How V's story subverts traditional video game tropes

[ShinAkira00]

This isn't something I see talked about a lot but one of the things I believe sets Cyberpunk 2077 apart is the fact that it didn't make V the stereotypical protagonist.
In most video game plots, the protagonist is eventually revealed to be the "Chosen One"... a special person with some unique ability (plot armor) or they're a descendant of someone special. This isn't just present in video games, it's the go to conclusion for every medium at this point.

The Witcher games unfortunately fall to the same crutch with Geralt the "white wolf" surviving trials others couldn't, which makes him somehow better than other witchers. I understand for most RPG stories the intent is for the player to feel empowered but I've always found that kind of narrative to be insulting because it suggests you need to be special to achieve these great feats.

In Cyberpunk 2077... V is not some character destined for greatness by virtue of lineage or some special ability. He/she is someone who's just trying to survive in a place that will eat you alive if you let it, that's something most of us can actually relate to. The character botches a heist and finds themselves in a predicament that they have to get out of with nothing but their wits and sheer will. Silverhand is along for the ride but he doesn't imbue you with special abilities, in fact it's the opposite....he's slowly killing you and has an objective of his own.

This was a risk on CDPR's part because gamers have become accustomed to these generic "Chosen One" but I'm glad they chose to go down a different path. I liked the Witcher but I didn't care a whole lot about Geralt because as much as I might want to role play as the character it didn't feel like you were because he's the white wolf...he's one of a kind. With V, you feel like you could very well find yourself in that situation, no matter who you are, this is your story. I believe that is a much better story and general lesson to take away from games like these.

My hope is they continue this by carrying on with a different character for the sequel but one who carries the legacy of V. Legacy is something I believe is more important than a character who is special and capable of doing great things on their own just because.

 

[LadyMiseryAli]

I like that V isn't special, at least not in the way most protags are, so I agree. That said, I'm hoping they are in the sequel, as the endings were too open-ended for me to want to play as someone else. V's story doesn't feel done yet.

 

[AlienSpaceBats]

Yeah, the absence of the chosen one trope and no basic rival/opponent was very refreshing. You still get to enact a power fantasy and be a Hero (to a point), but V isn't particularly exceptional, insofar as badass mercs go.

I do wonder if at some point in the game's development they considered that; Silverhand's engram would have some effect on V's abilities. The addition of the Relic to the stat menu and the way Misty presents the pills to V made me think they were going that way at first.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

The addition of the Relic to the stat menu

Just a guess, but I think the sixth slot is a remnant of the old stats design.
When there was a Strenght attribute, so 6 in total. Strenght attribute which was most probably "melted" with BODY and Aethletic in the final version. They just put "Relic" on it in 1.2 (or 1.3, I don't remember) to not let the empty and blurry slot present at release
2018 attributes in the Gameplay Demo.

On a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if they keep this sixth attribute slot in the game because they planned to "use" it later in the expansion or NG+.

the way Misty presents the pills to V

Agreed. At first, as Misty present it, I thought that it was more than "simply" a possibility to end dialogues with Johnny or let him the full control

 

[The_Blacks]

Hopefully next Witcher entries will get badass normal main characters too (I do like Geralt but I've always found the non-famous Witchers more interesting)

 

[ShinAkira00]

Yeah, the absence of the chosen one trope and no basic rival/opponent was very refreshing. You still get to enact a power fantasy and be a Hero (to a point), but V isn't particularly exceptional, insofar as badass mercs go.

I do wonder if at some point in the game's development they considered that; Silverhand's engram would have some effect on V's abilities. The addition of the Relic to the stat menu and the way Misty presents the pills to V made me think they were going that way at first.

I thought that as well. I thought Johnny would give the player some enhanced ability but the more I played, the more I was grateful they didn't go down that path.

Post automatically merged: Nov 4, 2022

On a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if they keep this sixth attribute slot in the game because they planned to "use" it later in the expansion or NG+.

Agreed. At first, as Misty present it, I thought that it was more than "simply" a possibility to end dialogues with Johnny or let him the full control

Yea i think this will be similar to the Witcher 3 where you could later obtain additional mutations after mad Kiyan.
But...do we really need more power ups? Lol they already make you a God mid way through the game. Hopefully for the next game they don't make things so easy to obtain.

 

[CS554]

V being just someone made some things possible. Experience the world of cyberpunk in many ways. For Commander Shepard there were certain expectations just via rank and position in Mass Effect universe, I suppose Geralt from the Witcher is the same (I only played the first one) and Denton was an agent for Unatco and so on. I think there were exceptions, Fallout New Vegas and I can't recall if the Outer Worlds protagonist had much background either.

Anyway, what having non special, but unique (V has Silverhand's engram) protagonist enables is freedom. Despite backgrounds (or because they only enable flavor) one can vision and execute their vision of V who is like the Batman, driving force behind that being yet another level of different things from real life things like following the Hippocratic oath to being a vigilante to something like P.I. from Noir who may be more often than not, observers to baseball bat wielding punk and they all feel natural and don't come obstacles when going through story. My V's tend to be sort of "pizza guy" mercenaries. People who know they replaceable, due my familiarity with the cyberpunk genre and for me I think that contributed a lot to my exprience with the game.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I can't recall if the Outer Worlds protagonist had much background either

If I remember, it's just "someone" that Phineas managed to wake up "alive". Nothing special, random dude/girl, clearly not among the great "brains" that The Hope carried.

 

[ShinAkira00]

V being just someone made some things possible. Experience the world of cyberpunk in many ways. For Commander Shepard there were certain expectations just via rank and position in Mass Effect universe, I suppose Geralt from the Witcher is the same (I only played the first one) and Denton was an agent for Unatco and so on. I think there were exceptions, Fallout New Vegas and I can't recall if the Outer Worlds protagonist had much background either.

Anyway, what having non special, but unique (V has Silverhand's engram) protagonist enables is freedom. Despite backgrounds (or because they only enable flavor) one can vision and execute their vision of V who is like the Batman, driving force behind that being yet another level of different things from real life things like following the Hippocratic oath to being a vigilante to something like P.I. from Noir who may be more often than not, observers to baseball bat wielding punk and they all feel natural and don't come obstacles when going through story. My V's tend to be sort of "pizza guy" mercenaries. People who know they replaceable, due my familiarity with the cyberpunk genre and for me I think that contributed a lot to my exprience with the game.

That's one of the reasons I wished they focused more on making the life paths actually mean more. It would have been good having a different ending for each life path instead of just leaving every choice to the player. At least that would present you with 3 unique playthroughs.

It's still possible to do this on your own by deliberately making your character naive or cruel but those choices aren't always clear in the dialogue options.

 

[Didacgomez]

Arcanum subverted the trope to the extreme, at the beginning

Spoiler

A NPC tells you that you are the reincarnation of the great elve mage Nasrudin.

You can tell him, you are crazy dude... and go alone the rest of the game

Later, is revealed that you are not the reincarnation of Nasrudin... because Nasrudin is still alive and kicking. So even if you accepted your status of chosen one, its false.
It applies a similar subversion with the antagonist, who is not who you are told he is at the beginning.

. Nothing special, random dude/girl, clearly not among the great "brains" that The Hope carried.

Specially if you lower your intelligence stat at character creation to unlock "dumb" dialog options (which makes a fun playthrough sticking to "Dumb" in dialogue as much as possible).

 

[CS554]

That's one of the reasons I wished they focused more on making the life paths actually mean more. It would have been good having a different ending for each life path instead of just leaving every choice to the player. At least that would present you with 3 unique playthroughs.

It's still possible to do this on your own by deliberately making your character naive or cruel but those choices aren't always clear in the dialogue options.

What I have got from following discussions, protagonists like commander Shepard, JC Denton, Geralt and like that are pre-defined protagonist. Player has agency of defining their own version of these characters limited by how they are defined.

Then IIRC Fallout New Vegas and Outer Worlds protagonists don't really have any background, that leaves a lot of agency for players to define them by themselves.

Cyberpunk 2077 then has what I would call vaguely defined protagonist and I tried to be clear what it enabled for me in practice, I pretty much liked my pizza guy merc.

Now your suggestion is practically making protagonist character more defined, exact opposition of what wrote about. Backgrounds as they are now enable player agency, to play and think like whatever. Making V defined by background would take that agency away and paths were pretty much straight lines.

So you like protagonist not being special and I wrote about what that makes possible, why it was great design choice as it allows me to make my own interpretations of my V as making protagonist special is just another way of defining protagonist.

Post automatically merged: Nov 5, 2022

Arcanum subverted the trope to the extreme, at the beginning

Spoiler

A NPC tells you that you are the reincarnation of the great elve mage Nasrudin.

View attachment 11327951
View attachment 11327954
You can tell him, you are crazy dude... and go alone the rest of the game

Later, is revealed that you are not the reincarnation of Nasrudin... because Nasrudin is still alive and kicking. So even if you accepted your status of chosen one, its false.
It applies a similar subversion with the antagonist, who is not who you are told he is at the beginning.

Informative. Now that's a twist.

 

[ShinAkira00]

What I have got from following discussions, protagonists like commander Shepard, JC Denton, Geralt and like that are pre-defined protagonist. Player has agency of defining their own version of these characters limited by how they are defined.

Then IIRC Fallout New Vegas and Outer Worlds protagonists don't really have any background, that leaves a lot of agency for players to define them by themselves.

Cyberpunk 2077 then has what I would call vaguely defined protagonist and I tried to be clear what it enabled for me in practice, I pretty much liked my pizza guy merc.

Now your suggestion is practically making protagonist character more defined, exact opposition of what wrote about. Backgrounds as they are now enable player agency, to play and think like whatever. Making V defined by background would take that agency away and paths were pretty much straight lines.

So you like protagonist not being special and I wrote about what that makes possible, why it was great design choice as it allows me to make my own interpretations of my V as making protagonist special is just another way of defining protagonist.

Post automatically merged: Nov 5, 2022

Informative. Now that's a twist.

Technically no. Your choices with V more often than not doesn't affect the outcome in a particular scenario. There are only specific missions where your choices actual matter to any great extent. Emphasizing life paths doesn't change that. All it would mean is you have access to specific skills associated with the life path you chose or how characters react to you might be different. You can obviously make choices within that life path so players still have agency as you put it.

They already give you a life path that determines your background so my suggestion isn't an add-on, it already exists in the game. In the game it just lasts for the duration of the prologue and after that everyone is in the same place regardless of what they chose.

 

[sdsweetland]

The messages you hear at the end are what the game is all about to me. V's story is everyone's story. We are all dying, but in the end, how many people remember that you touched their lives in a positive way?

 

[alittleLowkey]

I'd say that I agree with it being good that V is a bit of a nobody who becomes a somebody, and i like that there is no real specific antagonist but rather several small bad guys making up an antagonstic world.

But, I think the game sorta fails in the execution here and there, V is always snarky and dissmissive, you will always be an ass to Jackie in the tower heist. It feels like, yes, V is a different protagonist in many ways, but he is still cooki cutter in the dialogue.

Also, I'm a bit annoyed by the number of bad guys who act as if V.s background as a nobody makes them a nobody still (I'm looking at you Placide). That would work if it was obvious it was false bravado, but it never feels like that, it always feel like they see V as a weakling even tough the opposite is true.

 

[Bearded_Geek]

Eh, you know me, I hate the concept of the story and the endings.

The big problem of course is that the game isn't sold as what it is, the devs literally hid the true nature of the story in order to sell it as a regular power fantasy.

Anyway, "Luckily" the game is extremely disjointed, you can just spend act 2 becoming a god among men, killing everything in <2 seconds, then do the ending and be teleported back and continue to wreak havoc.
Which seems to be how most people play it; ignore the story 99% of the time and just go around killing gangers. I think to truly commit to the story as told the open world would have to go, and above all the ending should be a game over, like in most games, so you have to load an earlier save or restart the game to do the DLC.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

then do the ending and be teleported back and continue to wreak havoc.

It's not automatic. It only happen if after the end credits, players intentionaly clic on the button "One More GIG" instead of "Return To The Main Menu" button (in short, clicking on the button "One More GIG correspond to reload a save created at the point of no return... No difference with doing it manually)

So if you think the end is the "real" end of your story, just don't click on the button to return back to the game... It seem obvious, to me at least

Edit : Acutally, there is a little difference.
- If you load a manual save, you return back exactly in the state before starting the ending (seem obvious^^).
- If you click on the button "One More GIG" (which is optional and totally up to players), you return back before the ending, but you keep some items and rewards which are only obtainable during the endings.

 

[Spockprime]

I don't disagree about the "Chosen One" comment.

However, the game clearly does make use of common videogame (and movie) tropes. It's a mega-abuser of one of the worst: it creates fake tension by using the trope of having only "x" days before your world ends. If that one hasn't been overused to the point of nausea by lazy writing and/or poorly thought-out story design, then no trope has outlived its acceptability.

 

[Bearded_Geek]

I don't disagree about the "Chosen One" comment.

However, the game clearly does make use of common videogame (and movie) tropes. It's a mega-abuser of one of the worst: it creates fake tension by using the trope of having only "x" days before your world ends. If that one hasn't been overused to the point of nausea by lazy writing and/or poorly thought-out story design, then no trope has outlived its acceptability.

Oh exactly. The whole "you have a few weeks to live" has already been proven wrong just by me waiting a total of 5-6 weeks for different vendors to renew their stock. Plus all the 24 hour waiting periods I have done to forward quests...

Also, the true "Chosen One" trope isn't used all that often in video games. 50% of them probably avoid it these days.

RPGs without a chosen one I personally own: ALL Fallout games. (Skyrim on the other hand is definitely a Chosen One story), Cyberpunk 2077, The Outer Worlds, All four Shadowrun RPGs, the Wasteland RPGs.

 

[strangerr3]

I loved a way how they made V - playing a person who basically makes mistakes, fails, is betrayed and manipulated so many times etc. is what I needed. Scenes like one in Clouds where we can express our fear of dying is something very rare in games. It just feels so human and I`m so glad that we dont play some superhero.