CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf] (Dec 14)

Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by nkohari on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:07AM (#25439291)

Eh, this comes across as hipsterism. I know it's trendy to hate on the game right now, but c'mon.

How much of the game have you played? The entire main quest is about transhumanism and corporate control. Cyberpsychosis and the Maelstrom are used as a means for examining the results of the overuse of body modification.

Just like the Cyberpunk RPG, it was very heavily inspired by Gibson's work, and I mean that in a good way.

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by Pfhreak on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @01:24AM (#25439691)

I think that cyber psychos are a really tired way to translate an old tabletop game mechanic into a story beat. What's more interesting -- amputees and disabled folks go BERSERK when they get treatment, or what if we escaped the bounds of the human form. Why does this game have such an extremely boring view of what humanity could be if you had access to mods. Gender, race, body type, even the configuration of limbs and the like seem like they should be things of the past in 2077. Instead we have a tired Japanese stereotype, a Haitian gang, and some pretty boring ideas about the human condition.

Gibson himself offered the critique that the game looked like GTA papered over with 80s retrofuturism.

I think it's totally reasonable to critique the game as not really doing anything interesting in the genre or even doing anything more than appropriating genre tropes.

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by nkohari on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @08:18AM (#25442130)

I'm a HUGE fan of Gibson's books, but let's be honest: he's 72 years old, and might not be the best judge of modern video games. He was also involved in (and wrote the screenplay for) the Johnny Mnemonic movie, which was one of the blandest attempts at mainstreaming cyberpunk ever.

The Japanese stereotypes and Haitian gangs are lifted straight off the pages of Neuromancer and Count Zero. I dig the retrofuturist 80s vibe, but then I love retrofuturism in general so that's not surprising.

In the end, CP2077 is a AAA video game. It has to appeal to the general population, so yeah, it's probably not going to be the most experimental take on the genre. As mainstream cyberpunk attempts go, can we at least agree it's heads-and-shoulders better than Netflix's Altered Carbon? :)

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by ineedasername on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @09:35AM (#25442958)

Netflix's Altered Carbon?

Yes. It definitely fell flat for me. Having read the source material probably didn't help there since it was so much better. Although even the book... I re-read about 2 years ago and it wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it from around 2006.

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by Pfhreak on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:32AM (#25443752)

I agree on altered carbon for sure. The Haitian gangs, however, are based on the Voodoo Boys from the original source material. (Though I understand why they changed the game to have them not be a bunch of racist white dudes with dreads.)

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by nkohari on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:14PM (#25445131)

Yeah, but Mike Pondsmith no doubt drew inspiration for the Voodoo Boys from the Rastafarians living in orbit in Neuromancer, and from the AIs representing themselves as Haitian voodoo gods in Count Zero.

The tabletop game draws heavily on Gibson and Philip K. Dick by the way of Blade Runner. (And to be clear, I love that!)

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by tomc1985 on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @02:34AM (#25440024)

Step into the shoes of almost any past futurist and you'll find that humanity usually took the boring, predictable route, technologically. There is an inherent cynicism in the setting that needs to shine through as a fundamental part of the genre's identity.

Also, it's only 57 years in the future. You're not going to advance that much in that time. Personally I think the aesthetic seems a little too trapped in 80s retrofuturism -- I guess I agree with Gibson there -- but that was always the interpretation of cyberpunk and scifi that I liked the most so it gets a pass.

There is plenty of whimsical, optimistic visions into the future, and while I think a setting that explores "high tech, low life" in that context would be cool to see, it'd feel a lot closer to Star Wars than "cyberpunk".

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by Pfhreak on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @10:27AM (#25443686)

That makes sense. Something like Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix really gets wild with what posthumanism can look like. Cyberpunk taken to the next 200 years.

That said, media like ghost in the shell and altered carbon (the novels) gesture in this direction. Altered carbon, for instance, has people who have modded their bodies with animal features. GitS goes hard on the ship of Theseus metaphors and has lots of mods that don't fit a standard human shape. Not to mention plenty of discussions of gender and gender roles in a society where you can just choose whatever body you want.

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Re:CD Projekt Conference Call with the Management Board [pdf... by tomc1985 on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @12:19PM (#25445217)

A bit into the game, Cyberpunk starts to resemble Altered Carbon in some ways. I'm not super far into it, and I don't want to spoil anything, but it definitely has some things to say about transhumanism and at one point I felt like it was sharing some vocabulary with AC.

You are right in that I think the universe could explore those themes more thoroughly, but then maybe it will and I'm just not there yet

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