What Cyberpunk 2077 Gets Wrong About the Genre(blog.constelisvoss.ml)
blog.constelisvoss.ml
What Cyberpunk 2077 Gets Wrong About the Genre
https://blog.constelisvoss.ml/what-cyberpunk-2077-gets-wrong-about-the-genre/
11 comments
There's "technical limitation of the game engine" for not giving an avatar a haircut, now?
I liked CP2077 fine as Yet Another One Of Those Games (and the setting scratched my itch a lot more than GTA5), but the entire thing feels half-baked and credulous around most of its themes. Edgerunners aren't treated as nearly the deniable assets they should be (hell, the game treats cops as generally legitimate entities) and life is only cheap if you don't have a custom face mesh.
I didn't really hit any major bugs, so I don't have any negative vibes for it there. Some of the set pieces are really nice, though, and I do just like driving around the city. And some of the character work on the major characters is quite good. But conceptually? From the big-ideas perspective--and cyberpunk, and punk movements generally, is a big-ideas genre--it feels like "dimly remembered ideas of the future of the 80's, mostly misunderstood and viewed through a modern and very non-radical lens".
I liked CP2077 fine as Yet Another One Of Those Games (and the setting scratched my itch a lot more than GTA5), but the entire thing feels half-baked and credulous around most of its themes. Edgerunners aren't treated as nearly the deniable assets they should be (hell, the game treats cops as generally legitimate entities) and life is only cheap if you don't have a custom face mesh.
I didn't really hit any major bugs, so I don't have any negative vibes for it there. Some of the set pieces are really nice, though, and I do just like driving around the city. And some of the character work on the major characters is quite good. But conceptually? From the big-ideas perspective--and cyberpunk, and punk movements generally, is a big-ideas genre--it feels like "dimly remembered ideas of the future of the 80's, mostly misunderstood and viewed through a modern and very non-radical lens".
Cyberpsychosis was straight from the Cyberpunk RPG that the video game is based on. That game is bascially Shadowrun without the dragons and magic and orcs. And Shadowrun went even farther, in that you'd literally die if you swapped out all your meat for robotics.
PS: I agree with the article. Even on meat-body point as far as cyberpunk the genre is concerned. But my feeling is that the dice game shouldn't have had it. Not that CDPR shouldn't have borrowed it.
PS: I agree with the article. Even on meat-body point as far as cyberpunk the genre is concerned. But my feeling is that the dice game shouldn't have had it. Not that CDPR shouldn't have borrowed it.
I've bee thinking about this from the context of "body modification" and personalization. Do HN users here see any interesting cyberpunk-like startups or fashion trends, where we see body modification, personalized tech, personalized body tech, etc.?
I can see Kernel or Neuralink as one obvious example, but beyond that...
I can see Kernel or Neuralink as one obvious example, but beyond that...
> I can see Kernel or Neuralink as one obvious example, but beyond that...
The thing is that Biohacking (Biopunk sub-genre) has been a long associated part of Cyberpunk lore. but the tech is still in its early infancy as its done in underground communities with very low to no budgets by disgruntled biologists who left the Industry, like myself. And often have way too much going on to focus on the immense struggle of bring something to Market.
I'm a Biohacker with borderline transhumanist leanings, but I prefer to focus on the diet and fitness based modifications/alterations for longevity, cognitive enhancement and performance rather than actual physical implants for now because they are simply not there. But I'm entirely open to them and I think they will be common place.
But you should check out a few biohacker/grinder events and documentaries online because their is definitely going to be growth in things like self-administered smart drugs that interface with interactive things like smart-clothing that are analyzing all kinds of bio-metrics in the next few years.
The CEO of Lululemon is a big player in that space and comes from 'tactical' clothing for the 'extreme sports' era in the 90s (snowboarding) at a time when when it was non-existent and thought to be absurd in most circles only to create an immense business model with the advent of things like X-games. The same thing with his yoga wear with Lulu lemon that struck it really well as more and more people were ditching the bar-scene after the 2008 financial crisis--its a really thought provoking business model and trajectory if I'm honest and I really don't care much about fashion, let alone women's clothing.
The issue with that kind of tech envisioned in the Cyberpunk genre, like most hardware, is that its likely going to need tons of investment so it falls to the centralized pitfall (Mega Corps) and is part of the dystopic lore; which is something I'd like to prevent as I think their is tons of potential for that beyond the low-hanging fruit non-sense from an Apple Watch. The maker-spaces at Caltech were a cool spot to see what some were developing, I'm sure Stanford and MIT has something similar.
The thing is that Biohacking (Biopunk sub-genre) has been a long associated part of Cyberpunk lore. but the tech is still in its early infancy as its done in underground communities with very low to no budgets by disgruntled biologists who left the Industry, like myself. And often have way too much going on to focus on the immense struggle of bring something to Market.
I'm a Biohacker with borderline transhumanist leanings, but I prefer to focus on the diet and fitness based modifications/alterations for longevity, cognitive enhancement and performance rather than actual physical implants for now because they are simply not there. But I'm entirely open to them and I think they will be common place.
But you should check out a few biohacker/grinder events and documentaries online because their is definitely going to be growth in things like self-administered smart drugs that interface with interactive things like smart-clothing that are analyzing all kinds of bio-metrics in the next few years.
The CEO of Lululemon is a big player in that space and comes from 'tactical' clothing for the 'extreme sports' era in the 90s (snowboarding) at a time when when it was non-existent and thought to be absurd in most circles only to create an immense business model with the advent of things like X-games. The same thing with his yoga wear with Lulu lemon that struck it really well as more and more people were ditching the bar-scene after the 2008 financial crisis--its a really thought provoking business model and trajectory if I'm honest and I really don't care much about fashion, let alone women's clothing.
The issue with that kind of tech envisioned in the Cyberpunk genre, like most hardware, is that its likely going to need tons of investment so it falls to the centralized pitfall (Mega Corps) and is part of the dystopic lore; which is something I'd like to prevent as I think their is tons of potential for that beyond the low-hanging fruit non-sense from an Apple Watch. The maker-spaces at Caltech were a cool spot to see what some were developing, I'm sure Stanford and MIT has something similar.
How did you get to see the Caltech makerspaces if you weren’t a student?
> How did you get to see the Caltech makerspaces if you weren’t a student?
I'm having a hard time looking for anything related to it Online, but honestly I was just walking the campus the day they were showing off some of the stuff they made. I was in Pasadena for am unrelated meetup, and decided to just tour the campus as they had put in the sustainability building and wanted to see if JPL was doing anything on campus that day. And when I got there I just saw them showing off several things: one was a body suit that had turn signals built into it for bicycle riders, the other was a set of gloves that interpreted the hand movements in sign language to speech.
I asked about it any they didn't specifically mention it was a student only event, and told me to look up online for the next one. I might have even gotten a link to one of their slack channels on an old phone if I recall correctly.
I had also been a regular at the hackathons at CU Boulder for a few years as a non-student as I first saw it advertised on a flyer when I worked out of the Aerospace department during my startup days and just walked in. Years later when I was at IBM's blockchain lab I even introduced a team from Stanford working on a blockchain based verifiable fund spending audit solution for charities to the Crytpo based guys who eventually won the main prize, that was way more than the all the rest. I still have their picture somewhere as they asked me to take it for them when they won, it was a very cool day!
So to answer you question: I don't know, these things just randomly happen when I'm around and no one has ever told me 'no' so I just keep doing it.
I'm having a hard time looking for anything related to it Online, but honestly I was just walking the campus the day they were showing off some of the stuff they made. I was in Pasadena for am unrelated meetup, and decided to just tour the campus as they had put in the sustainability building and wanted to see if JPL was doing anything on campus that day. And when I got there I just saw them showing off several things: one was a body suit that had turn signals built into it for bicycle riders, the other was a set of gloves that interpreted the hand movements in sign language to speech.
I asked about it any they didn't specifically mention it was a student only event, and told me to look up online for the next one. I might have even gotten a link to one of their slack channels on an old phone if I recall correctly.
I had also been a regular at the hackathons at CU Boulder for a few years as a non-student as I first saw it advertised on a flyer when I worked out of the Aerospace department during my startup days and just walked in. Years later when I was at IBM's blockchain lab I even introduced a team from Stanford working on a blockchain based verifiable fund spending audit solution for charities to the Crytpo based guys who eventually won the main prize, that was way more than the all the rest. I still have their picture somewhere as they asked me to take it for them when they won, it was a very cool day!
So to answer you question: I don't know, these things just randomly happen when I'm around and no one has ever told me 'no' so I just keep doing it.
Inserting RFID chips under the skin is a cool hacker trend. Someone was using that to touch-on to public transport.
About the game itself: I've only seen the PS5 footage on youtube and to be honest I think the bugs aside, crashes and save game issues, they made an incredibly beautiful Open-World game with clear limitations on launch with the belief they were intentionally going to expand as years went on as it took so long to develop what they had.
Someone posted a video, from a bug no less, that showed the entire Map and it seems the Launch sites for the rockets may actually be utilized as they coincide with the 'Corpo' story-line and gameplay dialouge, its just not an accessible part yet.
And that's the issue, CDPR made an amazing product visually but were cut-short before it was all polished and expanded and may have been cut-short entirely if you believe certain rumors, likely due to unrealistic management demands and release pressure. Had I actually bought mine instead of passing on it I probably wouldn't have bothered with a refund, Watchdogs Legion had similar bugs, too, and Online play is still not available which was a critical part of its selling point, but pretty much went under the media's radar.
Instead the producer just reduced the price by 30% in less than 2 months since it's release, which if they reduced the expansion/DLC too it would totally be forgiven until Online play is available.
What I personally don't get after not gaming for nearly a decade is this new ever extractive business model of expansions and DLC they created; you pay ~$60 for a game on release day only to have to pay even more for Online play (Sony+) and then pay the game creators even more for DLC to give the game more play until it can be played Online.
I get micro-transactions (less than a dollar) for in game skins or something equally as trivial, but $30 more for something that should have been sold is why I think I'm too old and have way more interesting stuff to spend my money on to care for this stuff anymore. And I'm their 'prime demographic.' It's no longer just nickle and diming you to keep things going, its asking someone to pay sums that exceed the actual game cost just to use it as it was intended and otherwise succumbing to software based planned-obsolesce.
It's absurd, my PS4 Pro came with Mortal Kombat 11 as a bundle and I was a die hard MK fan as a kid and I had all the games up until PS2, so when I inserted the game I noticed 1/2 the characters on the screen were missing and I thought I got a demo instead of the real thing only to look it up online and realize that you have to buy those characters as an add-on. So, I never bothered to play it and just saw the fatalities and brutalities online which is what all I really wanted to see anyway.
Someone posted a video, from a bug no less, that showed the entire Map and it seems the Launch sites for the rockets may actually be utilized as they coincide with the 'Corpo' story-line and gameplay dialouge, its just not an accessible part yet.
And that's the issue, CDPR made an amazing product visually but were cut-short before it was all polished and expanded and may have been cut-short entirely if you believe certain rumors, likely due to unrealistic management demands and release pressure. Had I actually bought mine instead of passing on it I probably wouldn't have bothered with a refund, Watchdogs Legion had similar bugs, too, and Online play is still not available which was a critical part of its selling point, but pretty much went under the media's radar.
Instead the producer just reduced the price by 30% in less than 2 months since it's release, which if they reduced the expansion/DLC too it would totally be forgiven until Online play is available.
What I personally don't get after not gaming for nearly a decade is this new ever extractive business model of expansions and DLC they created; you pay ~$60 for a game on release day only to have to pay even more for Online play (Sony+) and then pay the game creators even more for DLC to give the game more play until it can be played Online.
I get micro-transactions (less than a dollar) for in game skins or something equally as trivial, but $30 more for something that should have been sold is why I think I'm too old and have way more interesting stuff to spend my money on to care for this stuff anymore. And I'm their 'prime demographic.' It's no longer just nickle and diming you to keep things going, its asking someone to pay sums that exceed the actual game cost just to use it as it was intended and otherwise succumbing to software based planned-obsolesce.
It's absurd, my PS4 Pro came with Mortal Kombat 11 as a bundle and I was a die hard MK fan as a kid and I had all the games up until PS2, so when I inserted the game I noticed 1/2 the characters on the screen were missing and I thought I got a demo instead of the real thing only to look it up online and realize that you have to buy those characters as an add-on. So, I never bothered to play it and just saw the fatalities and brutalities online which is what all I really wanted to see anyway.
heavy spoilers about the game btw.
Confused about this analysis. They admit other NPCs engage with extreme body modification that falls in line with the core Cyberpunk genre, but still argue that not being able to customise your own player-character's hair style means CDPR have failed to understand the genre.
IMO, technical limitations of the game engine don't invalidate the worldbuilding and concepts they've very clearly intentionally baked into the game.
And regarding the author's implication that CDPR suggests the 'meat-body' is sacred which is at odds with Cyberpunk genre, using the 'Cyberpsychosis' illness as an example (being caused by people replacing too much of their meat-body with electronics), the actual storyline around this in-game illness is at complete odds with the author's point (which I won't spoil).