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Cyberpunk 2077: Rockerboy Keanu Silverhand

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"What's my password again? God, I should know this. Um, Z-h-3..... fuck. Might as well take an early lunch."
 
Vindictus said:
I'm going to be honest- I like evil routes in games.

But the thing is, a good 'evil route' shouldn't be a mindless celebration of being evil. Consider games as an art form- the main route, the 'good' route, has certain narrative arcs and themes which it puts forward as part of its story. The alternate 'evil' route in such a game should, ideally, be a way to further engage with the themes and ideas which the story is working with.

Consider Undertale. In Undertale, you are engaging with the idea of violence and killing in video games, and depending on how you approach this, you can get several, wildly different results. But all of these routes- good or evil alike- are legitimately engaging with that core idea, even the exploration of the most evil route- the 'Genocide' ending.

That's what an evil route should be- an interrogation of the values and ideas put forward in the 'good' route, in order to more fully explore the story and its themes. Taking the position 'Evil routes mean I should be able to be mindlessly monstrous without any concern for the implications of my actions' is, in this context, frankly an insulting defense of the idea of an evil route. It implies the only justification for including such a route is to indulge an appetite for atrocities, which is, frankly, the sort of argument that justifies arguments against 'evil routes' in their entirety.

And frankly, if 'I should be able to commit hate crimes in a video game without feeling guilty about it' is the position people are taking because of 'evil routes', then perhaps we shouldn't have them at all.
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Maybe make a case for a cautionary tale with Adam Smasher. Adam, from what I remember is like someone who treats life like a video game and smashes through the meatbags in search of the next payout that tickles his adrenal gland. Going that route means that normal RPGing like say Geralt in Witcher 3 is near impossible because people run off when you walk through the area and your employer briefs you via monitor since they don't want to be in the same room with you. So you end up stripping bodies for ammo and cash and a loot box opens at the end of a mission as your employer sends them in via drone. To top it off, at the end, Adam, who has praised you for your metal over meat attitude ends up as a final boss because there is room for only one at the top. Who wins doesn't matter, even if you win, you just become the new Adam Smasher.
 
VolantRedX said:
Here's the bigger issue is that @stratigo seems to be ignoring, nobody here is saying the corpo ending should be all roses and sunshine, but rather that the negative aspect should be in how empty a triumph it is. That to get that ending you'd have to betray all the people you befriend along the way and end up alone and miserable at the top, and the counter-argument seems to be "no because people will take it the wrong way". No shit someone will. People idolize Scarface and Tyler Durden despite the fact the films they appear in is all about how destructive and dangerous their lives are and how in the end they lose everything. Hell criminals love Tony Montana despite the fact his whole film is about him ending up empty and alone with everyone he ever loved dead and being killed by rivals. Your point seems to be that this isn't enough and the ending can't just be "being a corpo stooge is emotionally empty and you'll hate yourself despite your power" and it must instead show unequivocally that siding with the corporations is death and there is no victory. What a lazy story lacking any depth or nuance.
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A few people indeed do seem to be saying this.

Hykal94 said:
I mean, Outer Worlds 100% allows you to side with the corps and it shows, that for all your riches and powers, you've doomed the rest of humanity for making bad choices because you took the greedy route and fucked over everyone. You, the player, "won". Humanity, and the rest of the galaxy, lost.

It's not impossible for 2077 to end just like that, on a smaller scale.
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Like a lot of people, I found the story of outer worlds kind of ran thin halfway through the game and the promise never paid off, so the choices that lead to the end of the game never really connected with me. It just sort of ended.
 
stratigo said:
A few people indeed do seem to be saying this.
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And? Why do they matter? Why does a creator have to care about them? Your argument that creators shouldn't do create something simply because "certain people" could miss the point, when taken to its logical conclusion, would completely destroy satire altogether, all because some people could possibly miss the point.
 
Suzu said:
And? Why do they matter? Why does a creator have to care about them? Your argument that creators shouldn't do create something simply because "certain people" could miss the point, when taken to its logical conclusion, would completely destroy satire altogether, all because some people could possibly miss the point.
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I want to make an important point here.


This games isn't satire.
 
So just because it got brought up . . . The corporation route in Outer Worlds doesn't doom humanity. It only dooms the humans living in that particular star system. There are human colonies in other star systems. They're even able to conduct trade.

As for this talk of what a corpo run might end up as . . . Sure . . . Maybe they'll make it a miserable and lonely thing where you sacrificed the things that really matter for that power and wealth. Or maybe they'll just shrug their shoulder and "Press X to snort future-blow off a stripper's ass and forget about your worries."
 
VolantRedX said:
Even so your point is that you can't write any story that might give comfort to the right wing even if the entire point is to show why this view point is bad. That is so limiting when it comes to art that it seems insane.
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I don't have unshakable faith in CDPR's dedication to the underlying themes of cyberpunk so that they sell the corporations as bad in more than a superficial manner.
 
stratigo said:
I don't have unshakable faith in CDPR's dedication to the underlying themes of cyberpunk so that they sell the corporations as bad in more than a superficial manner.
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You seem to have an opposite of "unshakable faith" in that you're criticizing a theoretical concept for a game that hasn't even been released yet.
 
I mean, I am indeed always skeptical of the ability of a corporation to actually critique capitalism.

But also, people seem to want to enjoy, essentially, the evil path with no ramifications. And they want to take the teeth out of the setting and just be able to retire, cushy and fat, off the corporate dime.
 
stratigo said:
I mean, I am indeed always skeptical of the ability of a corporation to actually critique capitalism.

But also, people seem to want to enjoy, essentially, the evil path with no ramifications. And they want to take the teeth out of the setting and just be able to retire, cushy and fat, off the corporate dime.
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Your ability to misunderstand everything people were trying to say about the supposed "pro-corp" path is astonishing.
 
Hakazin said:
That's just wrong. It's incredibly easy for satire to fail and turn into mere affectation if not handled by someone who knows what they're doing. Cyberpunk isn't inherently satirical any more than adult animated comedy is.
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If it's a failure of a satire, I don't think it can even be called cyberpunk in the first place, then.
 
ForeverShogo said:
Or maybe they'll just shrug their shoulder and "Press X to snort future-blow off a stripper's ass and forget about your worries."
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Man, with the possible upgrades that might be available, that would be one hell of a line of supersnow.
Now I'm just picturing some dude setting up this massive trail of coke around a room, the way people set up dominoes, and just going to town. Beautiful.
 
Suzu said:
I have no idea what you mean, and if you were trying to sarcastically point out how I'm wrong, I'd rather you use plain words for that.
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No True Scotsman is a fallacy where someone creates an alternate definition for membership of a group or category (often arbitrary or bizarrely narrow), then uses that definition to prove itself correct by excluding things that don't meet their new alternate definition as "not real/actual [category]"

Basically, there's no real basis for your assertion that all cyberpunk neccesarily has to be satire, and arbitrarily deciding that cyberpunk stories that are insufficiently satirical by your standards should not be "called cyberpunk in the first place" is laughable at best.
 
Jyusan said:
No True Scotsman is a fallacy where someone creates an alternate definition for membership of a group or category (often arbitrary or bizarrely narrow), then uses that definition to prove itself correct by excluding things that don't meet their new alternate definition as "not real/actual [category]"

Basically, there's no real basis for your assertion that all cyberpunk neccesarily has to be satire, and arbitrarily deciding that cyberpunk stories that are insufficiently satirical by your standards should not be "called cyberpunk in the first place" is laughable at best.
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I mean, I consider cyberpunk to be satirical by default because of the "punk" part of cyberpunk. The genre itself is supposed to satirize the present via its dystopian view of the future, which a typical cyberpunk protagonist would stand in opposition to. At the very least, this is what I imagine when I think about "cyberpunk."
 
Suzu said:
I mean, I consider cyberpunk to be satirical by default because of the "punk" part of cyberpunk. The genre itself is supposed to satirize the present via its dystopian view of the future, which a typical cyberpunk protagonist would stand in opposition to. At the very least, this is what I imagine when I think about "cyberpunk."
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Cyberpunk needs to be in opposition to the world it is presenting to be punk, but it doesn't necessarily need to be satire to do that.

Like, idk, take anti-war films. They oppose war without satirising it. I think a cyberpunk piece of media could do that whilst still being cyberpunk.
 
ForeverShogo said:
So just because it got brought up . . . The corporation route in Outer Worlds doesn't doom humanity. It only dooms the humans living in that particular star system. There are human colonies in other star systems. They're even able to conduct trade.
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Off topic, that's not quite what I got from Outer Worlds at all?

The real issue with Halcyon colony isn't just that the colony is non-viable in agricultural terms, but that interstellar trade has broken down. It's mentioned that even if Halcyon had food issues, the Board could technically just import the food...but they can't, because ships stopped coming in. In fact, Halcyon can't even get a message out; there are at least two sidequests that deal with wider universe, and in both its very strongly implied that spacefaring civilization has *somehow* broken down. And the one FTL ship the Board send to find out what the fuck happened went missing without ever reporting in. So as far as player knows, you really are it. There might not be any humanity beyond Halcyon anymore.

On-topic, I personally plan with going "I do whatever I fucking want to do" route. If corpos pay the most so be it, but I won't be too worried if I have to yeet some board member of a rooftop for trying to "cost cut" me.
 
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