CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[NJClaw]

rpgcodex > we're all here just to argue with rusty

 

[Grunker]

which i didn't. the entire point is that (good) cyberpunk is uniquely political compared to comparable genres

Didn't accuse you, m8. I only took part in the arguing with rusty and didn't bother to keep up with the discussion after that.

fair enough, took your response as an input to me and mediocre's discussion. though it was rusty who posted the quote i re-quoted so i'd imagine he agrees with me

 

[Absinthe]

what the fuck even is your point lol. do you know yourself?

His point is that he's right. Everything else is basically unimportant to him, and open to reinterpretation.

Why do you think my argument with him quickly turned into being about nothing more than his brittle ego?

 

[mediocrepoet]

what the fuck even is your point lol. do you know yourself?

Are you serious?

I never took you as a dumbfuck before. I assume it's just on this issue.

The game's called Cyberpunk because it licensed a specific IP. That's the name of the IP. That this particular iteration doesn't have much of a message of the sort that you seem to want is a nothing burger.
The game is not called Cyberpunk because it's trying to call itself a genre name. That argument is a weird non-starter in the same way that Final Fantasy VIII isn't unusually named despite being set in a futuristic setting with spaceships and stuff, but not much fantasy.

Beyond that, the fact is it does take up issues of identity and mortality which are very much parts of cyberpunk's themes while not being political. If you have trouble seeing that, that's on you.

 

[mediocrepoet]

what the fuck even is your point lol. do you know yourself?

His point is that he's right. Everything else is basically unimportant to him, and open to reinterpretation.

Why do you think my argument with him quickly turned into being about nothing more than his brittle ego?

Did we have an argument? All I know is you take more interest in what I post than I do. So... ok.

 

[Grunker]

You’ve spent four posts whining that I’m assigning you intent by saying you disagree with me that good Cyberpunk is political

Now you’re arguing exactly that: that good Cyberpunk doesn’t have to be political

This is legitimately fascinating. It’s like arguing with Chefe back in the day when he forgot to switch alts

 

[mediocrepoet]

You’ve spent four posts telling me that I’m assigning you intent by saying you disagree with me that good Cyberpunk is political

Now you’re arguing exactly that: that good Cyberpunk doesn’t have to be political

This is legitimately fascinating. It’s like arguing with Chefe back in the day when he forgot to switch alts

That isn't what I said at all, but you read what you like.

Go play the game then see if you think it's named after anything other than the source IP, whether it's a good adaptation or not and whether it even fits into the cyberpunk literary genre at all.

 

[Absinthe]

what the fuck even is your point lol. do you know yourself?

His point is that he's right. Everything else is basically unimportant to him, and open to reinterpretation.

Why do you think my argument with him quickly turned into being about nothing more than his brittle ego?

Did we have an argument? All I know is you take more interest in what I post than I do. So... ok.

Poor memory retention, eh? Might want to get yourself checked for early-onset Alzheimer's before it's too late.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Poor memory retention, eh? Might want to get yourself checked for early-onset Alzheimer's before it's too late.

I guess it just meant more to you. Then again, it probably had to since I didn't read most of your posts.
Sorry to love ya and leave ya, sugartits.

 

[Absinthe]

Poor memory retention, eh? Might want to get yourself checked for early-onset Alzheimer's before it's too late.

I guess it just meant more to you. Then again, it probably had to since I didn't read most of your posts.
Sorry to love ya and leave ya, sugartits.

Welp. Guess we just confirmed mediocrepoet is a faggot.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Grunker I can't tell if you're just messing with me, but my experience with you tends to suggest that you aren't. So in the interest of disambiguation in case there's some sort of communication issue:

Cyberpunk (genre): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech",[1] featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.

Cyberpunk 2077 (intellectual property): https://www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/mdocs/en/wipo_smes_ge_20/wipo_smes_ge_20_p3.pdf

Cyberpunk 2077 is a video game produced by the Poland-based video game company CD Projekt Red (“CDPR”) that is slated for release on 19 November 2020.1 Cyberpunk 2077 is an interactive entertainment product – a video game. As such, it is a complex work from an intellectual property perspective, not only embedding a wide range of often overlapping intellectual property rights (“IPRs”), but also incorporating some content which may fall beyond the scope of intellectual property in at least some juristictions.

Cyberpunk (trademark): https://www.vg247.com/cd-projekt-re...emarked-cyberpunk-after-fans-feared-the-worst

CD Projekt Red wanted to make sure no one else will be able to use the exact name "CYBERPUNK" and naming scheme, such as "CYBERPUNK 2077" "CYBERPUNK 2078" and so on. This was done after the studio bought the rights to other Cyberpunk trademarks previously owned by the author whose work the game is based on.

"A trademark is not a copyright or patent - these are totally different rights and they should not be confused," CD Projket Red wrote. Owning this trademark does not prohibit all uses of the word, according to the developer, only its commercial use.

Cyberpunk (intellectual property): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk_(role-playing_game)

Cyberpunk is a tabletop role-playing game in the dystopian science fiction genre, written by Mike Pondsmith and first published by R. Talsorian Games in 1988. It is typically referred to by its second or fourth edition names, Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red, in order to distinguish it from the cyberpunk genre after which it is named.

Surely you understand that the intellectual property isn't the same as the trademark (though they're related) and neither necessarily has anything to do with the literary history outside of the specific tabletop RPG setting that they bought the rights to. Anything necessarily between the genre and this specific video game are inherited. Is it political? Perhaps, based on the setting. Are the themes used in the game political to the point that they're worth discussing? That's a stretch.
Does the game possibly being overtly political or not mean it's good or bad? Only if you're a politics fag.

You're either intentionally misattributing these usage cases to me, or are doing it by mistake.

 

[Grunker]

Listen, mediocre, I have nothing against you on a personal level but what you just wrote is retarded. I also have no idea why you're talking about trademarks and intellectual properties in a genre discussion, it's just more goal post moving. But I'm loathe to present a rebuttal about the nature of Cyberpunk as a genre seeing as I've already made my point several times, and frankly I don't know if I'm dreading another nonsensical response or another diversion about misassigning intend the most, because neither are going to be satisfying to read or respond to. I don't see any way forward that doesn't include minimally interesting output at the cost of maximum annoyance and only the bystanding receivers of potential lols at our expense shall be the richer for such an altercation. We certainly aren't gonna.

 

[Wesp5]

Now you’re arguing exactly that: that good Cyberpunk doesn’t have to be political.

I think this might be true. At least the politics can give a great background with mega corporations and such, but they don't need to be the center of the story!

 

[Absinthe]

Now you’re arguing exactly that: that good Cyberpunk doesn’t have to be political.

I think this might be true. At least the politics can give a great background with mega corporations and such, but they don't need to be the center of the story!

Cyberpunk politics don't always need to be front-and-center but they do always need to be integrated as part of the world. Otherwise it's not cyberpunk. The problem with CP2077 is that it does a pisspoor job of incorporating the themes of cyberpunk and that it's not really cyberpunk. It just uses it as window dressing. Considering the game is called cyberpunk, that is a problem. A failure to deliver on the central premise of the game - that it would be a cyberpunk adventure.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Now you’re arguing exactly that: that good Cyberpunk doesn’t have to be political.

I think this might be true. At least the politics can give a great background with mega corporations and such, but they don't need to be the center of the story!

The problem with CP2077 is that it does a pisspoor job of incorporating the themes of cyberpunk and that it's not really cyberpunk. It just uses it as window dressing. Considering the game is called cyberpunk, that is a problem. A failure to deliver on the central premise of the game - that it would be a cyberpunk adventure.

I think that it's a matter of personal expectations tbqh. While it might not have delivered some cyberpunk adventure, what it did deliver is an adventure within a cyberpunk setting. It's mostly window dressing, yes, but I doubt that the average player expected some deep philosophical work that would make him ponder things rather than just a neat cyberpunk theme park to mess around in.

 

[Caim]

What aspects

Chose corpo background, get trolled by CDPR shock&awe dept™ , get shoehorned into street kid instead of unfolding existential crisis etc etc.

When I played the game I started as a Corpo. When the stuff in my head started to fuck me up with the guy saying that I'd die in a few minutes if I didn't give him what he wanted I called his bluff and sat there not doing anything expecting a bad ending.

Oh I called the bluff alright, too bad CDPR didn't have the balls/foresight to just kill me there and give me the game's first any% speedrun world record.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Also I think that traditional cyberpunk cannot be faithfully recreated today. Not because it's technically impossible, but because the cyberpunk aesthetic would be detrimental to a serious work of speculative fiction since it no longer appears as a feasible and/or hyperrealistic possible future to us. Other writers will continue to tackle the same themes in works of fiction (including SF stuff set in the near future), but the visuals of it will reflect the imagination of a contemporary individual and not of someone living in the '70s/'80s like Gibson with his angst towards the economic rise of postwar Japan and what have you (although funnily enough that aspect in particular can be updated most easily into generic East Asian futurism due to contemporary angst towards China, but other stuff like how the internet functions in traditional cyberpunk is pretty much a dead and buried cultural relic of a bygone era). Cyberpunk aesthetics today would only detract from such works hence them being kept alive only in pop culture as frozen in time visuals without substance lest they lessen the possible impact of a more profound work.

 

[Caim]

We stopped being able to write cyberpunk because it came true, minus the flying cars, robot limbs, monowire threads, and plugging our brains directly into the internet.

 

[Gargaune]

When I played the game I started as a Corpo. When the stuff in my head started to fuck me up with the guy saying that I'd die in a few minutes if I didn't give him what he wanted I called his bluff and sat there not doing anything expecting a bad ending.

Oh I called the bluff alright, too bad CDPR didn't have the balls/foresight to just kill me there and give me the game's first any% speedrun world record.

An odd progression for CDPR. One of the most memorable moments for me from the Witcher 2 was when you meet up with the shitsquirrels and they've got their bows trained on you. I decided to call the game designer's bluff, piss the knife-ears off and force a fight like in a BioWare game. But it wasn't a BioWare game, instead of a fight, I got Geralt pricked with a hundred arrows and a Game Over screen.

Also I think that traditional cyberpunk cannot be faithfully recreated today. Not because it's technically impossible, but because the cyberpunk aesthetic would be detrimental to a serious work of speculative fiction since it no longer appears as a feasible and/or hyperrealistic possible future to us. Other writers will continue to tackle the same themes in works of fiction (including SF stuff set in the near future), but the visuals of it will reflect the imagination of a contemporary individual and not of someone living in the '70s/'80s like Gibson with his angst towards the economic rise of postwar Japan and what have you (although funnily enough that aspect in particular can be updated most easily into generic East Asian futurism due to contemporary angst towards China, but other stuff like how the internet functions in traditional cyberpunk is pretty much a dead and buried cultural relic of a bygone era). Cyberpunk aesthetics today would only detract from such works hence them being kept alive only in pop culture as frozen in time visuals without substance lest they lessen the possible impact of a more profound work.

I dunno, dude, Alien's fiction is technologically deprecated too, but I ended up glued to an Alien: Isolation let's play like it was the proper Alien sequel I never got. More seriously, though, you can still channel some of that cyberpunk aesthetic even if you move past dial-up modems and shit. CBP2077 itself has glimpses of that in Johnny's flashbacks, like when Alt gets kidnapped behind that bar, you can tell it looks different. For the rest of the game, though, it does seem like they tried to "update" the aesthetic with a more contemporary take and it was... not as satisfying as it could've been. Possibly another argument would be Fallout. Not the latest incarnations, but the original's more "comically subdued" take on the subject matter, point being you can still craft a serious, interesting fiction on a technologically outdated setting.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

I dunno, dude, Alien's fiction is technologically deprecated too, but I ended up glued to an Alien: Isolation let's play like it was the proper Alien sequel I never got. More seriously, though, you can still channel some of that cyberpunk aesthetic even if you move past dial-up modems and shit. CBP2077 itself has glimpses of that in Johnny's flashbacks, like when Alt gets kidnapped behind that bar, you can tell it looks different. For the rest of the game, though, it does seem like they tried to "update" the aesthetic with a more contemporary take and it was... not as satisfying as it could've been. Possibly another argument would be Fallout. Not the latest incarnations, but the original's more "comically subdued" take on the subject matter, point being you can still craft a serious, interesting fiction on a technologically outdated setting.

Technically you can update them, yeah. But as cyberpunk has already cemented itself into pop culture, the more you do that then the less cyberpunk it becomes in the eyes of a generalized audience. And the point of pop culture is to be as streamlined as possible in order to cater to the largest potential audience, something which you do by focusing on the iconic surface level stuff and making sure that everything is easily digestible for said audience. And frankly, proper cyberpunk would be too 'problematic' nowadays as well (see the whole tranny billboard fiasco).

 

[gurugeorge]

I think there's a good deal of Gen X resentment against the grown-up Boomer generation of their parents in the cyberpunk trope. If you think about it, the former hippies had all sold out and become the Reagan crowd, now capitalists themselves, and preaching "pull yourself up by your own boostraps" to their kids, heedless of the leg-up they'd been given by their own parents, the Great Generation. Their children must have resented being shut out that way (already having been "latchkey kids" when young). Quite often, the cyberpunk rebel is from the ruling class, knows their ways, knows the backdoors, etc.

Gen X was the first generation to experience NOT being handed down a patrimony from the previous generation, because the previous generation had been trained in "me, me, me." And I think the resentment against "the system" in cyberpunk is a bit like that. It's resentment against being shut out of something that should rightfully have been yours.

William Gibson was born in 1948, thus placing him near the older end of the "Baby Boom" generation, while Bruce Sterling was born in 1954 at the midpoint of the same generation. All of the early Cyberpunk SF writers would have been Boomers, if not older. Cyberpunk was an extension of the punk movement of the 1970s, which would have consisted almost entirely of Boomers, as even the oldest Gen Xers would still have been adolescents at the end of the decade. Some of these early Cyberpunk writers, including Williams Gibson, resented the conservative shift in American politics marked by the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and parts of their writing simply represent wish fulfillment, in that a plucky hero might use his technological savvy to fight back against faceless corporations.

Generational concepts are generally useless, since each generation encompasses cohorts born over a wide span of time, with enormous variety within each generation, and any division between succeeding generations is essentially arbitrary.

I was thinking more of the consumers of the stuff rather than the makers. The early to mid 80s would have been when the first of the Gen X-ers started spending money independently, and towards the end of the 80s is when their buying power really started showing through.

I always think of it that people make all sorts of stuff, but what becomes popular, who gets picked up (because the commercial outlets think they'll be popular), etc., all that is selected by the consumers.

Also, the tech side of it, that's more in tune with a young generation growing up becoming familiar with computers in a way that the Boomers weren't. It's a complicated topic because there's a lot of crossover from experimental themes and tropes from the New Wave of the 60s and 70s, and those are definitely more Boomer-ish.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Alright, once more into the breach to try and make my point intelligible to random midwits.

1) The Cyberpunk 2077 game is an adaptation of the Cyberpunk 2020 intellectual property.
2) Cyberpunk 2020 was only titled this way as opposed to just "Cyberpunk" in order to specifically disambiguate itself from the cyberpunk literary genre.*
3) CD Projekt Red registered "Cyberpunk" as a trademark to protect their Cyberpunk IP and allow for protected naming for sequels such as Cyberpunk 2078, Cyberpunk 2080, or what have you.
4) Cyberpunk 2020 was a tabletop game.
5) Both the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game and the cyberpunk literary genre share a variety of similar themes.
6) Tabletop games encompass a far greater variety of themes and possible scenarios than a video game because a video game is basically one adventure while a tabletop game can provide many adventures.
7) The themes covered in a single adventure will likely be limited to a subset of the themes of the overall setting (i.e. the tabletop game's setting), by necessity.
8) Some of the themes of the Cyberpunk 2020 game as well as the cyberpunk literary genre are broadly political, including things such as class inequality, anti-capitalist and anti-corporate themes, etc.
9) Some of the themes of the Cyberpunk 2020 game as well as the cyberpunk literary genre have nothing to do with politics and might be construed as broadly philosophical. These could be themes such as what it means to be human, what makes a person who they are, etc.
10) Cyberpunk 2077 has some political themes as it represents overly powerful corporations, abject poverty, power inequality, etc. These themes are not dwelt on much narratively, but are presented as part of the setting and window dressing.
11) Cyberpunk 2077 has some philosophical themes as the primary narrative is about identity and mortality. Arguably, it is also about how "alive" AIs are.
12) Therefore, Cyberpunk 2077 has cyberpunk themes, as well as cyberpunk window dressing.
13) However, since Cyberpunk 2077 is basically a looter shooter, it doesn't get all that deeply into any of these themes, other than presenting them and letting you think about them. Any depth to the narrative is probably provided by the gamer.

1a) Cyberpunk stories can be about a variety of things, as Wesp5 helpfully noted. Just as a Star Wars story could still be considered to be a Star Wars story even if it doesn't involve the Force, lightsabers, or Skywalkers, so too can a cyberpunk story not involve significant political commentary, even though they're part of the broader setting and even though they may be all the particular person cares about.
2a) No one complains about Final Fantasy being called Final Fantasy despite some of the storylines being completely non-fantasy and almost all of them containing significant non-fantasy elements such as lasers, mechs, etc.
3a) Therefore, complaining that Cyberpunk 2077 didn't deliver a "cyberpunk adventure" because it isn't political is stupid.

1b) Reviewing points 1, 2, and 3, and noting that Cyberpunk 2077 is a video game set in the setting of Cyberpunk 2020 (or Cyberpunk, the tabletop game), why would we expect it to be called anything other than after the intellectual property and trademark that CDPR has paid for?
2b) The Cyberpunk IP doesn't necessarily have any direct relation to the cyberpunk literary genre.
3b) Therefore, criticisms that video games based on the Cyberpunk IP don't have X, Y, or Z elements of the cyberpunk literary genre are retarded at best.

* This might seem stupidly pointless to some, but the commentary in this thread indicates that it was probably necessary.

tl;dr Some of you guys are fucking retarded. Also... I'm probably at least mildly autistic.

 

[Kjaska]

cyberpunk begins and ends with political commentary

It begins with a personal story about arrival in a city in 2/3 of the available openings and ends with your friends and acquaintances sending you farewell messages. Also, since when is anti-corporatism political? AFAIK almost all politicians and parties suck corpo cock, regardless of position on the chart. Similarly, all regular people dislike corpo unless it's their one favourite brand.

BTW: Whilst playing the game some more I actually heard on the car radio something about a dangerous leftist terrorist getting 40 years in prison because he wanted to re-introduce pensions. IT WUZ PULITICUL AFTER ALL GAIZ! I withdraw my statement, your Honour.

Now, can you politfags leave the thread unless you're going to talk about the game at hand?

Like, why do you even tout "cyberpunk is political" as if it's a positive trait. Politics are boring as fuck and are also everywhere now. The less of it I get in my entertainment, the better.

 

[Kjaska]

sunrise + sandstorm = 0 visibility

trying to reach Dakota to sell an Aerodyne I "found". RIP my eyes.

I have a similar experience when opening this thread and seeing 3+ pages of grognards arguing about politics instead of the game.

 

[Mikeal]