this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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I can really only comment on how integral combat and looting is to the game and the answer is very. There are clever ways you can navigate a lot of side quests especially to avoid combat, whether by stealth, hacking or finding "hidden" paths through maps, but the main storyline is a whole lot of shooting or shredding people in your way.
Looting is also vital. It's basically an RPG in that regard. In addition to looting money, junk to sell, upgrades to your gear, etc, you can break down stuff you find and use it for crafting too (which may or may not be appealing, but crafting is quasi-optional). Gear management is less important on lower difficulties anyway.
Overall, I think the game has fantastic design elements and the gameplay loop is satisfying. The story is also, in some ways, very nice, tight, contained narrative that doesn't explode into a Final Fantasy-type "main character is the only thing between all of existence and extinction". But, as a cyberpunk tale, it really, really lacks the punk part of the equation. You can literally do quests for cops (most of them are side things, not even quests, more just combat opportunities, you can just ignore).
It's much more cyber-liberalism than cyberpunk. Mike had a lot of audacity claiming the name of the genre and having no radical or tranformative critique of capitalism. Most cyberpunk works say that technology under capitalism is ruthlessly alienating but we can overcome that by building authentic connections and enduring. It's mostly not revolutionary, though some cyberpunk and especially post-cyberpunk is. But it's an inherently hopeful genre - most cyberpunk is about people surviving all the alienating bullshit of hyper-modernity and maybe making things a little better along the way. Cp2077 is a very static, pessimistic to the point of straw nihilism, and hopeless setting. Nothing changes but everything gets worse, history has ended, there is no human agency. There's no concept of revolution even though the cccp is still out there. All you can hope for is being a mercenary who kills a lot of people at the behest of warlords and corporations until you inevitably get splattered. I struggle to call it cyberpunk at all.
If you're in your 20s and grew up long after cyberpunk, i would strongly reccomend against considering cp2077 for a first step in to the genre. Read Neuromancer and Gibson's sprawl trilogy, watch The Matrix, super mario brothers (no shit the 90s SMBs is an utterly bonkers cyberpunk action movie), the first GitS movie, and Hackers. Pondsmith's cyberpunk ttrpg is very much outside the norms of the genre and provides a very shallow and flat vision that has been mired in 80s nostalgia since the 80s, while the core cyberpunk canon still has insights to offer and post-cyberpunk has grown and remained relevant.
This pretty much sums up my take from just watching videos on the game, from viewing various bits of gameplay and such. When I look at it, yes it has some aesthetics of cyberpunk, but it looks wrong.. especially when it looks like GTA with a few neon lights and cybernetics slapped on. I think between the 00s and now a lot of the genre has become more corporate and diluted, even on just an aesthetic level. A good comparison is looking at system shocks intro (the original) I highlight that as it's that 90s look which still feels cyberpunk to me
I fucken told you about cyberpunk dog
Idk what you see in Neuromancer tho honestly
the sequel count zero was a lot better than neuromancer as a literary work instead of just a description of an aesthetic.
Neuromancer was an iconic, genre defining work of literature that shaped both literature and people's views of the world. I read it before the turn of the century, it might seem less impactful now decades later.
Nah I mean it's still at least 40% not trash, it has some really nice flashes of brilliance at times, and it's got a nice retrofuture sheen now
Also "the sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel" is the best opening line in literature and for many people it already makes as much sense as "wine dark sea"