I don't know if I'm being stunning and brave by saying this, but I stuck a fork in Cyberpunk 2077 when the 40 minute gameplay demo came out. The one that almost everyone wowed about. If you compare it to the teaser trailer from 2013, the tone is completely different, and not for the better. Although the teaser was purely cinematic, it was interested in the darkness of transhumanism, but the entire gameplay trailer is about hustling. Almost every piece of dialogue is overbaked: "got news as big as my balls!"
The gameplay itself is far from the transformative systems that we were promised. It's forced first person in a setting where the entire premise is built on your physical appearance. The shooting is your standard pseudo-cover FPS system with or without the destructible walls, the melee is your typical awkward FPS spamming with or without mantis blade climbing.
I thought the 40 minute demo was crap because it was literally nothing new. It was just more of the same old same old. It may as well have been Call of Duty Black Ops 3.2.
I didn't get why people were so excited about the game based on that 40 minute demo when nothing about it was unique or original.
I also wholeheartedly agree with you about the 2013 teaser. That teaser is still one of the coolest game teasers made and it has more character and ambiance than the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 even with the newest patch. Just as you said, it promised a lot of interesting potentiality based on transhumanism, the militarised police state, and a cool dystopian environment. There was just so much there contained in that teaser that promised so much where the finished game delivered so little.
Took the words right out of my mouth. The teaser had things the game almost completely lacked: tragedy and poignancy. Oh sure, they have their sidequests, and boy does the main plot reach hard for pathos, but how are we supposed to feel for dyed in the wool hedonists bent on running their lives into the ground with vice, murder, and gadgets? What little is there to understand about them? Cyberpunk is defined by fantastical materialism, but counterweighted by the individual humanity and value of the people caught up in the dystopia. Without that, you only have exploitative kitsch.
The main hook should have been a deeper, open-world dive with what Dues Ex: Human Revolution touched on with the natural rejection of biomechanical prostheses and an attempt to overcome those roadblocks at the cost of humanity.
Once again, Edgerunners managed to touch on this pretty much perfectly without getting knee deep into 18th century German-influenced ontological drivel. It was about the human element, and something people could relate to -- and the loss of that element. It was ultimately a tragedy.
But you nailed it about the story in Cyberpunk 2077 -- why should we care about hedonistic degenerates? They offer nothing of value to life or society, but are simply a snapshot in the ever-devolving breakdown of society. Essentially, the "heroes" were actually the villains.
Also, the worldbuilding made no sense. They had a ton of people walking around all chromed out who weren't cyberpsychos, and yet many of the cyberpsychos were no more chromed out than average everyday NPCs and other named NPCs moseying about. It had no consistency or logic. Some people had their whole heads replaced but weren't psychos, but some people only seemed to have parts of their bodies replaced and were psychos. It was more unexplored and unexplained phenomena that just happened to be there that players moved through with zero consequence or care. I guess that kind of summed up Cyberpunk 2077 in a nutshell: corporate slop without consequence or care.
I don't know if I'm being stunning and brave by saying this, but I stuck a fork in Cyberpunk 2077 when the 40 minute gameplay demo came out. The one that almost everyone wowed about. If you compare it to the teaser trailer from 2013, the tone is completely different, and not for the better. Although the teaser was purely cinematic, it was interested in the darkness of transhumanism, but the entire gameplay trailer is about hustling. Almost every piece of dialogue is overbaked: "got news as big as my balls!"
The gameplay itself is far from the transformative systems that we were promised. It's forced first person in a setting where the entire premise is built on your physical appearance. The shooting is your standard pseudo-cover FPS system with or without the destructible walls, the melee is your typical awkward FPS spamming with or without mantis blade climbing.
William Gibson's tweet is probably the best summary of the game.
Same here.
I thought the 40 minute demo was crap because it was literally nothing new. It was just more of the same old same old. It may as well have been Call of Duty Black Ops 3.2.
I didn't get why people were so excited about the game based on that 40 minute demo when nothing about it was unique or original.
I also wholeheartedly agree with you about the 2013 teaser. That teaser is still one of the coolest game teasers made and it has more character and ambiance than the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 even with the newest patch. Just as you said, it promised a lot of interesting potentiality based on transhumanism, the militarised police state, and a cool dystopian environment. There was just so much there contained in that teaser that promised so much where the finished game delivered so little.
Took the words right out of my mouth. The teaser had things the game almost completely lacked: tragedy and poignancy. Oh sure, they have their sidequests, and boy does the main plot reach hard for pathos, but how are we supposed to feel for dyed in the wool hedonists bent on running their lives into the ground with vice, murder, and gadgets? What little is there to understand about them? Cyberpunk is defined by fantastical materialism, but counterweighted by the individual humanity and value of the people caught up in the dystopia. Without that, you only have exploitative kitsch.
Exactly.
The main hook should have been a deeper, open-world dive with what Dues Ex: Human Revolution touched on with the natural rejection of biomechanical prostheses and an attempt to overcome those roadblocks at the cost of humanity.
Once again, Edgerunners managed to touch on this pretty much perfectly without getting knee deep into 18th century German-influenced ontological drivel. It was about the human element, and something people could relate to -- and the loss of that element. It was ultimately a tragedy.
But you nailed it about the story in Cyberpunk 2077 -- why should we care about hedonistic degenerates? They offer nothing of value to life or society, but are simply a snapshot in the ever-devolving breakdown of society. Essentially, the "heroes" were actually the villains.
Also, the worldbuilding made no sense. They had a ton of people walking around all chromed out who weren't cyberpsychos, and yet many of the cyberpsychos were no more chromed out than average everyday NPCs and other named NPCs moseying about. It had no consistency or logic. Some people had their whole heads replaced but weren't psychos, but some people only seemed to have parts of their bodies replaced and were psychos. It was more unexplored and unexplained phenomena that just happened to be there that players moved through with zero consequence or care. I guess that kind of summed up Cyberpunk 2077 in a nutshell: corporate slop without consequence or care.