A good majority of primary/original source material for cyberpunk (IE, the books that really created the genre) absolutely covered this shit.
It's Hollywood specifically that glossed over it a lot. Partly due to time constraints, and maybe partly because it was too "deep" for them and their assumed audiences.
Look up William Gibson, arguably one of the main founders of the entire genre.
It's worth pointing out as well though, a lot of the people who write most well known cyberpunk are leftists and aren't that deep to begin with. They're usually surface level thinkers and anti-capitalist types which is why whenever corpos do bad stuff it's usually profit motivated among other things. Ghost in the shell is a great example I would point to of exploring concepts like this. They even address the thorny issue in some of the episodes of a disabled kid who wanted to get cybernetic parts but his parents forbid it because of their religious beliefs.
It's precisely because the writers are all leftists I would argue, that corpos can never be the 'good guys' in any capacity or they simply don't allow you to play as the bad guys properly in pretty much any Cyberpunk I can think of. Yes, this includes Cyberpunk 2077, I was so hoping to be some corpo enforcer that rises up to the top as an executive but CD Projekt Red couldn't manage that and I blame ideology for that one because it would be too squeamish of a concept for SJWs.
Yes I'm aware in Cyberpunk 2077 you technically get the 'Arisaka' ending but even that's still painted as V getting screwed over by evil corpos and having no choice but to go into the digital ghost prison to save himself.
To be honest, it's not exactly easy to make a case where mega corporations won't abuse the massive power that they accumulate. I do agree though that the way leftist writers often portray corporations at a cartoonish level of villainous, with very little depth, nuance, or seriousness.
The mistake leftists tend to make is in assuming that capitalism is the problem and that total communism is the solution. They also fail to take note of how the left wing is just as much (if not more-so) in bed with large and wealthy entities exerting power and influence however they please.
My main point is from a gameplay perspective they should be taking that aspect of the corpo life and running with it. What if I want to be the bad guy and climb up the ladder? Let me become an executive and fly around in my extremely posh sports car exploring my various businesses that I own and shaking down people for cash then go back to my penthouse. The corpo life path intro was such a fucking cock tease and they could have made that aspect of the game so good but they deliberately chose not to.
Instead we got some shitty CoD campaign at best with an open world tacked onto the main story that didn't really make any sense. Even GTA the 'crime game' did not get this aspect of their game right, you can sort of buy businesses don't get me wrong. However in reality especially for GTA Online it was designed by rockstar to be nothing more than a vehicle to grind for cosmetics and in-game items rather than anything genuine.
This is the exact type of freedom that RPG games are completely missing now and why I hate leftist writing so much and it's not even just because of the diversity and pronoun nonsense. They are just bad at what they do. Remember the original Deus Ex and how you could literally join the Illuminati rather than do the preachy good guy bullshit? Yeah, that's more of what I want in video games because it's fun being able to choose that.
It's ironic that leftists call gamers babies but it's definitely because of them we can't have the dark and mature storytelling that we used to which is part of what made older RPG games so great because they're so fucking infantile and would get offended at any of these concepts introduced today.
Remember the original Deus Ex and how you could literally join the Illuminati rather than do the preachy good guy bullshit?
No? Deus Ex had one of the shittiest "choose your ending" endings of any game I recall, topped only by HR's literal "push the button for the ending you want" ending which I assume must have been riffing the first game.
Or do you mean the middle of the game where you meet Everett? Because the story is all on rails by that point. You don't get to "choose" to join, and there's no gameplay where you play as a badass secret illuminati agent. You're working for him while also working for the good guys.
Deus Ex is an entirely linear story after UNATCO. The developers were going to add an optional "Choose to stay with UNATCO" branching path but ran out of time.
Ah, okay, I understand now. I honestly wasn't looking at it as much from a gaming lens as a general narrative one.
I agree with you though. When we're talking about anything that strongly claims to an RPG, there should be a lot more latitude and freedom, allowing the player to dictate how they decide their character does things. And far, far less moralistic narrative pushing.
I can't even fathom how godawful tabletop RPG's must be with woke campaigns/groups. Like it's one thing to hear the kind of stupid shit WotC is pulling, but I doubt I could stomach even 15 minutes of that kind of shit during an actual game session.
no choice but to go into the digital ghost prison to save himself
Or you can not do that, and that's the end of the game so who knows what happens but based on the credits messages it's presumed he does some work for Hanako before he dies. Loyal corporate dog to the end.
Yeah but that's just typical coping bs like we saw with the Mass Effect 3 endings where people tried to make it out they were some elaborately clever endings and Shepard was really having some kind of fever dream when all that shitty writing happened. Nah, both those games had incredibly average and unimaginative writing at best. If the endings weren't there, they weren't there, I actually refunded on Cyberpunk 2077 because it pissed me off that much.
No, I'm simply telling you that you're factually wrong. I don't care about your opinion of the endings. (though it's amusing you would "hate play" a game all the way to the end) You can use the soulkiller machine or you can walk away. That's the Devil ending. If we're sharing opinions I'd say you got the ending you deserve.
A good majority of primary/original source material for cyberpunk (IE, the books that really created the genre) absolutely covered this shit.
It's Hollywood specifically that glossed over it a lot. Partly due to time constraints, and maybe partly because it was too "deep" for them and their assumed audiences.
Look up William Gibson, arguably one of the main founders of the entire genre.
It's worth pointing out as well though, a lot of the people who write most well known cyberpunk are leftists and aren't that deep to begin with. They're usually surface level thinkers and anti-capitalist types which is why whenever corpos do bad stuff it's usually profit motivated among other things. Ghost in the shell is a great example I would point to of exploring concepts like this. They even address the thorny issue in some of the episodes of a disabled kid who wanted to get cybernetic parts but his parents forbid it because of their religious beliefs.
It's precisely because the writers are all leftists I would argue, that corpos can never be the 'good guys' in any capacity or they simply don't allow you to play as the bad guys properly in pretty much any Cyberpunk I can think of. Yes, this includes Cyberpunk 2077, I was so hoping to be some corpo enforcer that rises up to the top as an executive but CD Projekt Red couldn't manage that and I blame ideology for that one because it would be too squeamish of a concept for SJWs.
Yes I'm aware in Cyberpunk 2077 you technically get the 'Arisaka' ending but even that's still painted as V getting screwed over by evil corpos and having no choice but to go into the digital ghost prison to save himself.
To be honest, it's not exactly easy to make a case where mega corporations won't abuse the massive power that they accumulate. I do agree though that the way leftist writers often portray corporations at a cartoonish level of villainous, with very little depth, nuance, or seriousness.
The mistake leftists tend to make is in assuming that capitalism is the problem and that total communism is the solution. They also fail to take note of how the left wing is just as much (if not more-so) in bed with large and wealthy entities exerting power and influence however they please.
My main point is from a gameplay perspective they should be taking that aspect of the corpo life and running with it. What if I want to be the bad guy and climb up the ladder? Let me become an executive and fly around in my extremely posh sports car exploring my various businesses that I own and shaking down people for cash then go back to my penthouse. The corpo life path intro was such a fucking cock tease and they could have made that aspect of the game so good but they deliberately chose not to.
Instead we got some shitty CoD campaign at best with an open world tacked onto the main story that didn't really make any sense. Even GTA the 'crime game' did not get this aspect of their game right, you can sort of buy businesses don't get me wrong. However in reality especially for GTA Online it was designed by rockstar to be nothing more than a vehicle to grind for cosmetics and in-game items rather than anything genuine.
This is the exact type of freedom that RPG games are completely missing now and why I hate leftist writing so much and it's not even just because of the diversity and pronoun nonsense. They are just bad at what they do. Remember the original Deus Ex and how you could literally join the Illuminati rather than do the preachy good guy bullshit? Yeah, that's more of what I want in video games because it's fun being able to choose that.
It's ironic that leftists call gamers babies but it's definitely because of them we can't have the dark and mature storytelling that we used to which is part of what made older RPG games so great because they're so fucking infantile and would get offended at any of these concepts introduced today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cur1uMGrxs
No? Deus Ex had one of the shittiest "choose your ending" endings of any game I recall, topped only by HR's literal "push the button for the ending you want" ending which I assume must have been riffing the first game.
Or do you mean the middle of the game where you meet Everett? Because the story is all on rails by that point. You don't get to "choose" to join, and there's no gameplay where you play as a badass secret illuminati agent. You're working for him while also working for the good guys.
Deus Ex is an entirely linear story after UNATCO. The developers were going to add an optional "Choose to stay with UNATCO" branching path but ran out of time.
Ah, okay, I understand now. I honestly wasn't looking at it as much from a gaming lens as a general narrative one.
I agree with you though. When we're talking about anything that strongly claims to an RPG, there should be a lot more latitude and freedom, allowing the player to dictate how they decide their character does things. And far, far less moralistic narrative pushing.
I can't even fathom how godawful tabletop RPG's must be with woke campaigns/groups. Like it's one thing to hear the kind of stupid shit WotC is pulling, but I doubt I could stomach even 15 minutes of that kind of shit during an actual game session.
Or you can not do that, and that's the end of the game so who knows what happens but based on the credits messages it's presumed he does some work for Hanako before he dies. Loyal corporate dog to the end.
Yeah but that's just typical coping bs like we saw with the Mass Effect 3 endings where people tried to make it out they were some elaborately clever endings and Shepard was really having some kind of fever dream when all that shitty writing happened. Nah, both those games had incredibly average and unimaginative writing at best. If the endings weren't there, they weren't there, I actually refunded on Cyberpunk 2077 because it pissed me off that much.
No, I'm simply telling you that you're factually wrong. I don't care about your opinion of the endings. (though it's amusing you would "hate play" a game all the way to the end) You can use the soulkiller machine or you can walk away. That's the Devil ending. If we're sharing opinions I'd say you got the ending you deserve.