Cyberpunk 2077 Review thread - Umm....

Eacaraxe

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I am not sure that means anything. The whole game is a sloppy hatchet job in terms of story (which is really obvious in Tom's Diner when V knows a lot of stuff the player never heard of like, like who Anders Hellman is and Takemura's first name)...
Not CDPR's fault you didn't pay attention or use game mechanics. You're told Hellman's the guy who designed the biochip before meeting Takemura (if I remember right, it's either during the heist setup, or Vik's the guy who tells you), and you can scan Takemura at literally any point to learn his first name. V's eyeball is a real-time Google people/image search and you're griping about not using it.

The game is simply so barebones that lack of anything is more realistically attributed to the grossly mismanaged production then any artistic intention. Cars lack damage models, water doesn't have reactions (try shooting the water, wait forever for the splashes). Hell, here's seven(!) minutes of comparison footage to games from the 00's showing functionality that CP77 lacks.
Game's buggy therefore they can't have told a good story. Got it, you're just clutching for straws to problematize it just because it didn't tell you a story in the language you want it told.

That argument is about a lack of imagination from CDPR. Ironically, the ads themselves are "contemporary real-world sensibilities" employed diegetically.
"That people in the game aren't walking around treating the ads in question as abnormal, is proof of how totally not normalized those ads are in the game universe!"

Doesn't make an iota of difference in terms of what my argument was. Nice red herring.
You're aware the Copts are a heavily-persecuted group of Christians, predominantly from north Africa, who are persecuted for having gnostic-derived metaphysics and for leaning heavily into salvation through works as opposed to salvation through faith, right?

One might wonder if perhaps there are parallels to be drawn, there.
 

sXeth

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The biggest problem with all of that is that Character design is NOT "make a real person". Just like you don't see many differences in the body types of A-list movie stars. There is a way that characters are designed that is not realistic and it's not meant to be, because they are characters.

And if you look up nutrition facts around the "super hero" body, most people will tell you that the kind of Captain America Physique that you see is extremely unhealthy. Which is why you see Abby's body double talking about the differences between the times she is "show ready" and not. Hell there was an Entertainment article about Jason Mamoa in which someone took a candid of him with a little bit of a pot belly. Which is what he is supposed to do. The body needs to fat a bit of fat with it and cannot be in super hero shape 100% of the time, so actors will often put on weight when not filming and lose it for a shoot. That isn't to say that they gain unhealthy amounts of weight either, but there are fluctuations.

None of that is a reasonable arguement about the design of fiction characters in video games. It all boils down to the fantasy of which you are playing. And in terms of video gaming, people almost always prefer to play "beautiful" characters while designers also prefer to design beautiful characters. Beauty, equals health, and health equals "hero", which is why the heroes of comics, movies, and video games are often the perfect looking man or woman facing off against ugly monsters.

You are right though, there is an incredibly hypocrisy in which these people will claim that body-shaming is evil while they directly body-sham people who are in fantastic shape. The reason for this is because getting into shape is hard, and it is a also easier to be a fatass and therefore people seek validation that it is okay to be lazy and fat. That's why the body positivity movement is a thing and for no other reason. It's fine if you want to enjoy your McDonald's and don't want to be healthy, that's your choice and you have the right to make it. But other people also have the right to not find that sort of body attractive. And this also applies to the extreme opposite end. It's your choice to be Arnold Schwartzenegger, but it is also not my fault that i don't find Abby attractive.

I forget where it was but there was an interview with Cavilli about playing the Witcher and having to dehydrate for multiple days to pull off the tub scene physique



And Geralt, lest we forget, is kind of meant to be a bit of a wispy haggard dude (exploits aside), not even a pinnacle of desire.
 

CriticalGaming

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I forget where it was but there was an interview with Cavilli about playing the Witcher and having to dehydrate for multiple days to pull off the tub scene physique



And Geralt, lest we forget, is kind of meant to be a bit of a wispy haggard dude (exploits aside), not even a pinnacle of desire.
I saw that interview as well and he has said it in many places. Basically he dehydrates for 3 days before shooting and he is miserable.

It is not a good thing.

Also if you look up his video of him building his gaming pc or hell just look at interview videos, you will see that he is in shape but he is nowhere near as cut as he is in actual films. Because it is simply not healthy and not sustainable.
 

Terminal Blue

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What you are asking for is freedom beyond what the contores of the linear writing can play off.
I think you've misunderstood my point. I'm not really concerned about writing, I think in that regard the game actually succeeds about as well as could reasonably be expected. In fact, the way they've done it, with your character never being referred to using gendered pronouns, is far more efficient in terms of voice acting. I'm not talking about games accurately representing the quote/unquote trans experience, and I don't really trust cis creators to be able to do that anyway.

What I'm talking about is literally bodies. Because a huge selling point of cyberpunk was this enormous level of control and customization over your character. This was actually emphasized a lot in the game's pre-release marketing, including the fact that you could play a gender variant character. But again, because the only real control you have over your character's body is their sexual characteristics, that promise is actually fairly shallow. It also kind of suggests, and I really hope this is unintentional, that the writers saw sexual characteristics as the most important things that define your character, which is really kind of the opposite of what trans inclusion is about.

I always find myself thinking back to Saints Row 2. That game is over 10 years old, and yet it gave you an incredible amount of control over the character you wanted to play. You could play a character who was skinny, or fat. You could play a character who was androgynous, not just one who was hyper masc or hyper femme. How hard would it really have been, with the budget and hype surrounding cyberpunk 2077, to give players that level of control, and it's not even just something that benefits trans people, it benefits everyone who wants to personalize their own character.

I think you are falling into the idea that sexuality makes the person and that simply isn't the case.
In a fictional world, I agree that it doesn't have to be the case. The fantasy that maybe you can be queer or trans and just be accepted and treated normally has a certain appeal, and I think there's a need for media like that. But it's not authentic to the world we live in, and if you're just going to keep writing a bunch of straight-acting queer characters and expecting to be showered with praise, there's going to come a point where people stop recognizing themselves.

Straight, cis people often don't realise how weird they are from the outside because they have no media offering them that perspective. There are so many things which a queer or trans person just has to get over or deal with in the course of growing up which a cishet person never does, and it almost always produces a different perspective. If you write queer characters as straight characters, then there's a risk they will just seem closeted, and being closeted isn't an endearing personality trait.

The same can be applied to Cyberpunk, because to me that "Mix It Up" ad, showcases the total freedom people have over there bodies in this world.
Firstly, it's selling a drink. Again, if it was selling something relevant to the image, like sexual services or cyber-dongs, maybe it would make sense. But I don't see what the connection to bodily freedom is.

Secondly, if the intention was to showcase bodily freedom, it doesn't do that. Kind of the opposite.

Like, it's weird that you can't see this, because you were just talking about how you don't find a character's gender or sexual identity important. That poster makes it important, it's not just evident but cartoonish absurd and exaggerated in a way that is clearly deliberate. In a world where people have actual freedom over their bodies, it wouldn't be important. Showing a feminine person with a penis wouldn't be absurd, or funny, or brave, or anything really, it would just be a normal feature of this society. It wouldn't be worthy of comment unless it was relevant, it certainly wouldn't be something you need to exaggerate.

In EYE: Divine Cybermancy, all the adverts for the various models of guns you can buy have sexy women on them and absolutely awful slogans because it's a joke about how stupid everyone in this universe is (and, let's be real, because the developers were baked). Best case scenario, what you're basically suggesting is that Cyberpunk 2077 is doing the same thing without realising it's a joke.
 

BrawlMan

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I always find myself thinking back to Saints Row 2. That game is over 10 years old, and yet it gave you an incredible amount of control over the character you wanted to play. You could play a character who was skinny, or fat. You could play a character who was androgynous, not just one who was hyper masc or hyper femme. How hard would it really have been, with the budget and hype surrounding cyberpunk 2077, to give players that level of control, and it's not even just something that benefits trans people, it benefits everyone who wants to personalize their own character.
Thank you. Saints Row 2 just keeps getting better as it ages.
 

Dalisclock

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Am I the only person who thought 3 was better?
I think it's the weakest of the 3(2,3,4) but it's also a ton of fun and I love going to back to it every few years along with the others(I normally just start with 2 and play up through 4). It just has a few flaws that knocks it down slightly from 2 and 4 in my eyes.

I'm not counting 1 or Gat out of Hell because 1 is really hard to get ahold of now and Gat out of hell doesn't really feel like a Saints Row game.
 
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Terminal Blue

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Am I the only person who thought 3 was better?
As a game 3 is probably better, but I like it less. 2 is so extremely odd because it's still ostensibly trying to be serious, whereas 3 isn't trying and is just intentionally goofy, which isn't as endearing to me.

But yeah, the other reason I picked 2 in particular is because in 2 gender was a slider, and while that's not perfect it was still a really good way of letting you control your character's gender expression. No genitals required.
 

BrawlMan

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Matt's firing on all cylinders with this one.
Especially at the last 10-15 minutes. Spitting out the ultimate truth and saying the things I and others suspected and fucking called it! I forgot the game was supposed to even have a multiplayer mode. As far as I'm concerned, the game is dead in the water. No matter how much they "fix" or improve. I've been moved on already to better games.