Non profits are just handy tax avoidance schemes for capitalists,
Cool. I was wondering what I was doing of my days. Now I have meaning.
Also corporations are not people. They cannot be bad guys or good guys or ugly guys.
Oddly, i was about to argue the opposite : corporation-baddies don't bother me there precisely because, in the cyberpunk premise, they "are" people. They are the actors, the characters, the "sides". They are both the organized crime networks (in the sense that real life mafias are just unregulated over-capitalistic systems, so in unregulated cyberpunk they're basically legal) and the rogue states (in the sense that cyberpunk corporations replace nations). Just like nowadays everything, from games to music to films to books to letters, newspapers, cameras, etc, is a smartphone, in the cyberpunk universe almost everything, any baddie entity (cult, state, criminal organisation, etc) is a corporation. Individuals hardly have the required agency. The very premise is : corporate wars. Just like ancient Greece epics always come down to warring gods.
But still, shadows of doubt exists, and brings back the capitalist hell to the individual level,
Costa-Gavras-like.
Anyway, the thing annoys me in other settings though. Like, in modern settings, if there is a mutant power, it's of course the product of or/and hunted by an evil corporation's evil secret evil research evil department, because it's the idea on the top of the pile. I'm really tired of corporate super secret labs and nonsensical experiments, à la Resident Evil, Stranger Things, The Boys, etc. Mostly because of predictability, partly because the "profit" angle is so often too weak an excuse for the plot baddies (in practice, Weyland-Yutani is more a Secret Alien Cult than a greedy corporation). But cyberpunk settings are the places where it feels the most natural.
Fine fine, next discount I'll grab it. Although I watched a bit of a playtrough, its a bit disappointing that the moment you catch one killer a new one materialize. I think it would be better if there was one large scheme that wasn't crackable at the beginning and so you'd need to built up gear/connection before you could tackle it, and you'd do that by catching smaller crime.
Well, if there was a large scheme, you'd probably end up with evil corporate shenanigans. But again, it's Early Access, and I expect more variety of crimes in the future (next update is called "cheat and liars"), with hopefully more interconnected plots at some point.
Still, for now, it's a baddie-of-the-week procedural, old school with no season arc. You're a mere Derrick/Maigret/Monk/Columbo catching ordinary murderers, petty criminals, serial killers. Once you lock one up, life goes on, and other crimes happen. It feels natural, organic. A living city filled with little dramas. And a gumshoe detective treating it as routine. It feels part of the atmosphere. And I like stories where the world is not at stake.