Cyberpunk 2077: a review that lack coherency, pacing, and direction to lampoon it's subject: not because I'm still bad at writing shit!

 

Neuromancer is your favourite book that you finished on your second attempt. William Gibson spews prose that can charitably called dense, its bathypelagic quality made the genre stick. It’s called cyberpunk, emphasis on the punk; emphasis on the rough, unrefined, raw quality of the medium, punk is an aesthetic for artists, and art appreciators, not for consumers. It is not content, and it is far from content. It’s the gold standard against which we can measure anything claiming the label of cyberpunk. Punk is a dork’s idea of what’s cool; punk is sublime in its rejection of what is; and it's ugly as hell.

There was a point when writing this review, I got a cold; my tones altered a tad, fyi.

Cyberpunk 2077, much discourse has already been sung about its troubled launch, and the quirks of the RPG system it was based on. I’m perfectly willing to rethread old hash, but I’m not doing the research. It’s 2025, And I’m ready to jack in.

I was told to play the game, because it looks nice. Ray tracing, smoke effects, post processing; I’m not a fan, I’m sure these are all very titillating to people that have never visited a gallery and starred hungrily at a tapestry for half an hour. I run on vibes, moods, and mouth-feel: which is why I was banned from said gallery after they finished plucking the fibres from my snarling maw.

Because of my “feral” behaviour, I had to start running merc gigs for two bit clowns. I met sympathetic character doing my first such job and the following montage made sure I understood we were now best buds. All was going swimmingly, and we waltz gaily towards our big job; free from ominous foreshadowing.

Skipping ahead, friend died, and there is now nihilist persona invading my brain; taking over my consciousness trying to turn me into an unhinged self-destructive ego driven psycho, but more-so: I play games to get away from the news cycle not to embody it.

The game is still buggier than my second year entomology course. The Temnothorax of the matter is that I got into a car from the wrong side during a sequence, and the car decided to brick itself. A mood I can only describe as ‘too relatable’ (editor’s note: I’m going to remove the other ways you described this anecdote, saves about 400 words)

I’ve sunk too many hours into this game to dismiss it outright. In my estimation its closest relative is the elder scrolls: oblivion, a technically ambitious project for it’s time that had a noticeable jank to it, which is nonetheless charming, despite and because of its total disregard for game balance. I had to crank the difficulty up just to keep it interesting, so maybe the inverse of elder scrolls there.

The graphics being polished to a chrome sheen only makes the glitches and odd NPC behaviour more noticeable. Just as a ceiling to floor canvas, and period accurate 18^th century Venetian paint palette   only serves to highlight the fact you can’t draw a horse.

The story and the gameplay are at odds, flipping between slick hyper violence and the struggle of finding meaning and connections in a world where we are alienated from our own minds and bodies.

There are some highlights like when then human fleshlight program decides you need and existential pep talk more than a greasy handy. And when the chrom’d up glitter pop starlette says shit “I like what’s happening to me,” after murdering her manager Bf in a fit of rage.  I keep being told the dlc is better, which is a bit of a downer to anyone trying to enjoy the base game knowing they’re not playing the best bits.

The nihilist invading my brain kept telling to fuck the corporations; so when I got an text from one of their employees telling me to meet them at the no tell motel for a fade to black bang cut scene I decided to go along with it out of spite. To my horror the scene did not fade black, and I was treated to a full bang montage. But in the end it was worth it to know that Johnny had to watch in the corner.  

In fact most of my choices in game were the product of my loathing for the digital whinge bag try to worm his way into my neo-cortex. I favoured working with a soulless manipulative corpo-swine, who clearly hated me, rather than trust the parasite one bit. I know where I stand with the corps, but Johnny is playing a hot and cold abusive manipulator that I can’t get away from: and I play video games to avoid such issues not embody them. Credit to the writers for really making me hate someone.

4.The Trans-humanist project will not challenge our cisnormative heteropateriachal binary? I wrote this in my notes as a criticism of the setting. Something I found really disappointing. I’ll keep it to a single paragraph. But after some Foucauldian analysis it actually makes total sense. YES, Trans-humanism could undermine the whole shtick, but tech itself is neutral, even with its implied use cases. It’s a conduit for existing bio-power, not the liberator itself.

They have this thing in the “LORE” called the Datakrash! when the internet get’s 9/11’d and fucked up to all high hell. Some gonk spunked it off because the old internet was a vector for corporate power. The glib cynicism of that event is that corporations just made their own separate networks, nothing changed about the power relations. The nuking of the old net, though colourful, was entirely meaningless.

History in this world is a set of events in which the world gets worse but the power structures remain unchanged. Cisheteropatriarchical (word just rolls off the tongue) power is the same, if not stronger, simply because it is the power structure that co-opts the technology. Your super sex fuck cyberware comes in boner building blue or pussy power pink, they could build anything they like; but capital flows, queerness is marginalised, and the world keeps turning.

The Setting’s pointed re-enforcement of these norms and total inability to challenge orthodoxy on society in general and gender more specially is how an actual trans-humanist version of our existing social relations would function. Tech is co-opted into, and therefor reinforces existing hierarches of power. The internet did not set us free. The wild hinterlands of forums were quickly eaten by the corporations of our own world, just as trees shade out heath.  

The well spring of capital heavy LLM companies, playing with another dot com bubble; creating corporate use cases of their buggy malware is another example of ideology shaping the technology. Could be used better, don’t you agree?

Social liberation and egalitarianism is not, nor has it ever been a factor of technological development. No egalitarian system with dynamic social roles ever emerged by accident, but history shows they do emerge. These systems do not require post-scarcity, nor do they require the conquest of the body through tech, they never have. The solution has always been there: fix your fucking hearts. Strive for something better. Waiting for tech to fix it? It won’t. Maybe the parasite had a point.

As I unplug my Ono-Sendai, and stare up at the mould dotted ceiling of a sprawl apartment, I wonder; in a place far behind my eyes. Why we walked this path? Knowing where it would lead.

Game is okay ;)