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Cyberpunk 2077 - It Can't Get Darker Than Night City, Right?

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  • DanHibikiDanHibiki Registered User regular
    schuss wrote: »
    Corporate backstabbing is a cornerstone of cyberpunk. In one shadowrun campaign I think we were backstabbing three groups simultaneously

    It's the darksouls of RPGs, and by that I mean there's nothing but backstabbing and lag.

  • MancingtomMancingtom Registered User regular
    I hope there are ways to make yourself an actual power player—and not just because you’re some combat/tech superhuman.

    Some fantasy campaigns include the PCs getting their own castle, a fleet, or founding their own kingdom. It’d be neat if you could do something similar here.

    Remember GTA: San Andreas, where you slowly became an actual crime boss? That but cyberpunk. Enemy corpos/gangs bringing in reinforcements? Call in your own. Need intel on a stronghold or a high-value target? Don’t waste time looking for it yourself; task your eyes and ears network to find it for you.

  • Lucid_SeraphLucid_Seraph TealDeer MarylandRegistered User regular
    Bigity wrote: »
    The other thing is that if you don't backstab corporations in cyberpunk things, and they don't backstab you, then... you're... really just a freelance corporate shill, congrats?

    (apparently the most recent edition of Shadowrun accidentally stepped in that one by saying that runners take jobs from corps so that eventually they can... make their own corp??? and "change things from the top?" which is the most liberterian techbro thing I've ever heard, and basically the opposite of punk)

    Yikes

    Wanted to go find an actual source on it, so, here you are:

    So that this is actually kinda on topic of Cyberpunk 2077, here's some stuff about Cyberpunk Red's special boxed set:

    https://www.geeknative.com/67032/cyberpunk-red-jumpstart-kit-cover-reveal/

    The game is earlier in the timeline of 2077, taking place just after the 4th corporate war. Seems they're retconning 3rd edition out of existence. Iirc you get the rulebook PDF with 2077, but this is the physical version with all the feelies. Including cyberpunk d10s. yesssssss.

    See You Space Cowboy: a ttrpg about sad space bounty hunters
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  • QuiotuQuiotu Registered User regular
    ED! wrote: »
    More slow drips from the Cyberpunk 2077 twitter:





    Pretty much just teasing us with stuff I expect we'll get a chance to see in the gameplay demo once it drops at PAX. That music though from the PS4 (static) theme is pretty moody.

    Kinda reminds me, have been working through the Sprawl trilogy because you know... why not. Maman Brigitte looks to be the person you were meeting in the in-game trailer when your body was put under ice. Part of me is wondering if they're gonna have a Count Zero plotline here with the Voodoo Boys, where they start to find avatars of Loa in the Matrix and you go to try and sort out what the hell they really are.

    wbee62u815wj.png
  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Mancingtom wrote: »
    I hope there are ways to make yourself an actual power player—and not just because you’re some combat/tech superhuman.

    Some fantasy campaigns include the PCs getting their own castle, a fleet, or founding their own kingdom. It’d be neat if you could do something similar here.

    Remember GTA: San Andreas, where you slowly became an actual crime boss? That but cyberpunk. Enemy corpos/gangs bringing in reinforcements? Call in your own. Need intel on a stronghold or a high-value target? Don’t waste time looking for it yourself; task your eyes and ears network to find it for you.

    I'm willing to put money on this game being about lone frontier gunsman in the urban jungle over anything more involved.

    I'd love if it wasn't (which is why I mentioned backstabbing being kinda droll, because it's very much a facet of this trope) but nothing we've seen suggests anything but that.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    "Delegate gameplay to NPCs while you sit on your ass back at HQ" is uncommon in games of this sort, for obvious reasons.

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Having people you can actually rely and draw strength from is something that would lend impact to the betrayal.

    So yeah, it's not a mechanic in most games because most of them have rubbish narrative reinforcement through play and have rubbish betrayals.

  • ED!ED! Registered User regular
    Quiotu wrote: »
    ED! wrote: »
    More slow drips from the Cyberpunk 2077 twitter:





    Pretty much just teasing us with stuff I expect we'll get a chance to see in the gameplay demo once it drops at PAX. That music though from the PS4 (static) theme is pretty moody.

    Kinda reminds me, have been working through the Sprawl trilogy because you know... why not. Maman Brigitte looks to be the person you were meeting in the in-game trailer when your body was put under ice. Part of me is wondering if they're gonna have a Count Zero plotline here with the Voodoo Boys, where they start to find avatars of Loa in the Matrix and you go to try and sort out what the hell they really are.

    Yeah she's absolutely the person in the "release date trailer" and I suspect her helping you get into cyberspace (?) occurs after you've taken care of The Animals. They've also got Placide in their as well (guy revealed a couple of days ago).

    "Get the hell out of me" - [ex]girlfriend
  • DemonStaceyDemonStacey TTODewback's Daughter In love with the TaySwayRegistered User regular
    I like the way they worded that blurb about Maman.

    SHowing that you can really make choices to befriend and work with various gangs if you so choose.

  • NyysjanNyysjan FinlandRegistered User regular
    For a moment there, i blanked out the release part of the release date trailer.
    And my mind went to places. :D

  • Andy JoeAndy Joe We claim the land for the highlord! The AdirondacksRegistered User regular
    I guess I had just assumed up until now that typical player characters in cyberpunk-themed tabletop RPGs were cynical mercenaries who would be perfectly content with having their own corporate fiefdoms.

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  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    I don't think it's written anywhere that Cyberpunk HAS to be about sticking to the man. Deckard never gives up Blade Running because he thinks it's wrong, he gives it up to be with the Replicant that he loves. And as seen in the original film, though Replicants are sympathetic, no society can tolerate individuals who emotionally "break" and kill dozens of people with enhanced strength and reflexes without some kind of check.

    manwiththemachinegun on
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    I don't think it's written anywhere that Cyberpunk HAS to be about sticking to the man. Deckard never gives up Blade Running because he thinks it's wrong, he gives it up to be with the Replicant that he loves. And as seen in the original film, though Replicants are sympathetic, no society can tolerate individuals who emotionally "break" and kill dozens of people with enhanced strength and reflexes without some kind of check.

    If you aren't sticking it to the man, then you aren't very punk.

    Making excuses for the man: also not very punk.

    Especially when it's making excuses for killing people who are tired of being slaves. Because that's what the Replicants are. They're genetically engineered people who are created to serve as slaves. You're justifying the existence of those who hunt down and kill slaves by saying "but the slaves who we specifically wanted to be strong and fast are too strong and fast to be allowed to exist freely!" It's criminalizing existence.

    EDIT:

    This is just another example of how a genre like cyberpunk that is inherently politically charged can have very strong messages in it, and why that messaging is important even if the creators of the media might not have been considering what messages they were sending, or the audience might not be consciously aware of the messages they're processing.

    As far as Blade Runner specifically, I suppose an argument could be made that "is a genetically engineered person really a person" was still a philosophical hot topic back when the film was made. But the question has been settled for long enough that Blade Runner 2049 never even bothered acting like it was up for debate. Its exploration of humanity was interested in interrogating whether one has to be organic to be considered human.

    DarkPrimus on
  • AxenAxen My avatar is Excalibur. Yes, the sword.Registered User regular
    Despite having "punk" in the name, very few Cyberpunk stories are about sticking it to the man. Most are neo-noir detective stories or stories about the criminal underworld.


    As to Blade Runner and the Replicants. The Replicants were free to exist off Earth. Nobody cared if they went about their business in the colonies. Replicants were specifically outlawed on Earth.

    A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Axen wrote: »
    Despite having "punk" in the name, very few Cyberpunk stories are about sticking it to the man. Most are neo-noir detective stories or stories about the criminal underworld.


    As to Blade Runner and the Replicants. The Replicants were free to exist off Earth. Nobody cared if they went about their business in the colonies. Replicants were specifically outlawed on Earth.

    Yes, Replicants were specifically outlawed on Earth, after a mutiny was staged on an off-world colony. You know, a slave revolt.

    But they were viewed as less than human. They weren't considered people, but property. They weren't "free to exist" off-world, except as slaves. This is all right there in the opening text of the first film.

    "Early in the 21st Century, THE TYRELL CORPORATION advanced Robot evolution into the NEXUS phase – a being virtually identical to a human – known as a Replicant.
    The NEXUS 6 Replicants were superior in strength and aglity, and at least equal in intelligeance, to the genetic engineers who created them.
    Replicants were used Off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonization of other planets.
    After a bloody mutiny by a NEXUS 6 combat team in an Off-world colony, Replicants were declared illegal on earth – under penalty of death.
    Special police squads – BLADE RUNNER UNITS – had orders to shoot to kill, upon detection, any trespassing Replicant.
    This was not called execution. It was called retirement."

    Let me emphasize that again:
    "This was not called execution. It was called retirement."

    They aren't considered people under the law. People have rights. Even in a dystopian setting where one operates as judge, jury, and executioner, it's right there again in the phrase - the person would be summarily executed.

    (But this isn't a Blade Runner thread anymore than it's a Ghost in the Shell thread...)


    As far as what makes a cyberpunk story cyberpunk, for one thing, the man is always the bad guy. Even if they are acting like they're on your side, it's just to exploit you to further their ends. There's definitely overlap here with noir, where the protagonists are always pawns in a game that they might not even know the rules to, much less win, because the deck is always stacked against them. The best they can hope for is maybe bloodying the man's nose a little bit and/or making it out with their own life. It's about personal victories, not beating the system. You can't beat the system.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    I don't disagree on any particular point, but there are lighter shades of "the Corp". As an example GitS' society is hardly idyllic, but the story is told from the perspective of those keeping public order.

  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    GitS is technically post-cyberpunk.

  • manwiththemachinegunmanwiththemachinegun METAL GEAR?! Registered User regular
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    GitS is technically post-cyberpunk.

    Do you want to go in the locker?

  • TychoCelchuuuTychoCelchuuu PIGEON Registered User regular
    Amusingly back in 2013 we had this exact same conversation in this thread.

  • TheStigTheStig Registered User regular
    Jeez I forgot how long ago this game was teased.

    bnet: TheStig#1787 Steam: TheStig
  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    TheStig wrote: »
    Jeez I forgot how long ago this game was teased.

    What a fucking tease, though.

  • The Zombie PenguinThe Zombie Penguin Eternal Hungry Corpse Registered User regular
    I scrolled back and there's a comment talking about how it'd probably be out in 2015.

    Well, we can tar and feather that person for their time-seeing, i'm sure

    Ideas hate it when you anthropomorphize them
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  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Fencingsax wrote: »
    GitS is technically post-cyberpunk.

    Do you want to go in the locker?

    That's my close alone space.

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    I mean, there’s arguments to make that cyberpunk can have a focus on cops and other bad forces of the setting when it’s about showing the system being broken.

    But in most cases with games, tabletop or digital, that immediately runs up against players already tending to optimise to being souless monsters or being able to ‘beat’ the system and render it having no teeth.

    Most shadowrun groups aren’t punks because of this, they’re just mercenaries.

  • NyysjanNyysjan FinlandRegistered User regular
    Cyberpunk can be about fighting the system, or it can be about surviving the system.
    Can't remember much stories or games about living inside and upholding the system.

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    I mean, if you’re a cop or a pro Corp shadowrunner you aren’t surviving the system but actively upholding it with force.

    Just surviving in the system is the guy doing check out for minimum wage.

  • lwt1973lwt1973 King of Thieves SyndicationRegistered User regular
    Yeah, I can wait until 2020. That's only 3 years away. I'll be 30 then, but I will still be playing vidya games.

    @Grunt's Ghosts wins the pool.

    "He's sulking in his tent like Achilles! It's the Iliad?...from Homer?! READ A BOOK!!" -Handy
  • NyysjanNyysjan FinlandRegistered User regular
    I mean, if you’re a cop or a pro Corp shadowrunner you aren’t surviving the system but actively upholding it with force.

    Just surviving in the system is the guy doing check out for minimum wage.
    That's my point.
    I can't really remember cyberpunk stories about someone actively upholding the system.
    Even where characters start inside the system, they usually end up opposing it or trying to escape it.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Axen wrote: »
    Despite having "punk" in the name, very few Cyberpunk stories are about sticking it to the man. Most are neo-noir detective stories or stories about the criminal underworld.


    As to Blade Runner and the Replicants. The Replicants were free to exist off Earth. Nobody cared if they went about their business in the colonies. Replicants were specifically outlawed on Earth.

    It's a strong distinction between cyberpunk and some of its derivatives, like post-cyberpunk most obviously. It's a problem of English (and other languages, I think) that it's logical to think that all derivatives are kind of cyberpunk still, when some, but especially post-cyberpunk, are primarily defined by their critique of the original concept. If it makes sense: the post in post-cyberpunk is literally as important as the punk in cyberpunk. In fact, it's arguably more important than the punk in post-cyberpunk, though completely absent of it, it'd hard to define what the post referred to. It's a critique, after all. Particularly the aspect of power--Paul-Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, talks about the nature of power from and into institutions, inserting itself into people's everyday actions and attitudes, like blood in the capillaries. All the horrors power inflicts on the body (and body politic) are cyberpunk, but body's responses to that power, bending it to its will, coexisting with it, are most post-cyberpunk (though obviously at this level, it's a very broad interpretation).

    Yes, that sounded better in my head. At least, post-cyberpunk is an unsurprising outcome considering punk themes in general are not hard to criticize under scrutiny.

    Without bothering the mods, the whole of Ghost in the Shell, across interpretations (well, maybe not that terrible Scarlet Johansson film) is extremely postcyberpunk in themes and narratives, sometimes to the point of relegating the "normal" cyberpunk to aesthetics (and even then, Stand Alone Complex heavily features environments, fashion, institutions that are all visually very mundane and even realistic). You have to have punks in cyberpunk, right? Literally none of the protagonists, with the possible exception of each series' heroic antagonist (the Laughing Man, Hideo Kuze) are punks at all, the heroine included. They even mock, denigrate, and outright reject punk qualities or characteristics in others--literally the first episode of the first season involves the heroine shooting the leg out from under, and then beating and restraining, a very punk hacker hero, who tells her as much to her face.

    Looking at this as I type it, I realize it all seems painfully obvious. tl;dr--in a postcyberpunk setting, the hero's behavior and activities can be, and frequently are, very not punk or even outright antipunk. For good or ill, those are still sometimes considered cyberpunk narratives.

    Synthesis on
  • TalithTalith 変態という名の紳士 Miami, FLRegistered User regular
    This is at best tangentially related, but makes me wonder how far 2077 actually is.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0IjaXuTUz0

    I wonder what playing games will be like when you don't have to push keys, buttons, or move a mouse.

    7244qyoka3pp.gif
  • NyysjanNyysjan FinlandRegistered User regular
    I'm not sure i would call ghost in the shell a post cyberpunk setting.
    The nation states are much stronger, and corporations much weaker than in usualy cyberpunk works, but the world is in my ways a dystopia, and government and corporations often quite corrupt.
    The world is, less shitty than most cyberpunk settings, but still often pretty shitty.
    The setting just talks about other things than cyberpunk stories tend to talk about, the difference is mostly about framing.

  • SynthesisSynthesis Honda Today! Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    I'm not sure i would call ghost in the shell a post cyberpunk setting.
    The nation states are much stronger, and corporations much weaker than in usualy cyberpunk works, but the world is in my ways a dystopia, and government and corporations often quite corrupt.
    The world is, less shitty than most cyberpunk settings, but still often pretty shitty.
    The setting just talks about other things than cyberpunk stories tend to talk about, the difference is mostly about framing.

    It's absolutely a post-cyberpunk setting, to the point of being one of the defining post-cyerbpunk narratives (well, the 1990 novel was).

    There are a multitude of reasons why, but to be more on-topic (since we probably shouldn't dwell on this because it's not a Polish video game), the world frankly isn't that shitty. Even within it's own context: by 2030, there have been two more world wars that were vastly more terrible and horrific than anything that happens in the franchise, and this is widely understood (hitting Dejima with a nuclear missile frankly pales in comparison to outright nuclear exchange of the Third World War that sank the entirety of Metropolitan Tokyo and cratered dozens of major cities throughout the whole world, and that's before considering the recourse of attempting to upload the consciousness of the residents). Never mind that our own 2000s and 2010s feature more consistently constant warfare than the 2030 of that world, something that Stand Alone Complex almost laughs at, considering it was written on the very onset of invasion of Iraq.

    The world is not a dystopia, it really isn't. The franchise actively lampshades the middle-class comforts of Japanese life, and notes that their rarity is swiftly declining because other people look at them and competently decide what they want, and what they don't want. Governments aren't inherently evil, so what value is universal suffering and destitution? An island of impoverished, quasi-stateless refugees derives its own culture, its own hierarchies, considers a Marxist revolution, and then demands autonomy from the rest of the country with an imaginary nuclear weapon. It's a tense world, but the dystopia was what came before, when actual nuclear weapons were blowing up millions of people.

    The power struggle component of the story is, fundamentally, one of governance (including the failings), the rule of law, and the jealously-guarded sovereign power of states that frequently overrides the other first two. Corporations are important, but "Corporations run the world" is hardly the single defining trait of Cyerbpunk, whereas in that setting there are no shortage of examples of governmental institutions changing their minds and utterly bending the most powerful corporations to their will. Corporations don't run the world in Ghost in the Shell, they are collaborators in this long, complex scheme of supremacy, and distinctly junior ones at that: and if they don't remind you, the CEOs of major cybernetics manufacturers get to spend a decade under secret house arrest, or occasional get their heads exploded. Look at any given story in the franchise, and overwhelmingly, the punks lose to the antipunks, even if philosophy and intellectualism demand the antipunks recognize their ideas (and frequently judge them as interesting, but insufficient).

    Synthesis on
  • MassenaMassena Registered User regular
    Cyberpunk has always been summed up best, to me, by the phrase "high tech, low life". Sure, there's all kinds of amazing tech, and that tech is forcing reinterpretations of what it means to be human, what it means to be your own being, etc. But the story or narrative focus keeps coming back to the "ordinary" struggles of people trying to get by. Which is why something like star wars isn't cyberpunk and something like GitS threads the line enough that folks have trouble classifying it.

    The basic gist can (and usually does) have mega corps that are as strong as (or stronger than) nation states, or it can have some forms of body modification (sacred vs profane, "humanity measure", losing something indefinable but precious for practical and immediate advantage), but those are just interpretations of the basic concept of "high tech, low life". If a story is focused on how nations are moving and the politics of espionage or war, or exploration, it ain't cyberpunk. If it's about a cop doing a thing because that's the job, or a person doing work with shady organizations because they made some bad decisions in life, or the struggles of a woman trying to hold together a family and a community (in a world gone sideways), that's probably cyberpunk. Is it a world that we could see as our own, through a glass and darkly, and is the focus on "ordinary" things? Cyberpunk.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    Nyysjan wrote: »
    I mean, if you’re a cop or a pro Corp shadowrunner you aren’t surviving the system but actively upholding it with force.

    Just surviving in the system is the guy doing check out for minimum wage.
    That's my point.
    I can't really remember cyberpunk stories about someone actively upholding the system.
    Even where characters start inside the system, they usually end up opposing it or trying to escape it.

    William Gibson has a few characters who survive inside the system. They generally exist to show that, from the totalitarian oppression and Games of Thrones style backstabbing, it isn't actually any better at the top.

  • PhillisherePhillishere Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Massena wrote: »
    Cyberpunk has always been summed up best, to me, by the phrase "high tech, low life". Sure, there's all kinds of amazing tech, and that tech is forcing reinterpretations of what it means to be human, what it means to be your own being, etc. But the story or narrative focus keeps coming back to the "ordinary" struggles of people trying to get by. Which is why something like star wars isn't cyberpunk and something like GitS threads the line enough that folks have trouble classifying it.

    The basic gist can (and usually does) have mega corps that are as strong as (or stronger than) nation states, or it can have some forms of body modification (sacred vs profane, "humanity measure", losing something indefinable but precious for practical and immediate advantage), but those are just interpretations of the basic concept of "high tech, low life". If a story is focused on how nations are moving and the politics of espionage or war, or exploration, it ain't cyberpunk. If it's about a cop doing a thing because that's the job, or a person doing work with shady organizations because they made some bad decisions in life, or the struggles of a woman trying to hold together a family and a community (in a world gone sideways), that's probably cyberpunk. Is it a world that we could see as our own, through a glass and darkly, and is the focus on "ordinary" things? Cyberpunk.

    If you go back to the roots with authors like Gibson, the heart of cyberpunk was pushback against the idea that technological progress is intrinsically linked with human progress. The classic Gibson tale is a world where life has gotten progressively worse for everyone except the mega-rich because of technological advances, and the best anyone else can do is survive.

    Phillishere on
  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    Another weird factor of a lot of cyberpunk is that it's vision of the future actually came to pass in many ways.

    So at this point unless you add in the aesthetic trappings or body modifications being more advanced the difference between cyberpunk stories and modern day ones is mostly of tone.

  • Commander ZoomCommander Zoom Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    Yup. The dominant/prevailing idea before was "better tech will set us free/make everything better for everyone" and Gibson, for all that he got wrong about that tech, was bang on with his "lolno".

    Commander Zoom on
  • ChiselphaneChiselphane Registered User regular
    Elvenshae wrote: »
    I know what I really expect from the guys everyone insists are some of the best writers in the industry is stuff from a 16 year olds' first 2020 campaign.

    And yet, if no one betrayed you after a mission, ever, it'd hardly be cyberpunk at all.

    Better to have it happen early and set the stage, and then use it sparingly.

    See I would go the other way. Have your first job go off...fine. No betrayal. Just thanks here's your pay. The overhanging sense of the hammer going to fall would linger, though. And have the group/person/whatever who offered you the job occasionally throughout the game send you messsages like "Thanks for your great work, we'll keep you in mind for future jobs", "Hope all is well", etc just to ratchet it up that they haven't forgotten you.

    Bonus points if you can get Christopher Waltz to play the contact.

  • KrathoonKrathoon Registered User regular
    edited June 2019
    I wonder if losing your humanity to the implants will be an issue in the game.

    For example, you will start having cold and technical dialogue options.

    Krathoon on
  • DemonStaceyDemonStacey TTODewback's Daughter In love with the TaySwayRegistered User regular
    Krathoon wrote: »
    I wonder if losing your humanity to the implants will be an issue in the game.

    For example, you will start having cold and technical dialogue options.

    I could be mistaken but I think I remember that they said it's not a thing in the game.

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