Honestly tho for a game about a society totally cool with casual sex there didn’t seem to be a lot of it. I mean having the one het love interest for lady V being a fucking cop seems like a crazy choice to me and you don’t get any other options
The game's interaction with cops in general makes me raise an eyebrow. You're a cyberpunk fixer and street samurai, but you can casually do bounties for the police murdering petty criminals? That's not very punk samurai.
I think there's almost something to it. The idea that there's legally-sanctioned murder because the cops are just another gang could be interesting if it were explored properly, but sadly the game's writers were clearly not up to the task.
My impression from what I've seen of the game is that the writers are a bunch of :bootlicker: who like the aesthetics of cyberpunk but don't really get it.
Having played a lot of it it’s a mixed bag. You can tell the anti-capitalist messaging shines brightest in small scenes and easter eggs (probably where a higher up would miss it) but larger story elements and game mechanics are devoid of the core cyberpunk critique. The easter egg about sectarian infighting on the commie forum was my favorite part for sure. Felt very seen
I honestly have a hard time judging it too harshly because despite how deeply liberal and incoherent it is it still has some clarity and accurate cynicism to it that's just completely absent in other AAA games. Like with stuff from Bethesda all the tiny fragmentary bits of halfway good writing that get buried in terminals, tapes, or books and which are kept far away from the actual story are about on par with Cyberpunk 2077's more overt story beats, and nothing from EA or Ubisoft steps beyond just bland reactionary frothing and liberal whitewashing.
There are great moments in the storytelling here and there, personally I think I had a unique experience having a trans femme V give up her body to Johnny and in his ending as he's boarding the bus and talking to the kid, he mentions that it isn't really his body and that he'll need to get some work done to feel 'right' in it and it just came off as a really interesting look at gender presentation. My V was AMAB but then got work done to feel right in her own body only to then give that body to Johnny who then was in a body that he'd have to 'fix' to feel comfortable in what is now his own body.
I also liked when I first went to the rich part of the city that there were just death robots patrolling the street. Would've been neat had the cops been particularly sensitive in the area that speeding or bad driving would get them after you, even if just as a story mission aspect. You can tell that the world was made with someone that understood the critiques inherent in the genre.
You’re a cyberpunk fixer and street samurai, but you can casually do bounties for the police murdering petty criminals?
I think that went as far as someone saying "ok how do we create a narrative tie-in for these minor world encounters where you happen upon a massacre or assassination in progress/that just happened and can be rewarded for interacting with it?" that got resolved with "a subcontractor bounty system?" and no one ever thought about it again, because it gets used in places where no crime happened at all (one of them is just a flipped car in the hills outside of town, where you learn about a stash of goods) or where the violence in question was done by a legally-authorized party that the police are aligned with (there are several alerts where it's a corporate PMC like the police behind it). It's basically just a pre-placed world event system with a narratively incoherent justification for alerting you to things you can stick your nose into.
There's something interesting in potentially BEING the agent of state terror in post-cyberpunk works like Ghost In The Shell. I don't trust games exploring those concepts though, it'd be a hard needle to thread. I guess Spec Ops The Line managed to, so it isn't impossible. It helped that in Spec Ops you're killing American soldiers AND suffering a mental breakdown AND dropping white phosphorous on citizens all while being profoundly uncool so chuds can presumably not get a fascist rise out of it.
see that's why i'm enjoying the Edgerunners anime so much, pigs get killed en masse and none of them ever has a single redeeming moment. it sucks that most of the pigs are murdered by Cybervaush, though.
That is a cool concept and that did slap. As always you can feel the male gaze-ry in how the female romances are the most thought out followed by queer male and straight female at the bottom
It definitely feels like the studio knew that their audience would mostly be men - whether their characters were male or female - and the priority given to the in game characters reflects that. Both female love interests are essential characters to the games plot while, iirc, both male love interests are attached to totally missable side quests
i only played through the game once and the panam one was what i did i might go back as female v and try that romance if a big patch is good or something
wait its not just fade-to-black? i remember so many tweets and memes making fun of people asking for sex scenes? i mean im sure its not like pornographic but im still surprised
yeah they do this cut from cameras in the tank to the points of view of the characters and it bounces around it feels a bit disorienting but i think thats the point
Honestly tho for a game about a society totally cool with casual sex there didn’t seem to be a lot of it. I mean having the one het love interest for lady V being a fucking cop seems like a crazy choice to me and you don’t get any other options
The game's interaction with cops in general makes me raise an eyebrow. You're a cyberpunk fixer and street samurai, but you can casually do bounties for the police murdering petty criminals? That's not very punk samurai.
I think there's almost something to it. The idea that there's legally-sanctioned murder because the cops are just another gang could be interesting if it were explored properly, but sadly the game's writers were clearly not up to the task.
My impression from what I've seen of the game is that the writers are a bunch of :bootlicker: who like the aesthetics of cyberpunk but don't really get it.
Having played a lot of it it’s a mixed bag. You can tell the anti-capitalist messaging shines brightest in small scenes and easter eggs (probably where a higher up would miss it) but larger story elements and game mechanics are devoid of the core cyberpunk critique. The easter egg about sectarian infighting on the commie forum was my favorite part for sure. Felt very seen
I honestly have a hard time judging it too harshly because despite how deeply liberal and incoherent it is it still has some clarity and accurate cynicism to it that's just completely absent in other AAA games. Like with stuff from Bethesda all the tiny fragmentary bits of halfway good writing that get buried in terminals, tapes, or books and which are kept far away from the actual story are about on par with Cyberpunk 2077's more overt story beats, and nothing from EA or Ubisoft steps beyond just bland reactionary frothing and liberal whitewashing.
Ending spoilers
There are great moments in the storytelling here and there, personally I think I had a unique experience having a trans femme V give up her body to Johnny and in his ending as he's boarding the bus and talking to the kid, he mentions that it isn't really his body and that he'll need to get some work done to feel 'right' in it and it just came off as a really interesting look at gender presentation. My V was AMAB but then got work done to feel right in her own body only to then give that body to Johnny who then was in a body that he'd have to 'fix' to feel comfortable in what is now his own body.
I also liked when I first went to the rich part of the city that there were just death robots patrolling the street. Would've been neat had the cops been particularly sensitive in the area that speeding or bad driving would get them after you, even if just as a story mission aspect. You can tell that the world was made with someone that understood the critiques inherent in the genre.
As with most mass media cyberpunk, it's impossible to criticize something when you benefit so strongly from it.
deleted by creator
To be fair the devs weren't up to the task either.
deleted by creator
I think that went as far as someone saying "ok how do we create a narrative tie-in for these minor world encounters where you happen upon a massacre or assassination in progress/that just happened and can be rewarded for interacting with it?" that got resolved with "a subcontractor bounty system?" and no one ever thought about it again, because it gets used in places where no crime happened at all (one of them is just a flipped car in the hills outside of town, where you learn about a stash of goods) or where the violence in question was done by a legally-authorized party that the police are aligned with (there are several alerts where it's a corporate PMC like the police behind it). It's basically just a pre-placed world event system with a narratively incoherent justification for alerting you to things you can stick your nose into.
There's something interesting in potentially BEING the agent of state terror in post-cyberpunk works like Ghost In The Shell. I don't trust games exploring those concepts though, it'd be a hard needle to thread. I guess Spec Ops The Line managed to, so it isn't impossible. It helped that in Spec Ops you're killing American soldiers AND suffering a mental breakdown AND dropping white phosphorous on citizens all while being profoundly uncool so chuds can presumably not get a fascist rise out of it.
see that's why i'm enjoying the Edgerunners anime so much, pigs get killed en masse and none of them ever has a single redeeming moment. it sucks that most of the pigs are murdered by Cybervaush, though.
the sex scene with panam is hot and the idea of being mindlinked where you are fucking someone else but also fucking yourself is wild and cool
That is a cool concept and that did slap. As always you can feel the male gaze-ry in how the female romances are the most thought out followed by queer male and straight female at the bottom
this is a really good point. haven't played the game yet, but I'm guessing the lesbian romance feels like its written by a straight guy?
It definitely feels like the studio knew that their audience would mostly be men - whether their characters were male or female - and the priority given to the in game characters reflects that. Both female love interests are essential characters to the games plot while, iirc, both male love interests are attached to totally missable side quests
i only played through the game once and the panam one was what i did i might go back as female v and try that romance if a big patch is good or something
wait its not just fade-to-black? i remember so many tweets and memes making fun of people asking for sex scenes? i mean im sure its not like pornographic but im still surprised
Nope. Titties and everything.
Witcher II and III also had fairly explicit sex scenes, like prestige TV nudity explicit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQMzfW_bczI
:kombucha-disgust: those screen effects were really unpleasant. very hbo softcore otherwise.
also strange for the gimmick to have been pov-switching in first person then just randomly taking the camera out?
i dont know what you expected from a mainstream game
like full on hardcore explicit penetrative sex?
anyways its conceptually hotter than it is visually
i didn't expect anything, just observing it was kinda hbo-y and had a weird relationship to the camera lol
yeah they do this cut from cameras in the tank to the points of view of the characters and it bounces around it feels a bit disorienting but i think thats the point