It's a hyper-alienated end-stage capitalist world, you morons. Also
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The good ending can only be achieved if you choose to accept help from the close knit community of outcasts
Capitalists not entirely missing the point of media challenge.
I agree. Cyberpunk as a genre has tragic elements baked right into it, so complaining that CP2077 didn't have happy endings is like complaining that Romeo and Juliet didn't end up living happily ever after
A lot of the classics of the genre actually do have semi-happy endings. Snowcrash turns out okay. Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic aren't totally downer endings.
The OG Deus Ex has positive endings where real social change occurs.
Old school cyber-punk wasn't unrelentingly miserable. When the good guys won, or at least survived or broke even, it was usually because the punks came together and figured out a way to survive.
As soon as I saw that I thought "is it Paul Tassi, the redditbrained blogspam guy who uses sockpuppets to defend himself on reddit? I bet it is," and then I checked the link and it is in fact that walking imitation of a reddit-trained ChatGPT.
"My 1000 word essay only has 800 words and I need to pad it out because it's due in an hour" is what this guy's style says to me
tbh chatgpt may have done a better job in this case
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The recent expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, has been highly anticipated by players and critics alike. One aspect of the game that has garnered a lot of attention is the inclusion of romance options. In the base game, players have the option to pursue romantic relationships with various characters, but many players have voiced their desire for more diverse and inclusive romance options in Phantom Liberty.
One area where Phantom Liberty could improve in terms of romance options is by offering more LGBTQ+ representation. While the base game does include some LGBTQ+ characters and romance options, there is still a lack of representation in comparison to straight relationships. By including more LGBTQ+ romance options, Phantom Liberty could appeal to a wider audience and be more inclusive to players who may not feel represented in the current romance options.
Another way that Phantom Liberty could expand on romance options is by including more diverse characters. The base game includes a diverse cast of characters, but there is still room for improvement in terms of representation. By adding more characters of different races, nationalities, and cultures, Phantom Liberty could better reflect the diversity of its player base and create a more immersive and believable world.
In addition to expanding on the diversity of romance options, Phantom Liberty could also improve on the depth and complexity of its romantic relationships. In the base game, many of the romance options feel shallow and lack depth, with little development beyond a few scripted scenes. By adding more dialogue and branching storylines for romance options, Phantom Liberty could create more meaningful and engaging romantic relationships that feel like a genuine part of the game world.
Another way that Phantom Liberty could improve on romance options is by including more non-romantic relationships. While romance is an important aspect of the game, not all players are interested in pursuing romantic relationships in-game. By including more non-romantic relationships, such as friendships and professional partnerships, Phantom Liberty could offer players a wider range of options for character development and relationships.
Finally, Phantom Liberty could benefit from including more player choice and agency in romance options. In the base game, players often feel limited in their ability to pursue specific romance options, with certain characters only becoming available under specific circumstances. By giving players more control over their character's relationships and allowing them to pursue the romance options that interest them, Phantom Liberty could create a more player-driven and immersive experience.
Overall, the new expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, has the potential to greatly improve on the romance options available in the base game. By offering more LGBTQ+ representation, diverse characters, and meaningful relationships, as well as more player choice and agency, Phantom Liberty could create a more inclusive and engaging experience for players.
Apparently there are two men romance options, one of them is a cop, and one of them is a blink and you'll miss it thing that you might never even find bc it's buried in some random conversation.
I only ever saw the men romance options mentioned like a year after release.
Meanwhile the Mass Effect games came out like, what, ten? fifteen years ago? And people are still horny for various hot alien dudes.
Cop is only an available romance if your character is a has a feminine body.
The other male romance is canonically bisexual, but only into you if you have a masculine voice and body. He’s not really blink and you’ll miss it, but you can only meet him through doing side quests and is fairly late game.
this is basically what the antagonists were up to in Neo Yokio. RIP to the sweet, sweet Marxist demons in a show that was clearly readying the audience and the MC for the reveal that they're completely right. naturally it got canned after one season.
Was the first Cyberpunk good? I'm kinda interested in playing it one day.
I really enjoyed it. It's a beautiful game, provided you have an NVIDIA RTX card. The main story was engaging, even if the side quests were a little mediocre. The skill trees are really fun, there are 100 different builds you can choose.
I'm going through it right now I'd recommend it. They really got the game in a working condition now. Probably on sale now as well on steam
The main quest line feels like a first act more than the entirety of a game. I finished it and then immediately stopped thinking about it. They could have earned a fuck ton of good will if they had ever released a creation kit like Bethesda that allowed modders to write and develop their own content.
Yet another late 2010s shooter-looter. Far Cry with guns. Buy it 90% off or pirate.
It is not good, it is an unfinished broken jank ass mess to this day. It is fun though, and there are some kernels of good ideas left in there.
I played it a year or so after launch on the ps4. It was still very buggy and it would crash every couple hours. It obviously shouldn't have been put out for the ps4 gen, but it got delayed so much I guess they had to or something. They're officially ending support and future patches.
It still has major issues besides the technical ones it needs working out, like I don't think they knew if they wanted a cover shooter, stealth shooter or DOOM in your face shooter and it feels confused.
The characters, lore and environment are all great - dont skip the chatlogs if you play it. The storyline is good and a lot of the side quests were too. This was a very easy game for me to actually ROLEPLAY in and imagine my character actually in this world and how she would act. A downside is that I felt such a strong tension between just rushing through the main storyline (for in-game reasons) and meta-gaming and knowing that it's actually fine to take your time.
I'd honestly skip it unless you can get it for free and try it yourself. I dunno, too much is busted and the way it's going its not ever going to be fixed. Maybe you can handle the jank.
Forbes is not Forbes, It's just a guy's blog hosted on Forbes.
So many thoughts on this article. The list of desired romances is pretty fucking weird. Among others wished for are Placide (the Voodoo Boy who sends you to die to fulfill his purposes and refers to you as a "floor rag"), Hanako (the corporate heiress who literally forgets you exist a month or two after you help her save her family's fortune), and the Peralezes (a man running for mayor and his wife, who are being manipulated by some nefarious technology). So maybe these people don't have the most considered opinions.
But the romance thing in video games is always so fucking weird. Making them into pseudo-pansexuals who have no preferences for physical attraction or personality kind of cheapens them a bit. So too does the usual Bioware route of doing all the boyfriend quests so you can get the awkwardly-animated sex scene. I always did like Tali and Garrus in ME2 for romances, because they made sense. The characters had an established history to build a believable relationship off of. Tali only realizes how she feels about Shepard after he's dead,and she goes through the grieving process only to find out that actually he's Space Robocop now, and she has to process all these feelings again. Garrus has lost absolutely everything and by the time you recruit him he is a broken man, psychologically and physically. He's nearly killed by a missile that blasts a quarter of his face clean off, so he's got involuntary cyborg kinship with Shepard, who as we established earlier is now Lady Space Robocop. They're both in search of healing and can see themselves reflected in each other, and she's the only person Garrus trusts enough to let his guard down around. They both know what it's like to see people you command die because you fucked up. There's a powerful kinship in that trauma. Your other choices are people you met ten minutes ago, and none of them are Zaeed Massani so who the fuck cares?
Video games tend to do relationships poorly. It's rare that we find a game with an actual good depiction of one. Like Cole and Zeke's friendship in Infamous 2, or Kratos and his son Atreus in Dad of Boy. Or Ezio and Leonardo in Assassin's Creed 2. But I guess that's just a subset of the problem of video games being poorly-written in general.
Also hard disagree on that spoiler:
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The "good" ending is achieved by having first gained Johnny's trust and then waiting out all the options to get the secret ending, where you do a balls-out solo assault on Arasaka HQ by walking in through the front door and killing everything that moves, which turns you into a living legend. You get to hear about Arasaka going to shit in the news, learn you now own the Afterlife, and take your personal AV to a launchpad to go to SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
The reason this is the good ending, though, because none of your NPC friends get killed by Adam Smasher
I always felt like Tali being the first game's Mission Vao spunky teenager equivalent kind of made the romance in 2 a bit awkward
Granted, but Shepard's not that much older than her, and he technically didn't age for two years, so it's only borderline :libertarian-approaching:
My Shepard looked like Marcus Fenix's long lost brother so it may have heightened that feeling
I always just stuck with vanilla ManShep because it was better than anything I could be bothered to make. His blunt dialogue just feels right coming out of that blank himbo face.
I found a thread once where Cyberpunk TTRPG players were just listing out all their different character builds that could wipe the floor with Smasher in one round, all with far far less chrome than V has.
The only time where a legendary character's rules stack up to his lore in a TTRPG was Caine for the Gehenna modules in Vampire: The Masquerade.
They read, simply: "You lose."
Thane was always my favourite romance in ME2. He's terminally ill and trying to clean up his last loose ends before he dies.
His whole romantic arc with Shepard has him facing the guilt he feels both from the consequences of his life as an assassin and for pursuing a relationship knowing that he's dying soon and will be leaving his partner to grieve for him.
Garrus was my favorite for reasons listed, and I always made my FemShep a renegade with the spacer sole survivor origin, so she knows what it's like to lose everyone and have to start over carrying that guilt with you
ME2 opened up my mind to the concept of xenophilia having some story and character merit. I read Perdido Street Station soon after and adored Isaac and Lin's relationship. There's just something so heartwarming and joyous about seeing two people who are so utterly different from each other finding love with some other alien weirdo who is into boning aliens just like them. An emotional connection that trumps physical and cultural difference, and then they have weird alien sex
The best ending to me honestly feels like the one where you
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solo Arasaka Tower so friends don't die and then choose to join the gestAlt consciousness and give Johnny the body, getting a terrifying unknown journey with sorta immortality feels like the least shit outcome. The only problem is that the little characterization V actually gets is that they don't actually fear death, but rather fear ego death and the annihilation of identity, which doesn't really gel at all with them seeing the positive in that outcome.
Honestly the worst part of the game is that V is too much of a blank slate to get any interesting character development but not enough of one to stay out of the way, every moral consequence is railroaded and it feels like it.
Forbes is just a blogging platform. You might as well say the big brains at Wordpress completely missed the point.
Am I reading the same article?
It’s a filler about how they want more romance options in a mediocre game.
Why are so many of the comments just full of rage?
The game is just an exercise in branding. They bought the tabletop game to try and own the word Cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk 2077 even without the bugs is a deeply unfocused game with a lifeless world that is only skin deep.
It’s a hyper-alienated end-stage capitalist world, you morons.
counterpoint: if the game were true to the typical experience in such a world i.e. living in the pod and eating the bug bars until you die at 43 from incredible stress and terminal saturation with forever chemicals it wouldn't be much fun, would it? That's not to say that you should be able to make tons of friends and have everything hunky-dory, but I think diverging somewhat from perfect authenticity to explore characters isn't a bad idea.
Disclaimer: I have never played the game :gigachad-hd:
Cyberpunk protagonists are almost always people who are outsiders in the system, usually criminals of some degree, whose outsider status affords them at least some degree of agency that the typical plugged in normal person doesn't have. The cost, though, is usually very high.
tbh this just follows from the gamer mindset. we want a fully realized world to exist in, but more than that we want to be the absolute masters of our domain whose every whim is satisfied with only a few clear, well defined inputs.
