I don’t think your game is cyberpunk if it doesn’t touch upon income or class inequality. Otherwise it’s just a cyber game without the punk
Would love if it made it possible to do all the content without helping cops 😑
You mean the one where you help the suicidal PTSD cop neighbor of yours? I actually liked that one, showing how even the good people in the police are ruined by the abhorrent injustice they have to tolerate from their corporate masters.
In case you mean the river storyline, dude is just an uncle on a mission.
Ya, but that cringy-ass asking you out/kiss move on the water tower after dinner with his family was just awful.
No i mean literally all of the ncpd gigs 😂 i don’t mind helping out that guy, he’s not a cop anymore
There’s also that cop you have to get rid of to help some corrupt cops she’s been getting in the way of.
You can either kill her, helping said corrupt cops, or warn her to leave town, thus helping her (to stay alive, at least, though obviously not to do her job).
Either way you’re helping cops, but the NCPD looks like trash (which can also be said for River’s storyline), so there’s that, at least.
I mean, I’m pretty sure cyberpunk settings usually center around the dystopic future brought about by late stage capitalism.
I really enjoyed Cyberpunk, but I dont think it did enough to make me hate corporations. I wanted to see them activily being terrible, but you mostly just hear about how bad they are and idk, they just weren’t portrayed as villianously as I think the game wanted them to be. Adam Smasher was the only enemy that I like really wanted to get my hands on, and even that was because of Edgerunners.
I did start to notice things during gameplay, like how there arent any animals, save for a few cats, no birds, nothing like that.
Now when I finally to the dive into the tabletop lore, that was when I found all the henious shit that I wanted to. Multiple corporate wars, purposly getting people addicted to cyberware, overthrowing governments (hey Ive seen this one!) And all sort of just vile disgusting actions that make you want to be Johnny Silverhand. Actually made me sad we didnt blow up Arasaka HQ again. Or Millitech for that matter, theyre actually kind of worse imo.
I got the big sad on Judy’s diving quest, she goes on about how tha one corpo inundated the whole place for profits.
Or even the El’Captain quest where you need to go steal a medical truck because the corpos where poisoning his whole neighborhood real bad for years.
I can find more examples of these “small” atrocities, I think they are meant to infuriate you over time, problem by problem, and not display a big single thing you’ll hate forever
The cyberpsycho hunts are where you find most of the evil corporation stuff. But that’s all told through notes and environmental storytelling. So it’s there if you’re willing to search for it, but it’s definitely not as big a part of the overall narrative as I expected it to be.
Yeah, I’m mid way through my first play through and the lack of birds and animals just feels lazy / a tech limitation covered up by lazy writing, not a real thing to care about that corpos did.
Otherwise the corpos in the story so far don’t seem that crazy bad or evil. Most of the time they enter the story it’s just you stealing something from them and then trying to get it back.
Honestly, GTA V had far more pointed social / political commentary thus far, even if this is a much better overall story.
I dont think it did enough to make me hate corporations
Counterpoint: Biotechnica. Those bastards are almost as bad as scavs. Some of them are worse.
Also, maybe it looks normal for Americans, but what Militech are doing in the badlands definitely ain’t right. (Phantom Liberty kind of ruins it by treating Militech’s puppet president like one of the good guys, though. Night City ain’t part of the NUSA, and it doesn’t want to be!)
And, besides all the relic stuff, Saburo was also seriously considering nuking Night City (properly, not like Silverhand’s half assed job), so there’s that, too.
Of course, by “call out” they mean sort of vaguely point out that they exist without actually saying anything meaningful, and that will still somehow be too political for the “gamers”.
No, this is just cynical and mean-spirited.
It was an individual developer talking on the podcast about what he wants the game to be, there’s no reason to think he doesn’t feel exactly the same way you do.
If you’re going to be cynical, be cynical about whether or not that messaging would make it through the layers of corporate beurocracy until it’s published, not whether the individual wants to do something meaningful, most do.
REEE why are you making games political?! /s