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Reviewers that lean extremely far left weren't happy that a video game didn't espouse their ideology at every second. What a surprise. Depending on what path yo

Reviewers that lean extremely far left weren't happy that a video game didn't espouse their ideology at every second. What a surprise. Depending on what path you chose the start of the game literally has a corporate employee order the execution of elected officials. But I guess that wasn't on the nose enough?

danbolt 6y ago
I think a lot of the critique people had towards the game has merit. Or, it strikes me as a strawman to reduce their ideas to "ideology".
- friedman23 6y ago
  The game has corporate leaders and the rich killing and trampling over poor people throughout the game. While walking through the city you will have people randomly hit the ground in front of you because they jumped from a building. Do we really need a character to come out and tell us how bad this is in words for it to be a critique?
  - danbolt 6y ago
    I was thinking of critique more along the lines of Carolyn Petit's article for Polygon.
    - freeflight 6y ago
      That's exactly the kind of political criticism that I consider very odd. It barely admits that being able to choose genitals, independent of gender, is a step forward, only to then complain why CDPR didn't go much further by having players select pronouns and a non-binary voice. Then it complains how the game is allegedly transphobic because it "objectifies trans bodies", a statement solely based on one poster in the game that made the rounds trough the Twitter-outrage-sphere a while ago, while completely missing how in the CP2077 world pretty much everything is commodified down to peoples memories and their individual body parts. It's like there is some kind of agenda to paint the game, and it's developers, as transphobic since their PR Twitter account made a not so well received "Did you just assume my gender?" joke a couple of years back. Along similar lines: Jeff Gerstmann complains about the lack of political correctness in some of the NPC lines, like when hardened gang-bangers proclaim "We are getting raped over here". Which is just such an odd thing to complain about considering the setting: Here are these hardened criminals committing all kinds of unimaginable crimes like human trafficking, killing people, torturing people and pretty much everything else in the book, yet there's a weird expectation that they should be completely PC in their speech while engaging in these inherently anti-social practices. Extra odd considering that a lot of the source material did something very similar for its time: The slang Gibson used in his books was inspired by very real criminal sub cultures like biker gangs and dope pushers. These kinds of sub-cultures where never particularly PC, still are not to this day. So the expectation that criminal sub-cultures have to use socially progressive language, while abducting somebody to saw them apart for parts to sell, is just really weird and highlights a very odd double standard in our actual times: Depictions of all kinds of nasty things is okay, but as soon as the language gets nasty, that's where we want to draw very vaguely defined lines.
      - danbolt 6y ago
        ohhhh okay
- scpedicini 6y ago
  What specifically are those criticisms that you think have merit?
chungus_khan 6y ago
This sort of criticism isn't about content. Simply having something like that happen in the plot is different from saying something interesting about it. Those sorts of plot elements are core to the genre, and are an expected part of anything within it. The genre gets most of its appeal from philosophizing about its content though.
- friedman23 6y ago
  Tell me what you think the game was lacking. BTW, this belief that all cyberpunk stories need to have some explicit critique of current economic systems is wrong and doesn't accurately represent the genre. Cyberpunk has always been primarily about style.
  - mercer 6y ago
    All the most well-known cyberpunk media, afaik, is extremely political. Sure, style plays a role, but even the stylistic trappings have strong political undercurrents. There's a reason 'punk' is part of the name. One could create 'high fantasy' games, movies, books, and infuse it with any number of political views. But with cyberpunk the most common themes are highly political (and I'd say relevant to our time). That said, I don't believe it always has to neatly fit into a 'left-wing' perspective. If anything, I'd say one of the defining characteristics is libertarianism, perhaps with leftist tendencies, but not necessarily so.
- exolymph 6y ago
  > The genre gets most of its appeal from philosophizing about its content though. I don't think this is true.
paxys 6y ago
The average Call of Duty title makes you kill thousands of people, but that doesn't automatically mean the series has done a good job exploring the themes of war, PTSD, politics, military industrial complex etc.

danbolt 6y ago

I think a lot of the critique people had towards the game has merit. Or, it strikes me as a strawman to reduce their ideas to "ideology".

friedman23 6y ago
The game has corporate leaders and the rich killing and trampling over poor people throughout the game. While walking through the city you will have people randomly hit the ground in front of you because they jumped from a building. Do we really need a character to come out and tell us how bad this is in words for it to be a critique?
- danbolt 6y ago
  I was thinking of critique more along the lines of Carolyn Petit's article for Polygon.
  - freeflight 6y ago
    That's exactly the kind of political criticism that I consider very odd. It barely admits that being able to choose genitals, independent of gender, is a step forward, only to then complain why CDPR didn't go much further by having players select pronouns and a non-binary voice. Then it complains how the game is allegedly transphobic because it "objectifies trans bodies", a statement solely based on one poster in the game that made the rounds trough the Twitter-outrage-sphere a while ago, while completely missing how in the CP2077 world pretty much everything is commodified down to peoples memories and their individual body parts. It's like there is some kind of agenda to paint the game, and it's developers, as transphobic since their PR Twitter account made a not so well received "Did you just assume my gender?" joke a couple of years back. Along similar lines: Jeff Gerstmann complains about the lack of political correctness in some of the NPC lines, like when hardened gang-bangers proclaim "We are getting raped over here". Which is just such an odd thing to complain about considering the setting: Here are these hardened criminals committing all kinds of unimaginable crimes like human trafficking, killing people, torturing people and pretty much everything else in the book, yet there's a weird expectation that they should be completely PC in their speech while engaging in these inherently anti-social practices. Extra odd considering that a lot of the source material did something very similar for its time: The slang Gibson used in his books was inspired by very real criminal sub cultures like biker gangs and dope pushers. These kinds of sub-cultures where never particularly PC, still are not to this day. So the expectation that criminal sub-cultures have to use socially progressive language, while abducting somebody to saw them apart for parts to sell, is just really weird and highlights a very odd double standard in our actual times: Depictions of all kinds of nasty things is okay, but as soon as the language gets nasty, that's where we want to draw very vaguely defined lines.
    - danbolt 6y ago
      ohhhh okay
scpedicini 6y ago
What specifically are those criticisms that you think have merit?

chungus_khan 6y ago

This sort of criticism isn't about content. Simply having something like that happen in the plot is different from saying something interesting about it. Those sorts of plot elements are core to the genre, and are an expected part of anything within it. The genre gets most of its appeal from philosophizing about its content though.

friedman23 6y ago
Tell me what you think the game was lacking. BTW, this belief that all cyberpunk stories need to have some explicit critique of current economic systems is wrong and doesn't accurately represent the genre. Cyberpunk has always been primarily about style.
- mercer 6y ago
  All the most well-known cyberpunk media, afaik, is extremely political. Sure, style plays a role, but even the stylistic trappings have strong political undercurrents. There's a reason 'punk' is part of the name. One could create 'high fantasy' games, movies, books, and infuse it with any number of political views. But with cyberpunk the most common themes are highly political (and I'd say relevant to our time). That said, I don't believe it always has to neatly fit into a 'left-wing' perspective. If anything, I'd say one of the defining characteristics is libertarianism, perhaps with leftist tendencies, but not necessarily so.
exolymph 6y ago
> The genre gets most of its appeal from philosophizing about its content though. I don't think this is true.

paxys 6y ago

The average Call of Duty title makes you kill thousands of people, but that doesn't automatically mean the series has done a good job exploring the themes of war, PTSD, politics, military industrial complex etc.