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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 มี.ค. 2024
- What philosophical ideas are hidden in the game Cyberpunk 2077? What Cyberpunk genre tells us about human nature, and why does God play an important role in the game?
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#cyberpunk2077 #voxpop #philosophy #gameexploration - บันเทิง
CP2077 was one of the few games that stayed in my mind after i played it, for a long time - most games today don't feel as compelling, with a few exceptions. I'm no philosophy expert, haven't read all that much on philosophy. Didn't even know that much about the whole genre, never read the Android Sheep book or others. As a "normie", a few things stood out to me when playing it: how you can find something to "pleasure" you at every corner; how many can even save your life (Trauma Team); everything hyper sexualized; morality being dulled down a lot (you can even hear some Night City residents calling your character "a rare type in this city" if you are the kind of character that keeps his word and is "a decent human"); transhumanist ideas, people loving that they can change even their whole bodies; many more things. Oddly enough, even though this fictional city is nowhere near to be a city/timeline I would like, I liked that the devs made all characters very "human" and full of a wide array of emotions and traits, despite most of them being cybernetically augmented oftentimes completely. Like it was a signal that no matter how much parts a human loses, they still have that "something" that makes them a human being. Even borgs like Smasher (although on the negative spectrum).
I especially liked the Sinnerman quest with Joshua. I loved that the developers didn't shy away from depicting religion in general and in this quest. Funny thing is, as an agnostic who now is more of a believer, the dialogue in this quest was so nicely done that I would choose different lines depending if I were still an agnostic or not (i.e. 1. refusing him his wish or 2. actually "helping" him and "believing" in him).
I love how it feels like everything in this game was made by somebody who wanted to make a world that actually felt alive the only other games i can say have done that is the elder scrolls games that took many games and a live service mmorpg cyberpunk did it all in one game and a short anime and i will leave it there before i start going yapping about how amazing the music in this game/anime is
They do have a lot of old source material but I totally agree, it is a lot different than the TTRPG but borrows so many good elements and made a good foundation for things to come ❤
Love your breakdown of the genre, the game, and the themes. You're the only person I've seen being out these points and their philosophical nature.
“The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others-the living-are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Hell's Angels
I love philosophical analysis about pop culture, especially video games! Good job!
Thank you 🤩
Very deep, food for thought. Thank you for your words.
Excellent vide VOX POP. I would love for you to go deeper into these ideas. So many things I did no notice yet I walked away from the game with a feeling of profundity.
This is a really good video, man. Good job. I’m a super fan of cyberpunk 2077
I really like these kinds of analyses - am currently writing a fan version of my own continuation of the Cyberpunk world after the Star Ending of 2077, and some of the themes you mentioned will be front and centre - very interesting stuff.
Hey! That’s actually really cool)) I’m glad to be any helpful☺️ you gonna publish it somewhere? Would be nice to read)
I honestly thought you missed out with ignoring the buddhist messages, you put a lot of focus on western religion when in night city, buddhist monks roam the streets in mass, i was expecting you to mention the buddhist outlook of a soul
Hey! Like I said in the video-the philosophical/religious/political messages are literally everywhere 😂 I could cover all of them in one video, but it would take 4 hours for you to watch and 2 months for me to make))
Amazing video!
I think one of the most interesting philosophical ideas featured in cyberpunk is its depiction of souls. The idea that a copy of your consciousness can be made and transferred into other bodies really blurs the traditional definition of a soul being a supernatural embodiment of “who you are.” Do engrams have souls? ARE engrams souls? If so, have humans lost the right to their very existence? If one “soul” replaces another, like in V’s case, does that mean souls aren’t actually immortal as we traditionally see them? Can a soul be annihilated by science? Is an engram a human? Does it have human rights?
Theres a lot to think about. This becoming reality could completely change our definition of a human being. And, terrifyingly enough, this consciousness transfer stuff is absolutely feasible with real world science. We arent there yet with neural interface technology, but it is very much possible to do.
Alt Cunningham tells us straight up - "the name fully reflects the essence." Soulkiller - it kills the Soul, while creating a Xerox of the persons mind. Functionally it kills off both the Soul and the mind, as it doesn't transfer the consciousness, it just copies it. There's bound to be errors, and there's evidence of this as most of Silverhands memories are completely distorted. An engram is essentially just a digitized golem trapped in a virtual prison until housed in a proper carrier.
In V's case, her Soul ceased to be a part of her when DeShawn plugged her. While she may still be retaining her personality for a bit, she was full-on Soulkilled after the heist and is slowly turning into a golem of Silverhand. The Engram may have most of Johnny's mannerisms, figures of speech, a collection of memories, but it definitely ain't Johnny.
The easiest way to think about it is if it's an Engram, it is 100% removed from God.
Now, as far as the philosophical aspects of Soulkiller - does it permanently remove the Soul from the entirety of existence, or does it just give it a quick off-ramp back to the spirit realm? If the former, that is a terrifying proposition for science and mankind. The Soul is supposed to be everlasting, a collection of experiences and knowledge gained from multiple physical existences in the bid to reach Nirvana, Heaven, or wherever the final destination is. To have that put in the hands of man is unfathomable hubris.
@@AndrewWilson1991 Exactly. If you make a copy of a person’s consciousness, are they really even the same person? If not, what differentiates them from the person they were copied from?
@@AndrewWilson1991
It's just a Ship of Theseus problem. The same ship, but with pieces of it replaced as it is repaired. Johnny could've had his redemption arc while he was alive and that'd still be a different person than he was before. Or he could've slipped and hit his head and woke up with a different personality.
The take away lesson isn't that the engram is a "fake" or literally killing an actual soul. The point is that the soul doesn't really exist. It's an abstract concept. The Soulkiller and Relic programs just drive this point home. If the whole thing makes you confused and angry and results in your internal monologue making incoherent screeching chimpanzee noises, well, yeah, it's supposed to. Because you're just looking at _death._ It's what Johnny was feeling when you visit where his body is supposed to be buried.
Johnny is a flawed record of the past. But that's more than most of us ever get after death. We live on only in memories, photos and stuff like that. And most of us aren't going to be famous enough to even have more than a name recorded somewhere in an old obit, government record or a gravestone. A few generations out and there won't be living grandchildren who really remember the stories their parents told about you. And even that's kind of fuzzy at best. Silverhand is more of a symbol of terrorism than anything by the time the game takes place.
The impermanence of your identity, of your person is just how things work. The overwhelming majority of religions and philosophical systems fail miserably at actually dealing with death. And the notion that meaning isn't actually a real thing. The thoughts in your head aren't real either. They're all fleeting abstractions. And so, the vast majority of these give fake answers or fictional ones. Or bad advice.
Buddhism's answer is a _recognition_ of this dissatisfying impermanence, but it errs in that it believes the goal of life is to escape an alleged cycle of reincarnation into oblivion. Reincarnation, far from a pleasant bonus, was more conceived as a kind of death of identity. Having a soul here is no consolation prize, because this substance never has a firm sense of persistent identity between lives. Being a prince in one life has it upsides, but the trouble is, none of that carries with you when you're a slave in the next. The how isn't interesting, and neither are the theological specifics, only that its core mythology believes the world is a certain way and the escape should be possible from an eternity of dealing with this impermanence.
You already are familiarity with Christianity's story, so I won't bore you with that. It's lamer in that it thinks there is such a thing as a fixed meaning, a definite purpose and a permanent soul. But believers rarely discuss what it really means to be "close to God" or what heaven would be like and if you'd even be a same person, if you could be called such a thing, once you got there. Most people just imagine they're just hanging out in a retirement club up in the clouds.
You know I'm not lying and that I'm 100% correct, because how could Alt really program a literal death of the soul? Nonsensical. It's a metaphorical flourish, nothing more. She made a very convincing scan and replica and that's all there is. But every act of translation is also a small act of remaking and destruction. Simply being a program that could grow into a powerful rogue AI on the net would already need to erode your old identity. What's the point of your former sex or your old relationships when you can look at other people's memories and alter your own code?
Every conversation where Johnny tries to communicate with the rogue AI Alt comes up short and unsatisfying to him. Because it must. Alt is saying a lot by omission. She can't accept Johnny's preloaded assumptions about the soul or fixed identity or a shared past -- because those concepts are artificial. And are all the more so now that she's a machine intelligence. This is what Johnny is telling you when you debate whether or not to take his body or go with Alt. He can start to accept being a lifeform like Alt, simply because he's been an engram inside your head long enough to take that next step.
I treat the engram of Johnny as a person and a moral agent, because he is self-aware and has emotions. The question of whether he is the real Johnny is irrelevant, as he still has a potential positive impact in the world by closing out the affairs of the mortal Silverhand that died. And, for all it's worth, in most of the endings, Johnny finally does real damage to Arasaka while giving real closure to old friends.
It may help to think of him as a vengeful ghost, if it helps, but even that is only a metaphor. Yorinobu roasts the Arasaka board of directors. They're all scared of a talking voice of a dead man from a box. Idiocy. The dead emperor doesn't have power unless his underlings perceive that he does. That, above all else, is what Yorinobu hated. That the illusion of that particular soul was enough to terrorize Arasaka and the world into obedience.
Thank you for introduction to cyberpunk philosophy. I came across the idea that we talk about these topics as if they are inherently relevant to lived experience and to a certain degree they are. To another degree it is a fact of prophecy while I believe humanity can still surprise us. We certainly see some of these processes happening now, and it’s refreshing to see you describe it in a matter-of-fact manner. Can I ask what you are studying? All in all well edited & good source and reference material.
Hi! Thanks a lot for your feedback) I study Law, wbu?
I definitely think that there are lessons to be had with Cyberpunk 2077. CDPR was definitely trying to warn us just like Cyberpunk as concept itself and I think the more further we get technology wise the further we get from what mankind is supposed to be.
As someone whos never been interested in the Cyberpunk genre, this game was big tiddies for me. Like massive, full hangers. CP2077 and MGS2 have really shaped how I view the world.
For the last probably 5 years (29m) I've been struggling with acceptance of my own mortality. Cyberpunk is the art piece that struck me in the balls.
Как говорится, у кого о чём болит, тот о том и говорит.
P.S. I know you understood my last sentence
Двум смертям не бывать, а одной не миновать👹
thkank you for not spending first 5 min abt how bad game launch was and how they fixed it etc. like every cyberpunk2077 video these days. just get to the point without history lessons
Why does nobody mention johnny mnemonic
U have great voice my guy! I can tell u have brain too haha! Good, very good! I luv philosophy......
Ty🥹
I could only think about why u are wearing a sleep mask with googles ontop on em. Why?
Trust me-this saves your psyche from witnessing my eye bags😂
I dunno, by the minute 8 you just retold the plot and repeated high tech low life formula of the cyberpunk genre.
Well it’s kinda impossible to talk about the philosophy of a game without mentioning the plot and genre, right?😅
Got a point, all in all the game was a total disaster the whole 4 years this far. I often remark that it’s the best story, with best character building, laid on top of unbelievably bad game mechanics. It’s come a long way though. If Orion comes out anything remotely close to how bad 2077 was, it’s over.
Wow what a negative outlook. The game has great mechanics and it got better after the perk overhaul.
I enjoyed the mechanics first, then came to appreciate the world. Straight up had so much fun killing and fighting I didn't pay attention but it was a trear on my second playthrough
Sikeeee, gameplay feels amazing. Truly feels like you can be a cyberpunk