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You're Wrong About Cyberpunk 2077 | An Overdue Critique
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ส.ค. 2024
- This video was made because of patrons-without them, I wouldn't be able to take the time to research, write, and film something as big as this. If you want to support my other writing and worldbuilding educational content, please do so at / hellofutureme
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00:00:00 Wake up, Samurai
00:00:41 Capitalism bad?
00:25:59 Capitalism bad, but only sometimes
00:34:39 Be gay for just $4.99 per month
00:46:00 The God in the Shell
01:11:54 DEATH
01:35:45 The American Dream Sucks, Apparently
02:02:02 All This Tastes...Familiar
Over the last six months, I've read 11 books, studied 5 films and 2 poems, played 3 games to prepare for this video. If you feel it was worth it, leave a like/comment!
The Matrix (1999)
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Burning Chrome by William Gibson
Akira (1988)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick
Purgatory Mount by Adam Roberts
Diaspora by Greg Egan
Neon Leviathan by TR Napper
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Cloudpunk by ION LANDS
Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red
Blade Runner (19842)
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Lovesong of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Elliot
Sailing to Byzantium by William Yeats
Deus Ex Human Revolution by Eidos Montreal
Exhalation by Ted Chiang
Black Mirror - 'Nosedive'
Trouble and Her Friends by Melissa Scott
Synners by Pat Cadigan
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Stay nerdy!
Tim
So, this video kind of dying right now, which hurts because it was six months of work for me and I worked really hard on it. Comments, likes, and shares really do help the algorithm!
Awesome 🤩
Daddy
yeah very interesting world and story but its still cyberbug for now...
We march today men! FOR THE ALGORITHM
Tim: “joining god in heaven with only good and happiness is meaningless “
Me:”welcome to buddhism”
Cyberpunk 2077 comes out: i sleep
Tim tells me to wake the hell up: R E A L S H I T?
-B
wake up, you have 2 yil
wake up. we need more sapphic content 👀
And right after this vid, I hopped right over to yalls vid about time skips! The audience do oh so overlap 😁
Too true
Hi OSP
The fact that this sort of high-quality deep-dive into the Cyberpunk genre gets fully demonetized for a clip several seconds long by a massive corporation, and ends up buried within an unknowable algorithm is all the irony that I can handle today
Tell me about it
That’s what makes those old books, this game, and his write up so interesting we already see it happening. We live in this it’s already here.
Ironic, but also highly predictable.
In other words the sky is blue and the grass is green
Oof
I'll never get totally past the irony that a game whose genre's main attributes include critiquing Capitalism was rushed in order to make a release date so it would sell more copies
It doesn't necessarily critique just capitalism, more so the consequences of a world owned by capital-worshipping corporations. The reality of how the human population would be reduced to livestock, you do it by making everyone feel as if they have freedom and are uniquely special while offering nothing to build upon their dream, think of the American dream. Think of how everyone is dressed like a punk, like a rebel, but not actually rebelling against anything, at most spray-painting a wall which affects the poor workers more than it does the corporation, much like how people protest today by becoming the figure of a rebel but not actually rebelling against any oppressive force, only further oppressing those who work at the bottom. It is ironic how this game's ultimate potential was killed by the corporate side of CDPR, the corporation killing the dream of the developers and the fans, where have I seen this before?.
Art imitating life imitating art. Imagine the spin strategy sessions at CDPR when it went nuclear. I wonder if they did Arasaka cosplay.
It criticizes corpo-fascism, not capitalism, Kinda 2 different things. One is free markets, other is markets that are free only for people who were allowed to be free by the Government (though in later stages became so powerful, that overshadowed Governments themselves).
@@kakhakheviashvili6365 That's literally always the end game for unfettered capitalism.
@@smoberley no, it's not. Also, don't overuse word "literally", especially when something isn't proved and tested in reality. First off, we never had unfettered capitalism in history, yet we already have monopolies. Literally (which here is very appropriate, BTW, because you can look up numbers yourself) EVERY monopoly we have right now exists because of Government regulations, that don't allow small buisnesses to thrive and grow. Or do you think Amazon is where it's at because of the free market? Look at last couple of years, when world economy was regulated the hardest, who thrived? It weren't small/medium buisnesses, let's put it that way.
Cyberpsychosis is one of the most misunderstood concepts in cyberpunk, and that is partly due to the fact that as a player you never have to suffer its consequences in terms of game mechanics. Despite this, gamers suffer from a form of cyberpsychosis already while playing games, though this does not apply to them in real life, just in games.
Cyberpsychosis has nothing to do with being the so poorly misnomered "psycho" as in "psychopath". Psychosis can be caused by many things, be it medicinal, disease based or drug induced, you name it. It has nothing to do with being a psychopath. In it's most basic form it's a term that describes a disconnect in a person's perception of the world as compared to a normal, rational individual who operates on facts and evidence. If you see a cat, hear a cat, touch a cat and feel it with your hand, can take a picture of it and show it to others and they confirm that they do in fact see a cat, then it is safe to say that the cat is real. But if you take a picture of that cat and it doesn't show up on the photo, it is possible that you have hallucinated the cat. You have suffered a psychotic episode. Psychotic episodes aren't limited to hallucinations of what you can sense. You can just as well suffer from irrational feelings or thoughts that cannot be explained otherwise. It's this aspect of psychosis that cyberpsychosis is related to.
Cyberpsychosis does not make you an emotionless robot psychopath that goes around killing people indiscriminately and doesn't feel anything. Cyberpsychosis warps our perception of reality, and does so very, arguably, rationally and subtly. The more arms and legs you cut off of your own body and replace them with cybernetics, the less attachment you have to your own body. It's almost a completely natural response. One of our primary instincts of self preservation and the guttural feeling you get when something bad happens to your body is caused by the finality of it. If you get your finger cut off, you lose it forever. It doesn't regrow. This is one of the reasons why people hate the dentist so much. The act of drilling in your tooth, your bone, requires that you put enormous trust in the dentist to replace what is lost. Otherwise you're just a guy with a milled down tooth. It's this outcome that your instinct screams against. It's this finality that we fear the most during torture or accidents or sickness. You can whip a man a hundred times and he'll be fine with it, but threaten to cut his foot off and he will immediately crack. Everybody has different thresholds of tolerance in this case, of course, but the principle remains the same. Pain is tolerable, but permanent losses of your body are the worst case scenario, only superseded by death itself. It's those consequences of permanence that cyberpsychosis strips you of. The more your body is altered, the less worried about it you become. You remove the instinct of self preservation, little by little, until it starts to extend beyond body loss and into your own being. If I can lose a leg, what's a few years of memory? I could lose that too and still be fine. I like sexual organs but I don't *need* them. If something happened, I'd still be fine without them, or even just replace them.
The devaluation of humanity, not in the sense of its purity from technology, but its previously unquestioned sanctity. That's cyberpsychosis. Thinking of your body more like an object, rather than your body. Modern technology made it possible to change your body without adverse permanent consequences. When you take this to the extreme, in order to be able to do what you do, you have to rationalize it in your head. That rationalization goes against our instincts, and it is in some way a permanent scar on our psyche. The psychosis is a person's thinking that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. It can be mild, but the more you change about yourself, the bigger leaps in logic you have to make to justify what you do to yourself.
There are four significant stages of cyberpsychosis, three of which are a problem, and two of the three are a very severe problem.
The first stage is having any kind of augmentation in the first place. It doesn't have to be willing, but even if it is due to forces beyond our control, like a car accident for instance, you still have to live with it. People experience this even today when they have prosthetics. It is a big mental problem that can manifest in many different ways. It's not just phantom pain, which is also a big problem.
The second stage is when you have altered your body so much that you have lost a significant part of your own respect for it. You treat it as a tool, as disposable, like a phone in your pocket. If you drop it and it breaks, you can always replace it. This is a massive slight to one's self preservation instinct. It is a break of your innate mental limiter, and it can cause you to put yourself in harms way when you otherwise would have avoided it.
The third stage of cyberpsychosis, and its most problematic one, is when your belief about your own body's disposability begins to extend to the bodies of others. Once you live long enough without respect for yourself, you start to rationalize that even if you hurt other people, they too can just fix their bodies, so it's not a big deal.
The fourth and last stage of cyberpsychosis is when your lack of care and respect for yourself and others disillusions you to the point where you no longer care, not just about the body, but about life in general. Dying or killing is no longer an extreme taboo, and its just a passionless matter of fact. An existential, twisted, apathic nihilism. This is the stage that has the most in common with psychopathic tendencies, but they are still not the same thing.
Whether or not it would actually happen in real life is a completely irrelevant point, as this is fiction, and in and of itself serves as a worldbuilding and a narrative tool. What is interesting though is that this sort of behavior has been mirrored in social and psychological experiments to an extent, so it isn't too far fetched to think it was plausible. General apathy and dehumanization are all tendencies we are prone to under certain circumstances. I myself have already been exposed to it to a lesser degree while gaming. How many times have I started out playing RPGs treating everything seriously at first, only to gradually become bored and start pushing boundaries, especially when a plethora of tools is at your disposal to remove the consequence. I think any gamer has quicksaved and then subsequently slaughtered someone or a group of people at least once. You can always quickload back, right? It's the same mechanism as what cyberpsychosis is supposed to be, just in a different frame of reference.
Thanks for listening to my TedTalk.
This comment is thoughtful in a way you usually don't find on TH-cam. Love your breakdown. Thank you for sharing your ideas.
@@dnatsrednUouYoD You are most welcome. Just wanted to shed some light on the subject because neither the video, nor the game itself has explained it in any meaningful depth. This entire theory revolves around cyberpsychosis mechanics from the pen and paper RPG version of cyberpunk. I don't mean RED which also includes them but also the original that the game was based around in the first place. During character creation and beyond it, you can purchase and install cybernetics but at a cost of humanity. Depending on your overall level of humanity you would be required to roleplay certain behaviors as a result of cyberpsychosis. Once a character lost humanity to the point where the total was less than 2, you would essentially lose the character as they become a cyberpsycho and the DM takes control of them permanently. Interestingly enough, humanity being a stat, it could also be lost by performing particularly egregious acts of violence and cruelty, even if it wasn't physical. Likewise, you could sometimes regain it by performing acts of kindness, but usually the only reliable way to do so would be to undergo expensive behavioral therapy. This was 1988, remember. Way ahead of it's time.
You put more effort into that than I put into any essay in school.
this is incredibly insightful
Psychosis and psychopath are 2 different things, I thought people new that
longform video essays/critiques like this are my favorite thing to have up while I play games
Me too!
~ Tim
Same! Such a great video to get your brain working on something while your hands are on autopilot.
Same :D
Playing Super Metroid while watching this. The more I think about it, the more I realise how many cyberpunk elements run through the franchise.
hell yeah, long form content ftw! keep it up Tim.
Also, jo, love your DOS 2 streams with shen, crystahal and max!
Tim, I have things to do today, you can't just drop this on me.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a YA game, don't @ me.
@Hrishikesh what is hypocritical about them reviews lol
@Hrishikesh your response feels empty and vague.
right?
nice to see u here dood
"a small cog in a large machine" is always the feeling i get reading anything in the cyberpunk canon. even good people doing good things can only unbreak a small part of the world at at time.
Yet people criticize it for not offering the grand world breaking plot
They don't understand cyberpunk
Unless a machine is designed with redundant or unnecessary parts, even the smallest part is integral to the machine functioning properly.
Using "small cog, big machine" to imply insignificance is sloppy.
@@joshholden9360 it's not meant to imply insignificance so much as emphasize the disparity in power between individuals and the system they're trying to change. or emphasize the difference in scale between influencing an individual part in the story and the total, implacable momentum of the story itself
@@joshholden9360 Doesn't matter if they can just replace it with more cogs, or cogs that don't "break"
This one sat in my "watch later" list for a while now, since it's 2 hours long, but I finally got to it. Well worth :)
The irony of an anti-capitalist themed game being harmed by the greed of bosses wanting a pre-holiday release date
its even more so ironic that its the consumer who demanded the company to release it under threat, and even though knowing and being told it was an unfinished product, they demanded it anyway and got upset when they found out it wasn't just an excuse. got to love Karens.
You mean corporatism, not capitalism.
@@theatheistbear3117 corporations are the product of capitalism. There is no such thing as corporatism
@@AMVactivists You are aware that Corporatocracy is a real thing, right?
@@csb8447 Actually they hadn't even started production until less than two years before the deadline. So blame should be justly placed on brain-dead company directors
I think the big thing that imitators miss about Ghost in the Shell is that it doesn't really ask "are you still human?" in the context of cybernetic enhancements, but rather "are you still *yourself*?" In the end, its answer is "no, but that's not a bad thing."
The "ship of theseus' question, right? That's nice!
@@Gadget-Walkmen literally.
Love that
And that is a literal think that CBP77 explores. The first time you talk to Alt you can ask her about her plan, and she tells you directly that she is going to use soulkiller on you, and you can ask what will happen to you, wouldn't that make you less human once you go back to your body?
And she says yes, it might, but that it the only way for you to survive.
what are we anyway? We constantly shift and change.
I think the game is incredible. Sure i wish some things were expanded on, but I adore what I've gotten. I love this world and it's characters. Can't wait for the expansions.
I wish I liked things.
I have the feeling this video is about to get a lot of new views since Edgerunners dropped and people seem to finally be coming around to this game.
I genuinely love this game and it’s story and its characters. It’s deeply stuck with me since I finished it, and I’m so excited to go back and do another playthrough when the DLC comes out
Now that they are fixing the game and adding mod support... The possibilitys are endless. Hopefully modders can add some of the missing RPG elements and some better side quests
This video hits the feels even more after edgerunners
That's exactly why I'm watching it rn.
he needs to do an Edgerunners video now.
It's funny how he mentions that V never really has to deal with cyberpsychosis in the game despite the option to stuff your character full of chrome to the point where you start to impress Maelstrom members with it, and then we get a series where we are reminded how humans in general cling to the idea of their own invurneability.
Johnny would drive V crazy faster than any chrome anyways.
"be gay for just $4.99 per month" is the best chapter title I've been in a long time
I agree
And I've been doing it for free?!
@@therongjr here you are sir, we’ve been trying to reach you. The gay bill will be sent to your e-mail ASAP
@@therongjr escaping the gay irs /j
@@therongjr I've really been evading my gay fines all my life. I hope the IRS doesn't see this comment...
I thought I should mention that even though Skyrim has mage, thief and fighter guild quests, you really don't need to know magic, how to sneak or fight to complete any of them. As a roleplaying game, Skyrim is quite horrible since none of your actions have consequences. Not even who you are has significant consequences. I say this even though I enjoy Skyrim. You made a short remark about it.
Skyrim better this this trash 🗑️ 😆
Yeah this is something the earlier Elder Scrolls did better.
@@crazychicSHENA You calling Cyberpunk trash shows how surface level your taste is. If you don't go off the beaten path don't expect an adventure. Skyrim and Cyberpunk are very similar, the way people are shitting on Cyberpunk is like how people used to shit on Skyrim because it was considered cool.
@@crazychicSHENA no Skyrim is garbage along with Cyberpunk. Just for different reasons.
@@scourge.of.the_internet4406 no people are shitting on Cyberpunk because it's a shitshow of game design and writing. People shat on Skyrim because it took even more that people loved about TES and removed it effectively making it hard to even call it a TES game anymore.
And more to the point, it's literally considered a hot take to shit on Skyrim so i dont even know wtf your argument is.
My friend, I only just discovered your channel and I'm kicking myself (and the algorithm a li'l but) for not finding you sooner. This take on cp2077, or rather this take on modern society's failings framed as a take on cyberpunk, is so ridiculously on point in ways I honestly don't think I've ever heard short of within my own personal soapbox.
I'm not sure how much you've internalized the revelations you drop, especially as you start to pass the halfway mark of the video, but I truly hope as many people as possible take the time to hear the points you elucidate here; to that end, I will be sharing your video with as many of my loved ones I think can be bothered to give it a chance, as you very eloquently shine a light and point towards many things I've attempted to share with the people in my life, though I will admit it hasn't always been presented so structured in my case. Maybe that structure, that eloquence can help make the case with a few folk that couldn't be bothered before.
Either way, however that goes, I wanna thank you, whether you truly believe it all or not, for putting these ideas out there, if only so I know I'm not the only one whose mind goes down those roads.... And for being someone I can use as a human shield of sorts, whenever certain people try to dismiss my thoughts because I'm supposedly a lone dissenter; now I can hold you up and prove these ideas are not exclusive to myself. Very much appreciated.
All that said, you've scored a new fan and subscriber to help with that economic stability thing. Hell, I'll even donate a few bucks on payday. Won't be much, but I'll do what I can. Keep up the good work.
To be fair, CD Projekt Red didn't invent the game mechanic Cyberpsychosis. This was part of the 80's tabletop RPG game Cyberpunk that Cyberpunk 2077 was designed on. I don't remember how the mechanic was implemented (I only played that TT RPG game once, and that was back in the 90's.) The idea was that the more you augmented yourself, the less human you became... to the point that if your character did suffer Cyberpsychosis, the GM would collect the character and turn it into an Non-Player Character. (Essentially, the character dies and is no longer playable without actually dying.) Because this was a core thematic element in the original RPG, it's not surprising that CD Projekt Red would have included it in the game. (It could be argued that not including it in some way would have been a disservice to the game.) While I won't argue that it was implemented well, I do argue it's not the invention of the writers for Cyberpunk 2077.
Thanks for this comment! It’s helpful context
More importantly, the original concept of cyberpsychosis was meant to be that after you mod yourself so much the corporations that made them essentially own you. But this was considered too radical for the publishers and had to be changed to the cyberpsychosis we known now.
I think we should applaud people that try to make difficult concepts work even if it doesnt work out in a satisfying way. The problem in games is people taking too little risk.
THANK YOU! A lot of the problems at the end seem to stem from the RPG, like the terminology used, but that was made by people that, at first, were inspired by the genre instead of trying to make their own thing. It’s an awkward byproduct, but a lot of these terms were kept because it made it much easier for other fans to understand.
I seriously love Pondsmith’s world and wish more people knew about it, especially the new Cyberpunk Red.
Huh, cool. Although, that just makes it even worse that cyberpsychosis doesn't affect the player character in 2077 :p
"You don't go down in a blaze of glory for all time, you just go down." What a raw line holy heck
One that is not true. If you're talked about, documentaries are made about you, you're mentioned when we "look back" at certain years or time periods.. that's the glory. We will glorify you in some way, especially if you do enough damage or a big enough thing. Even Johnny is being glorified in Cyberpunk.
@@bryansolo5272 do you really think a rotten corpse can distinguish between being adored forever and being forgotten? It will only matter during the moments before death, everything after that is irrelevant.
@@bryansolo5272 Johnny isn't being glorified. Besides his drink at the Afterlife, a song on the radio, and a random aging fan, he's all but forgotten.
His sacrifice amounted to little, Arasaka quickly rebuilt, and the world moved on without him.
Dispte his "blaze of glory", he faded away all the same.
@N7Andy indeed its better to go out in a blaze of glory in a universe as buggy and unfinished as this one.
Marvin Heemeyer takes issue with this sentiment
One thing I have to point is that V can actually solve all the assassination contracts without actually murdering the target. Sometimes, the ones who actually have done bad things will try to evade death by bribing V, other times, V will be able to listen to her victim's version and spare them. So empathy is actually involved in those quests. As a summary of my opinion, I just think fixer's gigs are a very underrated part of this game, and they feature some brilliant level design and sometimes, great non traditional storytelling. I would actually like to see a cyberpunk game based around just doing gigs with a background From Software style narrative instead of a traditional linear main quest, and I think it would unironically be a great experience
The assassination quest I liked the most is when you're targeting an honest cop on a hit put out by her corrupt coworkers. I convinced her to leave town instead, and I noticed a few dead cops dumped in the garbage nearby afterward, almost as if she'd gotten her revenge on them before leaving, which didn't bother me at all.
@@Stray7 There's actually a news broadcast on the radio that reveals her fate. She was killed when she went after some of her fellow officers. The only way you can convince her to leave and keep her alive is to be a nomad and follow a specific dialogue path(not telling her about her NCPD buddies). You can find her in the Aldecados camp later and there's a heartwarmimg scene with her
I had trouble continuing any main or side quests because I was so caught up in gigs at many points. 2077 is one of the only games that's made me feel that way about tiny packages of side content. I actually finished them all and had fun throughout. Only other game that game close was Elden Ring and its tiny side dungeons and even those got incredibly dull by the last third or so of the game for me.
I feel like I understand both you and Tim here. On one hand there are many genuinely well written side quests that further the themes of the game, but on the other hand there are just as many if not more side quests that are pretty mindless. Especially if you include the NCPD scanner things, then you really get hitting the themes of "the problem with the city is the violence of the lower class rather than the corporations" that Tim was talking about.
This is one of the most immersive games for me. Whenever I play it, I just get lost in Night City and it feels so alive. Especially when you really read the shards, internalize the side missions, gigs, ncpd side missions. The exposition and world building of this game is insane.
It's funny that I get the exact opposite feeling..... But for the same reason. After a night of slaughter, rescue, theft and loot and augmentation. I just feel empty and dead inside. And I think that's the reason I love it. It's one of the few games where I've been so immersed that it was a negative impact on my emotional state. It was new and I loved it. It mirrored a time where I was depressed and became somewhat of a guilty pleasure. The highs were so much higher and I thought they were worth the lows.... Oh how I was wrong. I felt low for longer after every session, and more intensely. And still I reveled in it. I tried explaining this to my friends and they said I sound like I'm halfway to joining mayhem and buying snuff.
@@kalyambamhango4548 dude yes you described the feelings that I got whenever I played this game. It had me hooked
good for you, but that wasn't the case for some of us; everything is so empty and generic, nothing to do except FPS.
i bounced off hard, every time i enter night city there will be weird stuff, like making you empathise with the cops, the largest system of corp power. these people commit evil every day, the game even agrees with takamura with governments being no better than corps. and condemns you for lashing out even when you are effective.
like the game refuses to allow you to rebel while pretending is does. itll gesture vaguely at anticapitalist critiques then refuse to allow you to interrogate the critiques.
@@PropheticShadeZ The point of the cyberpunk genre is that you are stripped of every liberty. The point of rebelling is to at least regain the freedom to die on your own terms, possibly giving the middle finger to the corps in the meantime.
The game never condems you for rebelling nor for siding with the corps. Silverhand does, but how much should you care about the opinion of a terrorist? Or is he a reber hero?
I think the message of the game and the genre is just to make you think about how far you're willing to go to survival in a dystopic world:
The corps are bad, sure... but so are the scavs, the Wraiths and the Maelstrom. Not many characters are just good or bad, most of them are just realistic, human.
The ending with PanAm I find the most endearing. Yes you are choosing the quiet life, but you are also not giving up your challenge to the system. Aligning yourself with people who know what you did and who will likely continue their resistance. One individual can’t spark change, but a group of people inspired by one can.
Maybe that's why it also felt like the most hopeful ending.
Definitely the good ending
Suicide ending makes the most sense to me. V is being controlled and used throughout the game by this entity called night city. Him ending it on his own terms, is the last decision that is truly his.
@@nenadmilovanovic5271 Weak
@@MistahJay7 Ong bro
Johnny Silverhand also died fifty-four years before the game starts. That's a half century of social and economic decay he completely missed out on and is completely unware of. Not that he's the type to care if he was made aware of it. That man is the punk rock equivalent of the out of touch "back in my day..." mentality.
Wasnt he trying to destroy the same system regardless?
@@allyourbase50 Maybe, but the timing matters. It's like trying to close the wealth gap today verses he 1950s. In the 50s any one person having a billion dollars was unthinkable. It was absurd, what would someone even do with that kind of money? Yet today we're on the verge of history's first trillionaire.
Another example...imagine some random slub bragging about that one time he went to New York to an alien from the Andromeda galaxy who visits Jupiter on the weekends. His "accomplishments" aren't anywhere near as impressive as he thinks they are, and really he should probably just stop talking before he embarrasses himself further.
@@arkhamcreed4326 Well it's all relative, travelling from London to Paris was far more difficult in the 1400s than travelling to from London to Melbourne today. Personally I'd be far more interested in hearing about the former journey than the latter. Just because his accomplishments were less relevant in terms of scale, doesn't mean they didn't involve more skill and effort (and adventure) in making them happen.
Also, if you're going to compare millionaires of the past with possible trillionaires of the present, perhaps you should also consider inflation and how it's changed the value of currency over time. The amount of money matters less than the amount that money can actually buy (since the whole point of money is that it's value lies in it's purchasing power, not how many pieces of paper you have).
Furthermore, Johnny's character is pretty complex and changes as the game goes along. He actually does reflect on how things have changed in that time, and he sees the irony in how people still love his music without appreciating the whole point of the message behind it (even as his own art becomes part of the system he hates).
I don't think you're giving Johnny enough credit. Yeah there are definitely times when he's a self absorbed prick, and absolutely he has several moments where I wanted to give him a good hard smack in the face (when he insulted Judy and co I wanted to deck him). But he has more self awareness and more genuine concern for the world than even he is willing to admit at points. Dude is a truly complex character and I love him for it.
roses are red,
violets are blue.
if arasaka still exists,
johnny's got some blowing up to do.
Interesting. Johnny mocks or pities such a back-in-my-day-mentality of an old fan who couldn't let go, right? The guy who sells Samarai records.
Did I already love this game?
Yes.
Did I still sit here for 2 and a half hours just to feel validated?
Also yes.
I dunno if you're still checking the comments on this thing, but if you are I think you should put out a video discussing cyberpunk edgerunners. It would be a great vehicle to continue the discussion of a ton of the topics covered here.
Alternative take on the side quests: they are showing you that everyone else in Night City has bought the Blaze of Glory idea and are trying to claw their way to the top. We, as the protagonist, have the option to engage with it or not. There are side quests for living the quiet life - diving with Judy or hanging out with Panam for instance - but the action packed climb up the anti-social ladder is always going to conform better to the genre of a shooter game!
😎
Well said
It is showing the troubled development. Story goes completely against the open world design and missions they are using. V is dying, yet she is hunting cyberpsychos, like why?
Don't feel like I need to comment anymore thanks to this comment, but still commenting for the algorithm.
I just played through the Judy swimming date, it felt like playing through the bloody baron quest line again in terms of pure engagement to an interesting character. Really lovely quest
Actually, I found the Cyberpsycho missions to be amongst the most engaging. Regina urges you *not* to kill them, & the mission can't complete until you give her an insight into what went wrong with them. In at least half the cases I dealt with, the psychosis could have been avoided if their employers-the people who usually got them to get the chrome installed-had treated them decently from the get go. The stories in the shards are actually really sad.
I just bonked all them going sleep in the middle of the day. Making sure they aren't dead
@@suorsodavit7421 but the point still stands that you get to learn and interact directly with cyberpsychosis and see the many different ways it can happen. Whether it's a mental trauma or a short circuit that truely was an accident, these people had lives and families and dreams before they become the objective we need to hunt down
For me, it felt weird that I shot hundreds of bullets at them and they were all alive in the end.
Right, I had the feeling, most Cyberpsycho cases offered a non-Cyberpsychosis explanation for them running amok and the ones where I found no such clue did not have a conclusive proof that it was definitely Cyberpsychosis either. ... So in the end, I took from that that Cyberpsychosis is not actually real, just a decoy topic invented to distract from the fact, that the System makes people mentally sick in various ways.
@@Maxuras I might be remembering incorrectly, but what I got from it was that cyberpsychosis is VERY real and it's its own thing, but it's not caused just because of having certain cybernetics - it was just amplified somehow because of them, in combination with all sorts of horrible abuse and mental illness. But all of those cases were so damn sad, and I'm honestly really happy that I managed to do all of them without a single death. Though I wish there was a follow up on it later, so we can find out more - and maybe maybe maybe even find that we've at least made some sort of difference in this hellhole of a world :((
Hey so, if this helps of anything... this video pushed me over the edge, and I bought Cyberpunk. Over 80 hours later, I came back to thank you ❤
You don't regret it, do you?
@@Jay-ho9io the people that actually play cyberpunk don't regret it honestly
More than 50 hours here
@@chimbrazz Same. Love that game
@@chimbrazz adorable... i got it on launch and i have roughly 300-500 hours with it? I tend to be a completionist and full completion is around 150 hours haha
its my favorite game and my favorite franchise lore 100%
It’s hard to get through a 7 minute video at times, but you managed to keep me here for over 2 hours. An absolutely fantastic video that more people should see. Love it!
"If you're going to take one thing away from this video, let it be: don't ever get a Twitter."
Way ahead of you there.
wars
Deleted mine suspiciously close to when this video released
Only have one so I can follow... "art" lol
"Be gay for just $4.99 a month" is the most amusing chapter title i have ever seen
When you're busy thinking about degeneracy, you don't think about class struggle comrade !
I just like his multi-steps plan:
-Buy bootstrap
-Pull up bootstrap
-get wife
-get lawn
-plough lawn
-plough wife
I stopped listening here.
It's not a joke tho, only our future :)
My favorite ending in 2077 will always be (Don't Fear) The Reaper - Temperance.
Not only do you go solo, but you beat the odds, you do kill that corporation, and then when the inevitable finally came you give it up to the man who did and failed for him to take the route out unable to forget what you did, helps a kid, and leaves.
It's an ending that, keeps everyone alive. But, for someone who always sides with Judy, she has a unique ending card that it's the only one you never see her leave the city too despite telling you that's what she needs.
If you do it right, and I mean everything right, you get different endings to the side quests, even the gigs. I don't know if it was rewritten and added, but you end up at a threshold where you're told to stop being a mercenary because it doesn't fit you. The playthrough the game forces you on a path that feels hollow. I think it shines the most in the cyber-psycho quests, and the writing beyond the quests. You have to dig to find the humanity in everyone or you can go cold and kill get paid, repeat. The only time it doesn't fight you is the NCPD calls, where you arent supposed to leave them alive, they want you to kill, and in a side quest with maxtac you're forced to kill or watch someone else kill.
And, there's edgerunners now. The one I wish took 2077's place in this video. In the end, it's the illusion of choice 2077 goes for. Would you rather die on your feet or live on your knees? Would you rather control your death or live in servitude? Thats the heart of the idea. It plays on the hopelessness of those with no way out as long as the system stands. But, that's why I like the temperance ending so much. It admits Johnny's fault in tearing down without a plan to rebuild, the people he killed with that bomb was an accident. I grew up with Rise Against, a band that directly understood this and brought to light every person who died, every person who has ever fed revolution, everything to do with counterculture.
I admit I might be biased, but I also can admit my faults that I've had almost directly by counter culture. I've wanted to burn it down, I know a lot have, and to a certain extent I still think it neccesary, but I also believe theres a way to slowly replace it. I don't have all the answers, nor can I do it alone, but something does have to be done. It's fiction to think one person can burn it just enough to rebuild properly. And I know I won't see it in my lifetime, I can only hope to write in a way that others will understand where I'm coming from separated from myself.
This is an incredible essay on Cyberpunk 2077. I already quite enjoyed the main story of the game itself, but to recontextualize all of that with the history and themes of the cyberpunk genre and what it foreshadows about us and the current societal shift, it makes me appreciate the story all the more. Thanks a lot for the incredible work, man.
"There was never a simpler time which we should yearn to go back to... no, there was only ever a time when we were more ignorant"
What an elegant way to describe such a complex topic
And yet when you tally up shows rather than tells the cyberpunk genre says the opposite. Oh they may drop a line here and there about how things were bad in the past too but they spend hours and hours ion showing us the future is sloping downwards.
@@DaDunge that's only if you assume cyberpunk as a genre to be speculative, but it isn't. It uses futurism as an aesthetic, but that's just surface level. All of the issues it tackles are contemporary.
Capitalist exploitation, racism, class inequality, gender identity, climate change, hyper-consumerism, corporate lobbying, these are all issues in the real world TODAY. Cyberpunk uses an absurdist lense to bring these issues into sharper focus, not to say that the past was better, but to warn that if we don't continue to learn, to fight against ignorance, the future won't get any better
@@HungryHungryShoggoth Except it doesn't matter if the intentions are to not be speculative if the coding you use make the consumer think it's speculative and a lot of people are increasingly thinking the future slopes down because genre's like cyberpunk has told them it does.
Also bottling upp real life existing suffering and selling it to a wealthy clientele for profit is like something out of a cyberpunk. But that is exactly what Cyberpunk does, it's not written for the poor, they don't have time or money to consume it. It's written for the wealthy middle class so they can feel smug and superior that they are on the side of good, because they understand the problems even if they are not ever going to act on this understanding.
He compared it to the musical Rent well rent is a reimagining of the earlier la bohem and in both case it's a prettied up version for the suffering of the poor for the benefit of the rich.
I direct you to Lindsay Ellis' excellent breakdown of everything wrong with Rent.
@@DaDunge well, can you blame them? I'm not sure how old you are, but as an older millennial I'm a bit sick of living through all of these "once in a lifetime" world-changing events. And a lot of us don't feel like those in power are addressing the issues at hand.
That being said, even if you want to assume that cyberpunk is actually speculating about the future, that doesn't automatically mean it's nostalgic for the past. You can have cautionary tales about the future without idealising the past
@@HungryHungryShoggoth Then stop living through them and get off your ass and do something about it.
Yes cyberpunk is right one person can't do anything but guess what there's not one person felling like this there are loads of people feeling like this and there's strength in numbers.
When the police murdered George Floyd the black community did not just shrug and say "Oh well I guess nothing ever changes" so why do middle class millenials (a class generation combination I myself was born into) do that?
And if things are worse in the future it means you're idealising either the very flawed present or the past. You can't have it both ways.
"Its not about meaningful change... it's about being angry, about the moral high ground"
That defines 99% of opinions on Twitter
Twitter and TikToks are a blight
@@joshgroban5291 Is TikTok that bad? I know next to nothing about it
@@hoguemusic9706 Think of tik tok as Vine 2.0. Though this time it actually has a bright spotlight as opposed to vine. Now we can see the cesspool of teens trying to go viral and caring about “likes” or whatever it’s called on tik tok. It’s also being abused to pry on these teens. Now this isn’t new abuse has been happening since the dawn of time but this is a problem because the age limit is 13 so the company publicly states they accept minors to use their site. So seeing abuse happen and seeing only lynch mob but not much banning from tik tok themselves is an issue but it’s understandable seeing how the site reached an insane amount of users. This was bound to happen any popular app will find their dark parts. Only real issue for me is minors are involved. I can’t imagine what would happen if my little sister or brother went out to a “meet” with other tik tokers
There was this awesome side gig where you tried to talk down a cyberpsycho, and it kind of haunted me for a bit. I'm pretty sure there was nothing I could have said to keep him from attacking me, but it was still chilling.
TH-cam tried to recommend me another Cyberpunk essay/"documentary" and I had to come back to this one because of the great way the genre is explored. I really appreciate how you talked about the common themes in the genre, what different stories contributed, and how various works play with (or steal from) each other. Very well thought-out and excellently delivered.
@1:36:04 - Bootstraps metaphor.
The funny thing about the phrase "pull oneself up by their bootstraps" was originally coined as a metaphor for workers being asked by their employers to do their jobs without what they need. Asking them to pull off logically impossible feats like "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps" - the point was, it couldnt be done - but the bosses decided to recode that term as a Herculean feat of strength that people could overcome and to be glorified - when in reality its a completely absurd task
Similar beginings for the word "meritocracy"
On another note, I know he’s dressed up as Johnny, but all I can see is Bucky Barnes. And I’m definitely not mad about it 😝
I'm glad I'm not the only one lol
same
Hell yeah
There is a secret ending. Where no one dies. You literally just kick in the front door of arasaka as a one man army
Thank you for giving a more nuanced look at Cyberpunk 2077 (which has become one of my favorite games of recent years despite its flaws and shortcomings) as well as giving Blade Runner 2049 the praise it deserves. Excellent video essay. You deserve more subs and this video more views.
"which one let's me keep my cat?"
Dude, I'm popping a "like" for that.
None. Sadly
Which one gives me a cat tho like I would like to be given a cat if I'm already selling my soul anyway, might as well become a slave to our TRUE overlords
Didn't expect him to be using that joke as legitimate critique that he kept referring back to but I'm totally onboard
"good thing we dont have political dynasties... right?"
>cries in brazilian
*and North Korean
*cough* Clinton *cough* Bush *cough*
@@Nerobyrne Yeahhh, because those are the only two Americans with political dynasties.
@@SnailHatan hey I never said they're the only ones.
They're just the two that came to mind
*and American
I still think I had the luckiest experience with cp2077. I had next to no glitches, very steady framerate, and I actually did all of the content. I played for 2 days straight on release and I slept at my desk so I could continue playing when I woke up. Yet, as I watch reviews every so often, almost everyone who played it had an awful experience. For a game that I played for 100+ hours, it was very surprising to find that people weren't enjoying themselves. (I have only a handful of games over 100 hours)
Same I had a very good experience with no glitches or anything on PS4 pro.. was able to beat it right away.. now all with the updates the legendarys aren't in the same spot as from the release, and are scarce this time I remember you could find anything legendary clothing piece or weapons in a random alleyway..
The side quest with the family having their memories over written, rivers child cattle farm, the crucified prisoner, Johnny playing music, the unalive ending, they all messed with my head I nthe beat way possible, hurt but amazing
“At best I can send out a hashtag and donate some money, at worst I can’t do anything and it’s a moral failing for me.”
Very well said.
Wow Tim really spent 2 hours building to say Blade Runner 2049 is derivative trash. Most impressive.
I just don't know how you watched that two hours in 35 seconds! Most impressive
@@razzledazzle8953 🤔🤔🤔
@@razzledazzle8953 goblins are able to do things “naturally different” than humans are able to do
Did you just jump to the last few minutes? 😂😂😂
Also, did you just call Blade Runner 2049 trash?!
My main problem cyberpunk in general is that it fundamentally misunderstands revolution. A revolution isn't built on one big glorious deed, it is built on a thousand small deeds.
Being a revolutionary doesen't mean being like Jhony Silverhand, it doesen't mean fighting till your last breath, it means working together with people from your community and spreading awareness ,trough word of mouth. Even simply accepting that there is a future beyond capitalism can make you a revolutionary in a world of capitalism realism. And that is enough, if you can't do anything else, because it means that when the revolution comes, you will not be fighting to maintain the status quo.
Cyberpunk tells you that you can't take on the system alone, but what it doesen't tell you is that you are never alone. The choice isn't between living in peace or going down in a blaze of glory, it is between living and helping in the little ways that you can, or living and not helping, believing that the system is too big for you to take down.
Yeah you're right but they need to make it wow bang bang boooom because its a game.... so hence the blaze of glory theme.
@@camraid9 Fair point, but they could have focused a little bit more on how you can live instead of wether live your life.
It does kind of tell you that though. The best ending involves working with people to create something else. Silverhands methodology ultimately fails in game for numerous reasons, narcissistic obsession with blazes of glory being a big part
@@MrCurbinator what happens in the best ending? I only watched a playtrough of the game.
@@Somajsibere you give up both the pursuit of status/wealth and the pursuit of doomed solo revolutionary ideas to focus on building something with people that care about you outside of the status quo
I’m so drawn to this game because of how dystopian it is. For some reason that is what grabs me and it’s almost like a horror game to me. It fills me with existential dread but it makes me actually FEEL something, which a lot of games don’t do to me anymore. Also the world is super cool and the story is good lol
yeah, I love the dystopia as well. It's a perfect look into a brutal, hypercapitalistic world where people are also hyperindividualist. I see it as a reflection of real-life, late-stage capitalism.
I mean the existence of a CORPORATE WAR is fucking brilliant. Such an amazing encapsulation of capitalism and its inherent ties to imperialism.
The conversation you have with Takemura when scouting is one of the best, because he basically highlights what’s wrong with Silverhand and people like him: they want to burn the system down but offer no alternative.
But at the same time, wouldn't almost anything be better than a system like the society of Cyberpunk? And does it all just end up feeding into the same loop over again?
@@mikehorne4053 If there is no alternative, you will instantly get back into the society you are used to. Even if you managed to burn everything down new leaders will rise new people will gain power, people who knew the old system. Even if you burn humanity back into the stone ages you will get the same outcome. You just pressed the reset button on a game with a fixed ending. To have a thriving society you need trade, for trade to be productive you need a homogeneous currency. Boom there we have capitalism back. You need to erupt the day-to-day life enough to make people start thinking about how they want to live and you have to have people of power who are willing to implement a system that is harder to be exploited as the last one. If you don't make people think they will blindly go into what they are used to. if you don't have a powerful elite that has the acknowledgment of the people working out the system it won't be accepted. Just look at what happened in Afghanistan... If the driving force is not accepted by the people it won't lead to change.
@@mikehorne4053 "anything would be better" is how thing usually gets worse
@@Zazu1337 Having a market doesn't automatically mean capitalism... Modern capitalism is 300 years old, recorded civilization has existed for 10k years, and people have been trading with each other long before if it did it'd likely still be extremely different because of a high chance Europe wouldnt be able to take over the world, China and/or India historically pretty much ruled the world for most of recorded history. Our era is extremely abnormal and the abberation happened by chance because of environmental factors.
Afghanistan is called the Graveyard of Empires because every one that invades it not only fail, they collapse their entire country's economy in the process; USSR, Britain, I think France, and the US. Afghani society is very decentralized making forceful takeovers practically impossible, military gets overextended and inflation kills the economy
Add-on: During a transitional period where China and Indian empires were both in decline, Europe plagued by disease and war set its sights on west africa to secure an advantage both regionally and globally, due to the soldiers carrying foreign pathogen into the continent killing countless civilians and weakening the african soldiers, along with instigating famines, European empires secured a strangle hold in the african continent that still exist to this day.
During the Dark Ages, western Africa had several flourishing empires that was a global educational hub and practically unlimited wealth, if not for european biological warfare modern history would look very different from today and capitalism almost certainly wouldnt exist. For example, the US and Canada wouldnt exist, although the Americas was bound to be discovered eventually, the genocides of indigenous americans would either have never happened or play out very differently, and not to the extent that Spain and Britain took it. Spain even at the time was universally regarded as inhumane monsters for the numerous atrocities they'd commit.
Without the destabilization and conquest over Africa and the Americas the world would be far more equitable and prosperous.
@@papo3887 with all you have said. The circumstances don't really matter neither do the respective countries. Our modern capitalism is a natural evolution from coinned money to printed money to virtual money. And it is much more natural than you are willing to admit. Yes there are infinite variables and there might be a small subset that would lead to a non-capitalistic world. There is also a small subset where humanity just whipes itself out before reaching all the prerequisites for modern capitalism. But the majority of possibilities lead back to where we are now in terms of economics. That doesn't mean that the same countries have to be the ones starting it.
I am fully aware of the situation in Afghanistan and all the prior attempts of converting it into a homogeneous state. But nevertheless all countries have once been in tribalism. A more recent example would probably be India it had basically the same problems as Afghanistan but management to keep the democracy because they chose it themselves.
Suggestion for a video: writing character arcs for “inhuman” characters. First place I’d start is Godzilla vs Kong, myself, but gotta be more than that out there
that’s a good idea
@@ericgabrielbautistajaimes9187 honestly, I’d do it myself if I had the equipment. I’ve got too many thoughts on it
That sounds really interesting, I'd love to see him do that. I think parts of it appear in his videos on Dragons, but there is a lot more for him to say.
I'd like that
Ooh, this
I was siting here playing Warframe and said oh cool another long form commentary video to listen to in the background and learn a bit. I came out of it feeling like I could take on the world a little stronger than before. I died a few times because I was enraptured in the way you told your story along with the story of Cyberpunk as a genre and game. You are an absolute inspiration
My guy, you put SOO much work into this vid. It was exactly what i needed today. Ive been SSOOO starved for long form content.
As Charlie Chaplin says in his final speech in the great dictator: "To those who can hear me, I say - do not despair... The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish."
What does that mean when men no longer die?
Then "accidents" become even more politically relevant.
Wisdom must rule the land, or selfishness and ignorance will destroy it.
Sadly, Chaplin was making the same kind of speech that got his subject notoriety. The sentiment always acceptable until the demand for power and subordination is slipped in. It often comes down to " Shed the shackles of this matrix and free yourselves, my new matrix is so much better than this one -and the shackles are shinier!"
It means that the desire for liberty is as innate to human existence as death.
@@Rfk551 It isn't meant to be taken that literally. It is not suggesting that liberty is correlated with our mortality, It is assumed people will always die, and as such will always demand and strive for liberty. Arguments about immortality not changing that fact may indeed be correct, but they are irrelevant, it's missing the point. It is like saying as long as the sun sets we will fight for liberty, as long as radioactive isotopes do decay e.t.c... except chaplins version is much more poetic.
For the algorithm! Will leave a more constructive comment when I've finished watching this video on my flight home.
Good to see Dom in the comments section of one of my other favorite TH-camrs. Great to be the 69th person to like his comment.
Practicing what you preach, noice.
Yeah, for the algorithm!
for the algorithm
Servicing the algorithm.... Now that's punk 👉🤛😎
Today I have finished Cyberpunk 2077 and I was excited to see what you had to say about it. This video was not what I was expecting: it's much more nuanced, interesting, riveting than what I could have ever imagined. Your love for the genre has let you create a great video, Tim, and somehow filled that void that Cyberpunk 2077 created in me with its admittedly very well made Arasaka ending. Thank you Tim, I know that the Algorithm of TH-cam (so much for the divine technological entities) is not helping you much, but do know that your work is very valuable, and some of the best on the platform.
I'm sad to see your note about how this video is doing poorly. I love this long form type of content, I love your videos and your channel, and I think this one is one of your best yet! Thank you for putting the time, effort, dedication, and love into this video essay. It really is a masterpiece!
The nomads ending is my favorite. You end your adventure with a new family leaving behind the city on the hill that changed you for the worst and V chooses to let go of the bullet and live out the rest of his life for those around him. Panam is waifu.
also in the Stars and Suns ending it's implied V is still looking for a cure
I love the Nomad ending
It's implied though that V may be dead in the credits
The messages
@@badfoody Not necessarily. If you've romanced Judy and she came with you, she leaves you a message while you're making breakfast for you two. You can hear your V faintly in the background - but it's much clearer if you have subtitles on.
Panam is definitely waifu…i beat that 😽 up in the tank 🤣🤣🤣
Panam’s speech patterns annoy me
It's interesting how people choose to interprete that Lizzy-Wizzy quest as her manager wanting to make her easier to control for profit, and not her boyfriend being afraid of her developing cyberpsychosis and seeking the wrong solution in desperation.
Yes it's funny that it's understood that way, considering how the quest ends up progressing
Yeah at the end you understand she's really crazy as f*ck.
@@PetitTasdeBoue Hold on, a person replacing his whole skin only to get *more* famous didn't already tell you that?
@@rawallon Na bruh she's getting some psychokillers vibes. Nowadays people are already changing their bodies even if that's not with chrome and they ain't that crazy
They are both evil but he was right in the end. I think a lot of people dont progress the Story beyond the first part and come to the wrong conclusion.
I love you. and your work. please dont stop!
So I watched your whole video from start to finish. All 2 hours. I'm glad I did, and I'm glad you made it.
Listening to you gave me a new appreciation for cyberpunk story telling, for the evolving culture and society around me, and for what it means to have some kind of moral guidance, as well as why it's important.
These are deep topics, and they mean a lot to me right now, being a millennial who's struggling with joblessness, a pressure to be ruthless to get ahead, and trying to rediscover just what kind of person I want to be. Your video also helps me put into words why people who are struggling economically and shop at WalMart don't necessarily have the luxury of just...not. That doesn't make them immoral, just human, and trying to survive.
I enjoy deep dives into subjects like this, whether it's films, video games, or novels, because a lot of these angles, the details and philosophies and subjects being explored, I think I would've missed them if left to my own study.
Thank you for all six months you put into this. I haven't read Neuromancer before, and I'm going to soon. I think after your video, I'll have a much wider understanding of it, and I'll enjoy its story more. And I know I'll have things now I can think about in my daily life that might make some of my own goals a little easier to understand.
The original purpose of cyberpsychosis seems to have been for balancing in the original Pen & Paper game. Player characters could get it if they modified themselves too much and became too powerful.
It’s still an interesting concept to keep in the story. Plus, even back in the 2020 game there were plenty of cyberpsycho NPCs and jobs that involved working with or against some of these psychos.
tim: says literally anything
literally everyone: *WRITE THAT DOWN WRITE THAT DOWN*
🤣🤣
Can confirm.
Glad it's not only me....
Quite literally!
Dude, I watch his video essays like 4 or 5 times just to be sure I've caught enough of what he's tossing at us.
And just about every book he's recommended is actually pretty good and was worth the time.
I recommend more people read instead of absorbing the video version of stuff. You need to ask your own questions and come to your own conclusions.
The thing is, when I'm playing an RPG I want to make _my own_ story.
My interest in the game dropped by 50% when my Corpo character got fired 3 minutes in.
I'm so glad this game got fixed to a state acceptable enough for people to realize how stellar the storytelling is.
Ironic how a game that was sold as an open world experience shines stronger whenever you are taken on mostly scripted sections and have to deal with dialogue.
I have a love-hate relationship with Cyberpunk as a genre. On one hand, I love the aesthetic and technology, and as a futurist I think it's important to think about the societal implications of these near future technologies so that we can better tackle potential problems before they are made manifest. But on the other hand, in my experience Cyberpunk stories are generally much more focused on finger pointing and moral grandstanding than on proposing actual solutions to the problems it identifies. A sort of directionless rage that leads to people like Johnny Silverhand.
Well, that is why the literary movement of Cyberpunk itself was rather short lived. By the time of Snowcrash it was already something of a joke and the world of SF lit moved on to post-cyberpunk.
I mean... Tbh whenever I hear someone say something like this I usually ask this question:
Are you upset of the focus of the criticism or the criticism itself?
So first off Johnny is a total jackass true, but just because he is, doesn't make him wrong. Criticism does not propose solutions it simply points out the problem. This suggests if there is a problem and if there are solutions. After all I'm sure Subaru Arasaka would disagree with Johnny Silverhand. What it comes down to is power, both who has it and who can use it. Subaru has a century old corporation, and a system that helps said corporations, benefit. Not just that but Night City is Arasaka home terf. What does Johnny have? A robotic hand and a bomb. That basically did nothing anyway but killed people, destroyed a long standing land mark, and made him look like a madman.
I say all this because I find this kind of comment to be immature. Not necessarily knowing how hard it is to just get people to pay attention let alone do something about it. After all this video is having a hard time with the very same concept, but you don't seem to upset about that in retrospect ( which is gaining attention if that's not clear).
Tl;Dr easier said than done. So that leads us to the question proposed before.
Are you more upset that Johnny was pointing out the ultimate flaws in capitalism or that what he did about it which was blow up a large tower? Or do you find the rhetoric itself lacking? Genuinely curious here.
@@xavierzabie8184 What do you mean the comment is immature? They just gave an opinion, which is in line with the point made by the video. The complaint, I believe, is with the execution of the criticism itself, not just in 2077 but in the Cyberpunk genre overall; works of the genre often make big critiques about aspects of society, particularly class divide, and then completely fail to actually address them in a style that suits the medium. In 2077, this comes in the form of most of the characters driving home a solid 'Blaze of Glory, Fuck the System!' attitude, while V consistently goes around murdering random civilians who's wrongdoings are just a by-product of Night City's Neon Leviathan.
The complaint is not made about the lack of finding an 'answer' to the questions posed by the game, it's that all semblance of nuance is destroyed by the mixed messages of player agency/linear story and fight the system/murder random civilians
I don't think a piece of fiction can actually propose satisfying solutions to the these kinds of problems. I would expect a bunch of experts in the scientific and social field to come up with solutions not an author.
That's the whole point of the genre though: pointing up the flaws and warning us what would happen if those flaws aren't addressed early on. The conditions in cyberpunk stories are where the root problems aren't addressed fast enough that it usually becomes almost (if not totally) unfixable.
A line from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance of all things...
"If our mission is to spread freedom, then, why was I never offered a choice?"
This was so well written, and I just want to say this is one of my favourite videos on youtube.
I am BLOWN away by the ending credit music! Oh...and the analysis was good too lol. Speaking candidly I loved this video. You're work is, as always excellent.
This essay totally didn't just drop me into a spiral of existential dread.
that just means it made an impact.
What separates despair from sadness?
@@leandersearle5094 The knowledge that when you wipe your tears, you see your friends reaching out to you.
Oh fuck it is despair
When Tim makes a 2 hour video, but your inner Rocket Racoon takes over and all you can think is:
"I'll get that arm..."
(FOR THE ALGORITHM!)
I kept wondering if it did not become uncomfortable at some point? Two hours of wearing it, maybe it gets itchy...
but I still want one too! XD
What a fantastic and nuanced exploration of the genre as it fits with our current experiences. Well DONE my fellow Tim!
So I just want to point out that V has little Chrome at the beginning of the story. She literally has a malfunctioning datashard that corrupting her brain and turning her into an entirely different person who she can have hallucinogenic conversations with in the meantime. That kinda' sounds like Cyberpsychosis to me.
Great video c:
"God, Death, Capitalism, and Cyberpunk"
We could make a religion out of this.
Wait don’t.
No
hmmm, maybe it already is⁓
r/unexpectedbillwurtz
It’s called Transhumanism, and it is a Good Time. Takes a bit more ass-kicking and misbehavior than most folks are used to these days.
While overall this is a pretty decent in depth critique, your description of cyber-psychosis leads me to think you may not have fully read into it (or chose to ignore) chunks of the surrounding lore. Over the course of the game cyber-psychosis is presented to you by persons of authority as an affliction caused by having too many augments (or bad ones, or the wrong ones), sending someone insane over time. The reality isn't as straight forward as, you'll find that roughly half of the cases are people placed in hard situations by their respective controlling agencies.
As an example, one of the cases that stuck out to me particularly was early on where I ran across a crime scene blocked off with cars and holographic-barriers - you get the notification that there's a cyber psycho nearby, but if you read the surrounding lore you'll find that the 'psycho' is an ex-corpo agent whos decided to run off with her built in tech, she's not really insane so much as she's chosen to take Corp's property and so they've sent agents to take her down and reclaim it. Now she does attack you in the situation, but to look at it from her side you just entered the area directly following on from the 5-10 guys that were expressly send to kill her, so really whos at fault for her attacking? Its a pure adrenaline moment on her part, and the same reaction could be made by anyone on the run and understandably fearing for their life - she's not being aggressive because of her implants so much as she's being hunted for the sheer fact that she 'stole' them in the first place.
Quite a few of the other psychos are in the same vein - for every person actually driven insane by their upgrades, there's another person just driven down by Corporate over-control and lashing out, which they can do pretty effectively when they're covered in weaponry and augments of all kinds, or people like the example that seem to be aggressive for the pure fact that they know they're being hunted.
Ultimately the only real uniting factor between all of them is that someone wants them dead to the point that "Cyberpsycho" seems to be corporate shorthand for "Person I don't want around".
I think it's both. The augments definitely play a huge part, but there's always some sort of catalyst in these psycho cases. Something that pushed them over the edge into a murderous rage.
@@PayAttEx There are also a couple other hypotheses put out there in the game in various radio/journal entries. (1) planned obsolescence causes the breakdown of cyberware that contributes to/aggravates psychological issues. (2) rogue AIs from beyond the blackwall (the porous garbage bag) are connecting to /breaking through the poor cybersecurity of cyberware.
He somewhat addresses this around the 53-minute mark when saying the player should have the option to choose an empathetic interaction when dealing with those who are supposedly suffering from Cyber Psychosis.
I think there is a piece of lore in-game that says a person can go cyberpsycho from just one implant, it all depends on the person.
@@MiraBoo The empathetic choice the game gives you is to take them in for treatment before the NCPD murders them or they murder someone else.
This video hits even harder after edgerunners tbh
The new ending added with phantom liberty is the definition of "I'm the V who survived". Hope you've already checked it out. You'd love it!
So after seeing this and learning about the cyberpunk genre... is Wall-E a cyberpunk story?
Yes, yes it is
Yes it's a post apocalyptic cyberpunk based film.
I'd say no. Aside from the corporate control theme, there's nothing else that significantly links it to cyberpunk imo.
@@donovan5656 cyberpunk is about the social consequences of technology evolving faster than morality could comperhend it.
I would say walle qualifies.
Robopunk
"Patreon. I wouldn't want your contributions to be lost to time.... Like Tiers, in the rain."
I find it strange that with all the vids I have watched on Cyberpunk that it took me a year to find this one. Whereas this was quite informative and entertaining, My God! it was long. I am actually surprised I watched the whole thing especially when I started to stop a several times.
Thank you for this.
Maybe this is due to the more recent updates, but I found that many of the side quests are actually pretty on-theme and help flesh out the world of night city more. You've already covered the mayor death investigation one, but I found that there were two other mission chains that were interesting, and I'll briefly describe them below.
The Hunt: A quest about helping Detective River find his nephew Randy, who was abducted by a serial killer. This quest made me consider what it would be like to grow up in an environment like Night City. We get to see how lonely and lost Randy was, to the point he was tricked and abducted by the serial killer Anthony Harris. We also get to see some flashbacks of Anthony's childhood, where he was abused by his father and then later neglected to develop into what he is in the quest line.
Sinnerman questline: In this questline, you start by riding along with Bill as he plans to kill the criminal that killed his wife. He doesn't really have a plan and is killed by the police officer transporting the criminal. Once that happens, you meet Joshua Sephenson, the criminal in question, who has apparently found God and reformed himself. He asks you to follow him for the day, whereby you have many opportunities to talk with him about religion, spirituality, and his offer from a BD company to film his crucifixion. You can try and talk him out of it, go along as a passive observer, or support him to the point of nailing him to the cross yourself. I thought this questline had some interesting ideas about the role of religion in such a world, where coprs and tech can basically copy and paste souls.
And I realize now after watching the entire video that this is mentioned. Nice.
I don't normally comment because I have little to say, but Tim, this was a master piece in looking at a genre, and felt like an epic journey in it's own right.
Looking forward to giving it another watch once I've had time to crystalize my thoughts about it. In a small way, just would like to say thank you for pushing yourself to make this and giving the topic the time it deserved to examine it properly. As always, your work is an inspiration.
I'm glad you said this and Tim will surely be too. Nicely put.
+
Was going to make a drinking game joke, but instead: Take a sip of water every time Tim says "blaze of glory." Stay hydrated! =D
Thanks for this, needed to finish my water
Or whenever the screaming cowboy shows up :D Gotta get that good H2O
Does this work if my water is spiked with gin? ^^;
I was going to say, if you used alcohol hooo boy that would either kill you, or leave you with one *hell* of a hangover.
This video is incredible. Thank you for it. Thank you for putting my feelings of it into words. One thing that really pissed me off after this release was the undeserving hate it received. My parter at the time pre-ordered the PS5 & convinced me to pre-order the Xbox Series X. I did. I played CyberPunk at the same time as Assassins Creed Valhalla and I can categorically say hand on heart that game is glitchier than CP especially before the first patches. Glitches that actually made it unplayable for a long while.
You should really consider uploading some of your videos (especially the longer ones like this one) as podcasts. I really love listening to them while driving or doing mundane work like cleaning
Tim has finally evolved to his final form: Hbomberguy's long lost twin brother
With hair
But more kiwi
Honestly, I prefer him over Hbomberguy.
"Who are you writing your novels for? Fucking Aquaman??"
I noticed the similarities too.
"Young people today are over burdened with truth and nothing they can to do about it"
Oh they do, but they just become another CEO when given the chance. Not much different from the old times to be honest. Not like a peasant going to bemoan kings and queens then reject the chance to join the royalty.
@@vargrhelsing8042 You obviously don't know the people I know if you think that
Did they all get a chance to advance in the system and denied it in the name of code of honor or some equivalent?
@@vargrhelsing8042 Not all of them, certainly, but I do know people who have turned away advancements in the system because they knew it wasn't the right thing to do (even discounting the people who were basically there to go inside and do what they can from there). If you think they're ALL able to do something about every issue they're facing (considering the weakened position of being young and under certain authorities, then promptly saddled with issues, even when being often dismissed if ones tries to enact something by those with more direct lines to change because of that youth and therefore assumed naivety and inexperience and lower intelligence) and will choose advancement over their own morals every time, when faced with the decision, then I just don't think you know that many youths or how hard many of them fight.
@@blazelightshine2311 I am 23. I live as a I preached. I see no one else doing the same. Well, that a hyperbole. There are and will be people who lives like me, just enough to eat, to satisfy our passion in life and no glorified excess. Most will take the chance- and like in the video, can't really blame them. Its how it is. But to say that their hands are tied is a gross oversimplification of what a whole generation decided to do. Its the defeatist attitude that got everyone here, and it will remain so as long as it is there. If you don't fight the battle, you won't know your chances.
Actually came here to find an opinion on the game that resonates with my own. This just gave me so much more than that. You really managed to speak out on so many topics and give me the feeling of being understood in so many ways - while also raising my interest on more than a few books/stories/genres/topics. This is a rare thing to find on youtube. Thanks for the input!
Pondsmith, the original writer of the tabletop game for which the game is based on, went on record to talk about the actual causes of cyberpsychosis in fairly great detail and length after the edgerunner release on netflix. I highly recommend looking it up and seeing what he had to say in more length but ultimately the TL;dr is that cybernetic augmentations are a miniscule part of the causes and reasons for "cyberpsychosis" and that it is more a symptom of the endemic problems of the world as a whole, ones that will largely not be treated because it is just not profitable to do so, that it is a mental disorder more akin to a psychotic break brought on by stress and depression rather than a direct one to one correlation to the amount of augmentation a person gets and that people who have good emotional support networks and tend toward a willingness and ability to empathize and connect with others are just not really susceptible to it, it is also hinted in several source books for the tabletop that sociopaths basically never experience it for reasons that are never really addressed, which makes Adam Smasher make a lot more sense in universe since he is essentially a "Full Conversion Borg" AKA a brain in a jar and while being a murderous sociopath isn't just a mindless killing machine or a berzerker rampage personified.
Edit: Which is to say that Cyberpsychosis is more an indictment of the society they live in than the people who experience it themselves.
1:01:20 "Don't ever get a twitter." From now on, everytime I'm asked why I don't have a twitter I will say, "A video essay about a videogame convinced me not to get one." Thanks for giving me a crutch to hide behind.
I support you.
That hot trash fire for an app is so useless I don’t know why anyone would ever have one. It’s literally a breeding ground for shit humans and trolls.
@@Spinach_Dip93 I only got a twitter so I could upload pics from Animal Crossing on my Switch haha Now I don't even play anymore and I forgot the password!
Twitter was a mistake just like facebook
@@Phyllo9 it's worse
"Why, why do these stories about the struggle against homogenization of the individual against the forces of corporate (or state) power resonate with people today?"
Hmmmmmmmmmm
And this comes from a contry with an individualist view/culture, imagine what collectivist culture think. Although I'm unsure what kind of culture Poland has...
Meanwhile in USA
*freedom intensifies*
@@icarue993 If that will help you, here's a good (for a wikipedia) article with many topics: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_of_Poland
Coca and Nestle have been real quiet since the video dropped
Murica
Interestingly something that changed my outlook on the game was when V was driving and had the radio on. The host mentions that *everyone* in night city has some kind of story and they either try to have a blaze of glory and return to the quiet life or have their glory and die forgotten because theyre just another person that had a "blaze of glory" moment
This came up on my recommended videos a month ago and I just got around to watching this. I had been waiting to play the game myself before watching it, but that never happened, and I forgot about it. This was excellent! Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into your video essays.
Every time Tim uses the screaming cowboy, it’s free serotonin.
Almost as good as dancing Gandalf!
I have a detatched retina, my surgery got delayed by three weeks, it's late summer weather already... But these kind of videos make things suck just that little bit less.
Thank you.
@Rough Collies Rock actually doesn't hurt, the one blessing I suppose. It's utterly fucking terrifying becausevforvthr time bring I have my full range of vision and a shot at getting everything back (which wasn't great to begin with but st the same time it-) and there is that knowing fear any moment black will start creeping in at the edges before they can get in and fix it, or that I will somehow mess up during recovery.
I e already been waiting a month and a half what's there more weeks huh?
Guess I should count myself lucky, when I was in school a detatched retina was unfixable. It detatched that's it, donzo. Still, I'm... Angry. Furious even that i can't just get his over with. But the life I'm in and situstion I have leaves my family with having nobody to help care for my special needs siblings so people can shuffle around to help me.
So when people stsrt going in about opprotunity cost? This is kinda a good example. I can't get things fixed promptly because I help my family with an existing nursing and until people start coming back to my stepdad's shift doesn't matter if they want things done now. The reality is we can't, not til the gap in work closes so he can take off so my siblings have someone there while I get patched up, and then there again when I do follow ups.
Today nothing of what recovery itself will be due to having to have my head stuck in specific positions because part of the recovery will be putting a gas bubble in to hold my retina in place (after scooping outbthe offending stringy bits of eye jelly that pulled it out of place.) Gas goes up so yu kinda have to have your face down for at least a couple days minamum.
Hi bud! My sister had a retina surgery recently too - she was told it’d go bad because of her astigmatism and some other stuff, but it went well!! You got this man! You’ll be okay :)
@@einin8752 Asa followup. It went very well. Shockingly so given distortion ahd reached the central macula.
It couldh ave gone so much worse.
My favorite thing in cyberpunk is all the sprinkles of climate change's effects. The landfills that are just mountains of trash, and people gave up and trash just exists in mounts behind buildings and on shorelines, food is all artifically flavored substitute and the only places that produce real food are expensive warehouses that have to create food through science. Acid rain, obvious drought, and a fog of smog sometimes blinding. It's great that it exists in the environment but it only touches the story at the start of the Nomad life path. The lack of biodiversity is a nice nod to "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Except in this world there is no mercerism.
Back after Cyberpunk Edgerunners to get the context again, and it's as good as ever!
When you kill God, the first thing you do is make a new one. And whatever you create, it just ends up being a self-portrait.
That's such a cool quote! 😎
Bruh
How very Nietzschen. What frees oneself from this grave error in rationale that creates this egotheism is realizing that people are not inherently philanthropic, this realization and awareness eliminates any meaningful illusions of grandeur. Some people, often self described intellectuals, say that religion and God are the product and tools of bronze age cavemen but fail to realize that their prized and so thoughtfully crafted nihilistic worldview creates the real savages and not the other way around as they insist. Only through God is this realization given meaning, it can come from nowhere else. Not to mention nihilism/secularism has no basis for value, the concept can't exist, so the self idolatry that it creates is devoid of substance. You spend your entire life chasing the dragon until one day it turns and consumes you, with the void never having been filled.
@@Let_The_Foolish_Take_The_Lead Dressing up.your self image in mascara, or claimimg it is that of.someone else does not.make it any less egotistical.
Any divine ordination can serve only the porpouse of control, for it will be utilized to such ends by those who would, and those who would not will be crushed unther thair heel.
To follow a god is to abandon sovreignity as a thinking being.
To follow your own god, is a futile attempt at denying your own pride. Meaning can only ever be extracted from life through human thought. It can only ever be arbitrary.
The choices are to remain blind to this, which so readily advocate, to despair, or to accept your responsibility.
There will not ever be an infallable father to judge you, no providance to guide your hand from evil.
The only one who can ever weigh your soul is yourself. The only one who can hold you accountable is yourself.
You will either accept that burden, or hide from as would a child.
Tho choice is open for all of us, and you have made your decision clearAnd I have made what I think of that decision equally clear.
People who are unwilling to aoen their morality as their own should scarcely lecture others about it.
@@ineednochannelyoutube5384 You cannot be sovereign when you are subject to your environment and the mercy of others supposed sovereignty. Do you know what the word "sovereignty" even means? Evidently not, otherwise you would not have used it lol.
If we can give the "other" a label then we don't have to be confronted by their humanity. I'm not sure if that's worse than doing the same to ourselves. Empathy for ourselves and others is a rare commodity.
@Domagoj Čović Care to develop?
@@arturxavier1253 some people's toxic, destructive, even morally abhorrent mindsets can't be just changed by us showing empathy
@@ljesak True. I don't see how it relates to Domagoj's reply though. Do you mean op's comment?
@@arturxavier1253 yeah, i apologise for the confusion!
@@ljesak Don't worry. I do want to ask, do you believe empathy is powerless to change morality or does it need something else to support it?
Cyberpsychosis in Cyberpunk is a phenomenon that has at its core a disassociation from humanity. The person who suffers from cyberpsychosis has augmented themselves so much that they on longer understand other people. They no longer remember what it is to be human. There is a great quote in the CP2020 book that illustrates this, where a warehouse worker recalls how he got parts of his body replaced after an accident. No more than a month later a palette fell onto his shift manager. He walked to it and lifted it like it was nothing. Over a ton of wood and product. He says that cybernetics are the stuff of nightmares.
The editing in this is so good!