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!
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
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?.
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).
@@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.
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.
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.
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.
@@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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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
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!
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?
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.
@@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
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 :((
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.
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.
@@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.
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.
@@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
@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
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.
"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.
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.
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
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
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.
@@hogue_music 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
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 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.
@@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%
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.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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.
@@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.
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.
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?
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!"
@@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.
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!
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.
Yeeeees let's go I'm so unbelievably hyped right now, unless I'm completely mistaken you've been teasing this video for months on Twitter so I'm sooooo happy to finally watch it
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
It took me 3 days to watch this and it was worth it. Work has got me so depressed, this world we live in weighs you down, and a 2 hour video going over a genre that works with that made me feel heard. So thanks for your hard work
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.
@@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!
As always, looked at the title and saw video was 2hrs long, thought “theres no way I can stick with a video on that subject for that long”. 2hrs later, I’m sitting here having gone on a journey thats left me full of thought. Thanks Tim, amazing content!!
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.
Commenting again after watching fully for helping the algorithm, but also to say I loved how insightful this was. I want to watch it again, because this reminded myself how much individualism I truly have and can create for myself without feeling forced, pressured, retired to or *doomed* by myself, others, or systemic principles to what I think I can't do. I want to draw, or make some kind of art I love, which is something I can't say I've desired in over a decade.
It's funny how, with certain creators, I'm MORE interested in watching a video the longer it is lol. I've not played Cyberpunk and was never very invested in it, so when I saw the title of this video I was like, eh, maybe not for me. But then I saw how long it is and for some reason that totally changed my mind lmao Excellent work, Tim
@@mrsexy5680 Not yet! I've been tempted to buy it several times when it's gone on sale, but I just don't have a PC capable of running it well enough. I mean, it would run, but this is a game I want to experience fully not just at 30fps on lowest graphics haha
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.
I'm kind of shocked this video is dying to the algorithm. This was the first thing youtube suggested me in the morning (I do watch most of your videos, though). For what it's worth, I really enjoyed Cyberpunk on release (PC). The really unique thing about Cyberpunk was that it felt like two halves of two different games stitched together. Half of it is a genuinely fantastic CDPR game with high production quality and unique story. The other half is a hodgepodge of Ubisoft-style fetch quests in a cityscape with leftover design aspects from scrapped mechanics (mantis wall-climbing, mono-wire hacking, that little bot thing from that one story mission) that ate up most of the advertising budget while releasing very few of its promised features. I hate that CDPR is being singled out for a problem endemic in the entertainment industry. Execs roll in with bonuses dependent on short-term goals, over-promise and under-staff the latest project, then roll back out after initial sales are done. They traded on the goodwill CDPR built in previous titles and will be unaffected when the backlash destroys the lives of the people that built that legacy. For what it's worth, I think the CDPR becoming the most valuable company in Poland before the backlash dropped its valuation by half will lead to greater consequences than other AAA companies face for similar practices. At least, I hope so.
If Square Enix never made Avengers they would have made a 3rd Deus Ex game to compete with Cyberpunk 2077. I also found that its almost like a Looter Shooter which I despised for a Cyberpunk RPG in which I think they should have relied on making Customizable weapons that adjusts to your playstyle whether you like being Silent, Loud, or even Pacifist which Deus Ex did well.
I left night city with the nomads at the end. When it came to the cyberpsychosis sufferers I at least took them all in non lethally. It was the best I could do.
It confounded me that cyberpsychosis was one of the top level hacks. I could have used it but never did even though I always double tapped enemies. I somehow managed to spare all the cyberpsycho victims and was disappointed nothing clearly positive happened, only being told that they lived.
Same, interesting that the ending shown here (sitting in a doctors surgery unable to solve a rubics cube) is so much worse than my one. Perhaps it has something to say about being a nomad and leaving the whole system behind
@@sharkmoos8741 The thing is, and it was commented on by the devs, is that the nomads aren't really outside the system. They still do work for corps or their puppets (and many of the gangs are in fact the puppets of corps)- the only real difference is that the leash has more give, and is harder to see. After all, No nomad group has the capacity to completely cover their own logistics. They still need fuel, parts, and food. And that means they need to trade, which means they need money, which means inevitably the corps have a hand in their doings.
@@lastword8783 They can be studied and potentially develop a cure / treatments to help others. Hope is not a typical component of cyberpunk but it would have been nice.
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.
@@shadeblackwolf1508 Not Religious neither, but I kind of like Jesus. I appreciate a person who preaches empathy like I heard him do. It's his father I have issues with.
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.
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.
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
TH-cam only recommended this to me now, which is a shame. To boost the algorithm I'm gonna comment now and then watch it later. I'm sure it will be a great video as always!
This video was bloody powerful. Had to take breaks through out so it took me all day to watch. Feel like I'll be coming back again and again. What a brilliant and focused analysis of storytelling
"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...
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.
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 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.
@@Nerobyrne we already have the dystopia and megacorps, just none of what makes the cyberpunk appealing and cool. Only the vapid capitalism and poverty
@@NerobyrneThere's an entire subreddit called ABoringDistopia...sigh Edit:which sounds like I think your friend was copying that, not the case. I am bad at comments.
I thought I'd say something about one of the themes you mentioned: the idea that technological modifications are dehumanising. I haven't played 2077 yet, but your summary of the theme is a pretty good analysis of it both in 2077 and in cyberpunk media in general. Whether it's Adam Smasher in 2077, Major Motoko's entirely android body in Ghost in the Shell, the mechanics of losing Soul Essence (effectively your access to magic) when installing additional cyberware in Shadowrun, Anakin losing his limbs and respiration, becoming Darth Vader, and then Luke starting down that path by getting his own robot hand... It's a pretty common trope in science fiction in general, and arguably stems from fear of disablement and the flip side of that coin, the fear and pity of the disabled. It's ironic that this persists even in settings where technologies enable disabilities to be mere temporary inconveniences, and their remedies even offering advantages, eg. Cybereyes that can detect infrared and UV light, or arms with blades inside. It also resonates with the idea you explored that moral high ground is itself a privilege that few people trapped in a system of impoverishment can afford to buy. The people who are able to see users of technological prosthetics and implants as less than human are invariably those privileged enough not to need them themselves. The glucose monitor I currently have implanted doesn't make me less human than anyone else. My friend isn't evil or insane because she uses a metal leg. Neither is anyone using a pacemaker, cochlear implant, or other device to facilitate their health, senses, or movement. We're cyborgs in our own ways of course, but one of the most defining human traits is to create tools that enhance our lives.
Anakin's plight goes further than just becoming Vader and losing Limbs. He also lost a great part of his potential as the chosen one by losing so much of his body(this was confirmed by George Lucas), which is why despite seeing how horrendous he had become after losing Padmé he couldn't go against the emperor anymore, and continued to be his pawn, until Luke showed up. So even his prized power, and pride was lost in that fight.
The loss of humanity idea comes from the Theseus ship paradox. Where replacing parts to were eventually everything is replaced are you still the same person as before. Specifically in this game Johnny is taking over your body. Since it’s still V’s body but changing who’s running it, is it still really V or is it really Johnny? Or just a copy of Johnny that an ai program supposes he would act. It’s not having the parts making you evil it’s about loss of humanity, if you don’t care about what it means to be human. Then morality is easy to side step. If your not human then morality doesn’t matter
I think this "loss of humanity via mechanical limb" idea is idiotic and will not happen at all (already some "handicapped" athletes are making records with prosthetics and it's celebrated.) Loss of humanity via modifications of human interactions however is already there.
@@meneither3834 I'm not sure about this. Prosthetics aren't mainstream yet, are very basic to this day (even if impressive) and very few are voluntary (most of the athletes whom you speak of didn't have them implanted voluntarily, they were replacements for limbs they lost due to other afflictions, whether birth defects, sickness, or accidents, none voluntarily sacrificed flesh limbs). The day when prosthetics become a viable replacement for a human organ, and even a straight-up upgrade, that question will drastically change in the mass'es opinion (and be central to identity).
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.
@@andrewdiaz3529 if those endings are meaningless to you you clearly haven't been paying attention, neither to the game nor the 2 hour video above those comments
@@kacperk5526 2 hours of saying anything redeemable about the storyline of a game that conned people so bad the company is under 4 separate major fraud investigations was copied off and done better by actual cyberpunk.
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!
TL,DR: CDPR built a game derived from another game, which itself was intentionally derivative due to it being the first pen & paper role-playing game in the genre. 2077 was based on the Cyberpunk 2020 TTRPG as faithfully as CDPR could manage with Mike Pondsmith helping to bring his game to life. So I have assumed, possibly incorrectly, that the reason so many of the terms and ideas are copied from seminal works from the genre is the same reason that D&D is a pastiche of fantasy tropes. European folklore, Arthurian legend, Conan, Fafhrd and the grey mouser, Elric of Melniboné and of course The Lord of the Rings defined the fantasy genre at the birth of D&D. Now not only could you read about the exploits of your favourite characters but you could embody them. So when Cyberpunk 2020 was made of course they included the terms and ideas from the genre-defining works.
we put on a mask every day when we get out of bed and step out the door for work; the only difference today since yesterday is that its easier and easier to make something and self publish, share with the world and make your own living. instead of 10 people you might care about and make an effort to put on a brave face to get paid, suddenly its 10 million. its hard enough to find the energy to smile at that customer who ordered a weak low fat soy latte with extra foam 6 sugars and sprinkles
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.
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 funny thing about Johnny's misanthropy is that to a degree, he has great criticisms even when he's being cruel. When you consider how easily people in Night City throw away their individuality for literally anything else, it makes sense that the one guy who tries to do anything against that become bitter. Johnny did try to change people through nonviolent means, mainly through music. But as he saw the world continue down it's path he just got more and more aggressive with his strategies. While the game sympathizes with everyone it doesn't hesitate to condemn everything about what they did too. Johnny in a way was right, but no one was truly willing to go the extra mile he was willing to make.
Johnny was a two bit terrorist raging at a world that doesn't care, and in the end, he accomplished nothing but killing a whole lot of people. And not just Arasaka drones. If you listen to the newscaster you quickly find out that the nuclear fallout from his little boom gave thousands of townies lethal radiation sickness. People with the money could get survive by getting prosthetics- but what do you think happened to the less fortunate? Radiation sickness is an incredibly shitty way to go. And does he care at all? Nope. In fact, if you call him on it his rebuttal is "you kill people too, am I somehow worse because the scale". And frankly, it's a shitty argument. there is a big difference between getting into a shootout with shitbag groups like maelstrom or scavs and the indiscriminate mass murder he took part in. And ultimately- it wasn't for some higher reason. He snapped because his ego killed his girlfriend. He killed thousands- literally thousands of people in one of the worst ways imaginable because he couldn't fucking listen and just unplugged alt without a thought. And we *KNOW* this is what killed her because Alt AI says as much. And that's Johnny in a nutshell. An Angry, Narcissistic Asshole who fucks himself over more than any corporation.
@@AsaelTheBeast A lot of is damaged psyche came from his experiences in that war. He saw the worst of people which in turn brought out the worst in him. Night City is a blackhole of people slowly letting themselves get swept up in the corruption bit by bit. Everyone can keep dogpiling on just Johnny, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say everyone contributed to this mess. "Scale" means nothing in the face of utter complacency.
@@AsaelTheBeast I would like to say that "you kill people too, am I somehow worse because the scale" is a fairly decent response though. Same resources, another person, same or similar result.
Don’t forget that Johnny is a master manipulator. For example: He manipulates Rogue into getting involved with his BS again, if she dies, he says that redeemed herself for being a sellout. Something about her being cool with a death like that. Completely ignoring that Rogue has a son that she loves.
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”
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
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
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!
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
"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"
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 :((
"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 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.
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.
"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
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
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 :)
@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
“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.
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.
"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.
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.
+
"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
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.
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 👉🤛😎
"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
@@hogue_music 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
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
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%
"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 :)
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.
"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 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.
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.
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
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.
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.
The quality of the writing and research you've done here is incredible. Just truly amazing work! Thank you!
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.
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
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!
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?"
I completed this game what feels like forever ago and someone talking about it now like this is kinda refreshing.
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?!
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.
the production value on this video is mindblowing--i've only just started the video but holy HECK
Yeeeees let's go I'm so unbelievably hyped right now, unless I'm completely mistaken you've been teasing this video for months on Twitter so I'm sooooo happy to finally watch it
And remember, twitter is the epitome of human communication degraded by technology, so say off twitter.
Links to twitter in the description. ;)
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
It took me 3 days to watch this and it was worth it. Work has got me so depressed, this world we live in weighs you down, and a 2 hour video going over a genre that works with that made me feel heard. So thanks for your hard work
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
As always, looked at the title and saw video was 2hrs long, thought “theres no way I can stick with a video on that subject for that long”. 2hrs later, I’m sitting here having gone on a journey thats left me full of thought.
Thanks Tim, amazing content!!
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.
Commenting again after watching fully for helping the algorithm, but also to say I loved how insightful this was. I want to watch it again, because this reminded myself how much individualism I truly have and can create for myself without feeling forced, pressured, retired to or *doomed* by myself, others, or systemic principles to what I think I can't do.
I want to draw, or make some kind of art I love, which is something I can't say I've desired in over a decade.
It's funny how, with certain creators, I'm MORE interested in watching a video the longer it is lol. I've not played Cyberpunk and was never very invested in it, so when I saw the title of this video I was like, eh, maybe not for me. But then I saw how long it is and for some reason that totally changed my mind lmao
Excellent work, Tim
So you got it? Was it fun?
@@mrsexy5680 Not yet! I've been tempted to buy it several times when it's gone on sale, but I just don't have a PC capable of running it well enough. I mean, it would run, but this is a game I want to experience fully not just at 30fps on lowest graphics haha
Me too! I absolutely adore long TH-cam videos, especially essays.
@@mr_ekshun how abt now? You play it yet?
"Patreon. I wouldn't want your contributions to be lost to time.... Like Tiers, in the rain."
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.
I'm kind of shocked this video is dying to the algorithm. This was the first thing youtube suggested me in the morning (I do watch most of your videos, though).
For what it's worth, I really enjoyed Cyberpunk on release (PC). The really unique thing about Cyberpunk was that it felt like two halves of two different games stitched together. Half of it is a genuinely fantastic CDPR game with high production quality and unique story. The other half is a hodgepodge of Ubisoft-style fetch quests in a cityscape with leftover design aspects from scrapped mechanics (mantis wall-climbing, mono-wire hacking, that little bot thing from that one story mission) that ate up most of the advertising budget while releasing very few of its promised features.
I hate that CDPR is being singled out for a problem endemic in the entertainment industry. Execs roll in with bonuses dependent on short-term goals, over-promise and under-staff the latest project, then roll back out after initial sales are done. They traded on the goodwill CDPR built in previous titles and will be unaffected when the backlash destroys the lives of the people that built that legacy. For what it's worth, I think the CDPR becoming the most valuable company in Poland before the backlash dropped its valuation by half will lead to greater consequences than other AAA companies face for similar practices. At least, I hope so.
Hopefully it’s getting signal boosted now because I’m unfamiliar with this channel and it was the first suggested video on my feed. Happy it was too
Wow
CDPR was the most valuable Polish Company?
That's wild!
If Square Enix never made Avengers they would have made a 3rd Deus Ex game to compete with Cyberpunk 2077. I also found that its almost like a Looter Shooter which I despised for a Cyberpunk RPG in which I think they should have relied on making Customizable weapons that adjusts to your playstyle whether you like being Silent, Loud, or even Pacifist which Deus Ex did well.
I think exactly the same thing. It’s been difficult to find reasonable takes on this game so I’m grateful for this video and your comment
the last paragraph with the trend going sadly no its kind of sad, sadly :(
Wow TH-camrs these days really gunning for that 10 minute mark
Tim u deserve every ounce of what you've built so far... TH-cam ALGORITHM CAN'T STOP US
Oy. Grey boi. I need manhwa recommendations like TBATE.
@@iliveameme4930 it's not a manhwa but I'll be happy to help you just give me time to get back home from school
indeed
@@DeepInZero Have you gotten back from school yet? Are they holding you captive? Blink once for yes.
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.
I left night city with the nomads at the end. When it came to the cyberpsychosis sufferers I at least took them all in non lethally. It was the best I could do.
It confounded me that cyberpsychosis was one of the top level hacks. I could have used it but never did even though I always double tapped enemies. I somehow managed to spare all the cyberpsycho victims and was disappointed nothing clearly positive happened, only being told that they lived.
Not sure how getting them captured by the corps is better
Same, interesting that the ending shown here (sitting in a doctors surgery unable to solve a rubics cube) is so much worse than my one. Perhaps it has something to say about being a nomad and leaving the whole system behind
@@sharkmoos8741 The thing is, and it was commented on by the devs, is that the nomads aren't really outside the system.
They still do work for corps or their puppets (and many of the gangs are in fact the puppets of corps)- the only real difference is that the leash has more give, and is harder to see.
After all, No nomad group has the capacity to completely cover their own logistics. They still need fuel, parts, and food. And that means they need to trade, which means they need money, which means inevitably the corps have a hand in their doings.
@@lastword8783 They can be studied and potentially develop a cure / treatments to help others. Hope is not a typical component of cyberpunk but it would have been nice.
Overburdened with truth, with no opportunity to deal with it. An excellent summary.
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
Did I already love this game?
Yes.
Did I still sit here for 2 and a half hours just to feel validated?
Also yes.
"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.
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.
"Thy kingdom is no better off than the poorest among you."
I love this! Does it come from anything or did you come up with it ?
@@raphaelhemery152 Jesus Christ actually
@@shadeblackwolf1508 Oh the big J himself ? Well, great quote from him.
@@raphaelhemery152 I may not be religious, but if my bible translation is to be believed, he has said many truly insightful things in his life
@@shadeblackwolf1508 Not Religious neither, but I kind of like Jesus. I appreciate a person who preaches empathy like I heard him do. It's his father I have issues with.
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.
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.
I was captivated by how you showed how and why these stories are resurging in popularity and resonate with us
“You best start believing in Metal Gear games. You’re in one.”
We hated Kojima because he told the absolutely absurd truth
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
TH-cam only recommended this to me now, which is a shame. To boost the algorithm I'm gonna comment now and then watch it later. I'm sure it will be a great video as always!
I mean it’s been 2 days. Not 2 years. It is fine
This video was bloody powerful. Had to take breaks through out so it took me all day to watch. Feel like I'll be coming back again and again. What a brilliant and focused analysis of storytelling
"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
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.
"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.
TL;DR we are actually living in the dystopia that we think the future will bring
yeah, it's called civilization and our species has been going down hill for the last 10,000 years
except we don't have cool robo arms
A friend of mine once called the modern day "the boring version of cyberpunk"
@@Nerobyrne we already have the dystopia and megacorps, just none of what makes the cyberpunk appealing and cool. Only the vapid capitalism and poverty
@@NerobyrneThere's an entire subreddit called ABoringDistopia...sigh
Edit:which sounds like I think your friend was copying that, not the case.
I am bad at comments.
I thought I'd say something about one of the themes you mentioned: the idea that technological modifications are dehumanising. I haven't played 2077 yet, but your summary of the theme is a pretty good analysis of it both in 2077 and in cyberpunk media in general. Whether it's Adam Smasher in 2077, Major Motoko's entirely android body in Ghost in the Shell, the mechanics of losing Soul Essence (effectively your access to magic) when installing additional cyberware in Shadowrun, Anakin losing his limbs and respiration, becoming Darth Vader, and then Luke starting down that path by getting his own robot hand... It's a pretty common trope in science fiction in general, and arguably stems from fear of disablement and the flip side of that coin, the fear and pity of the disabled.
It's ironic that this persists even in settings where technologies enable disabilities to be mere temporary inconveniences, and their remedies even offering advantages, eg. Cybereyes that can detect infrared and UV light, or arms with blades inside. It also resonates with the idea you explored that moral high ground is itself a privilege that few people trapped in a system of impoverishment can afford to buy. The people who are able to see users of technological prosthetics and implants as less than human are invariably those privileged enough not to need them themselves.
The glucose monitor I currently have implanted doesn't make me less human than anyone else. My friend isn't evil or insane because she uses a metal leg. Neither is anyone using a pacemaker, cochlear implant, or other device to facilitate their health, senses, or movement. We're cyborgs in our own ways of course, but one of the most defining human traits is to create tools that enhance our lives.
Anakin's plight goes further than just becoming Vader and losing Limbs. He also lost a great part of his potential as the chosen one by losing so much of his body(this was confirmed by George Lucas), which is why despite seeing how horrendous he had become after losing Padmé he couldn't go against the emperor anymore, and continued to be his pawn, until Luke showed up. So even his prized power, and pride was lost in that fight.
The loss of humanity idea comes from the Theseus ship paradox. Where replacing parts to were eventually everything is replaced are you still the same person as before. Specifically in this game Johnny is taking over your body. Since it’s still V’s body but changing who’s running it, is it still really V or is it really Johnny? Or just a copy of Johnny that an ai program supposes he would act. It’s not having the parts making you evil it’s about loss of humanity, if you don’t care about what it means to be human. Then morality is easy to side step. If your not human then morality doesn’t matter
I think this "loss of humanity via mechanical limb" idea is idiotic and will not happen at all (already some "handicapped" athletes are making records with prosthetics and it's celebrated.)
Loss of humanity via modifications of human interactions however is already there.
@@meneither3834 I'm not sure about this. Prosthetics aren't mainstream yet, are very basic to this day (even if impressive) and very few are voluntary (most of the athletes whom you speak of didn't have them implanted voluntarily, they were replacements for limbs they lost due to other afflictions, whether birth defects, sickness, or accidents, none voluntarily sacrificed flesh limbs).
The day when prosthetics become a viable replacement for a human organ, and even a straight-up upgrade, that question will drastically change in the mass'es opinion (and be central to identity).
@@nope4620 a yes cause no one has ever jailbreak an iPhone, pirate and black market digital goods don’t exist at all in our current society.
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.
I stopped being human when I couldn't identify all the traffic lights and prove I wasn't a robot.
I'm kinda upset there wasn't an ending where V and Johnny merged consciousness and became one.
Or any ending that doesn't make it all meaningless.
@@andrewdiaz3529 if those endings are meaningless to you you clearly haven't been paying attention, neither to the game nor the 2 hour video above those comments
@@kacperk5526 2 hours of saying anything redeemable about the storyline of a game that conned people so bad the company is under 4 separate major fraud investigations was copied off and done better by actual cyberpunk.
@@andrewdiaz3529 Then it wouldn't be the genre cyberpunk. Cyberpunk is all about everyhting being pointless. The game isn't called post cyberpunk.
@@kacperk5526 Don't need to watch a video to make the endings meaningless. I played the game myself, so I KNOW they're meaningless first hand.
You presented the choice “Survival or Freedom?” If you survive, you have the chance to make a choice that could make a difference, even if small.
So basically, "s/he who fights and runs away, lives to fight another day" ? For the algorithm!
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!
TL,DR: CDPR built a game derived from another game, which itself was intentionally derivative due to it being the first pen & paper role-playing game in the genre.
2077 was based on the Cyberpunk 2020 TTRPG as faithfully as CDPR could manage with Mike Pondsmith helping to bring his game to life. So I have assumed, possibly incorrectly, that the reason so many of the terms and ideas are copied from seminal works from the genre is the same reason that D&D is a pastiche of fantasy tropes. European folklore, Arthurian legend, Conan, Fafhrd and the grey mouser, Elric of Melniboné and of course The Lord of the Rings defined the fantasy genre at the birth of D&D. Now not only could you read about the exploits of your favourite characters but you could embody them. So when Cyberpunk 2020 was made of course they included the terms and ideas from the genre-defining works.
^^^^ This. All of this.
Yes! Also the psychosis is more of a power balancing gameplay mechanic (augmentations can be very powerful) and less of a philosophical statement.
For the algorithm! This is kind of in-depth, high effort analysis definitely deserves more attention
we put on a mask every day when we get out of bed and step out the door for work; the only difference today since yesterday is that its easier and easier to make something and self publish, share with the world and make your own living. instead of 10 people you might care about and make an effort to put on a brave face to get paid, suddenly its 10 million. its hard enough to find the energy to smile at that customer who ordered a weak low fat soy latte with extra foam 6 sugars and sprinkles
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.
“A thing of beauty, I know, will never fade away”
The funny thing about Johnny's misanthropy is that to a degree, he has great criticisms even when he's being cruel. When you consider how easily people in Night City throw away their individuality for literally anything else, it makes sense that the one guy who tries to do anything against that become bitter. Johnny did try to change people through nonviolent means, mainly through music. But as he saw the world continue down it's path he just got more and more aggressive with his strategies. While the game sympathizes with everyone it doesn't hesitate to condemn everything about what they did too. Johnny in a way was right, but no one was truly willing to go the extra mile he was willing to make.
Johnny was a two bit terrorist raging at a world that doesn't care, and in the end, he accomplished nothing but killing a whole lot of people.
And not just Arasaka drones. If you listen to the newscaster you quickly find out that the nuclear fallout from his little boom gave thousands of townies lethal radiation sickness. People with the money could get survive by getting prosthetics- but what do you think happened to the less fortunate? Radiation sickness is an incredibly shitty way to go.
And does he care at all? Nope. In fact, if you call him on it his rebuttal is "you kill people too, am I somehow worse because the scale".
And frankly, it's a shitty argument. there is a big difference between getting into a shootout with shitbag groups like maelstrom or scavs and the indiscriminate mass murder he took part in.
And ultimately- it wasn't for some higher reason. He snapped because his ego killed his girlfriend. He killed thousands- literally thousands of people in one of the worst ways imaginable because he couldn't fucking listen and just unplugged alt without a thought. And we *KNOW* this is what killed her because Alt AI says as much.
And that's Johnny in a nutshell. An Angry, Narcissistic Asshole who fucks himself over more than any corporation.
@@AsaelTheBeast A lot of is damaged psyche came from his experiences in that war. He saw the worst of people which in turn brought out the worst in him. Night City is a blackhole of people slowly letting themselves get swept up in the corruption bit by bit. Everyone can keep dogpiling on just Johnny, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say everyone contributed to this mess. "Scale" means nothing in the face of utter complacency.
@@AsaelTheBeast I would like to say that "you kill people too, am I somehow worse because the scale" is a fairly decent response though. Same resources, another person, same or similar result.
Don’t forget that Johnny is a master manipulator. For example: He manipulates Rogue into getting involved with his BS again, if she dies, he says that redeemed herself for being a sellout. Something about her being cool with a death like that. Completely ignoring that Rogue has a son that she loves.
Commenting to bump the algorithm. Happy to see OSP and Daniel Greene in the comments and glad to see content creators supporting each other! :)
This was so well written, and I just want to say this is one of my favourite videos on youtube.