It is how they imagined the future in the 80s cyberpunk genre. Even the famous cyberpunk writer William Gibson called the game "'generic 80s retro-future". They didn't even bothered to make the flying cars with propellers, although it is pretty obvious now how the flying cars of the future are going work. Basically a copy-pasta of 40 years old vision of the future.

People always forget this is Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk. This has nothing to do with what Gibson thinks. We dont compare lets say Dragon Age to Witcher series, or Final Fantasy to Elder Scrolls. Im pretty sure this is gonna define Cyberpunk Genre, unless someone wanna challange them with another Cyberpunk game.

I really hope Cyberpunk comes out as "badass" and "dystopic", hopefully they push it as far they possibly can, without breaking the good taste that is. Easier said than done though. Theres definitely pits they can fall into. I would keep it at "little bit of fuck you" but I wouldnt go any further, if you know what I mean.

This is gonna be Cyberpunk's first impact. Could end up good or bad for CDPR, sadly.

By the time Pondsmith created his world (with which I'm not familiar) the cyberpunk genre was already defined and at that point I can't see what he added. To me it looks like a copy-pasta of the Gibson and co's stuff. Cyberpunk 2077 may or may not set some trend in gaming but certainly won't redefine cyberpunk, which already is past the Gibsonian in which this game still dwells.

Of course I like the genre and the style. That is why I'm here. I'm just clarifying for the OP from where all this comes, but I wish they modernized it a bit.

Defined by who? Someone writes a book what sells 100k copies or so doesnt mean nothing. Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna get 30+ mill sales, at least I would imagine they do what Witcher series did and a bit more. Hit the mainsream. Also Mike's tabletop Cyberpunk has 5 mill lifetimes as we speak. So seems to me Mike is pretty much the dude who defines this.

What I find funny is that people are already talking like Cyberpunk already happened.

I'm having hard time understating your point. Basically you are saying that the game will define cyberpunk... to which this games adds nothing and which already was defined in the 80s. It is like saying "the future of cyberpunk is its past".

I agree with Gibson. It is a retro-futuristic game. A cliché.

And I'm going to enjoy it.

Well I dont have any points really, trying to keep this dead forum alive. One thing Ive noticed though everybody is saying "synthwave" is Cyberpunk Music, says who I wonder. Another one is Blade Runner is supposedly Cyberpunk.

No, he doesn't. He gets to define his version of it. Just because a lot more people own Cyberpunk 2077 game than own Gibson's Neuromancer book doesn't mean the book isn't Cyberpunk anymore, it's just a different interpretation of the concept of Cyberpunk. Because it did.
The Cyberpunk aesthetic has been around since the 80s, there have been films, and books, and music, and clothing styles and people who have been Cyberpunk long before this game was even considered. Everything that came before informs what is happening now, you don't get this game without drawing on the things that have been created in the past. Where do you think Johnny Silverhand came from? He's not a new character unique to Cyberpunk 2077.
Do you think Johnny Silverhand looked like Keanu Reeves when Pondsmith created him back in the 90s? Is Pondsmith's earlier version of him not Cyberpunk now because his looks and personality are now different from how he was portrayed in the RPG books in the 90s?


OP You're not meant to. Cyberpunk's whole basis is punk, tearing the world down because it's corrupt (or you just want to), and building something new (or not).

It DID? If I rememer 90s right, Fantasy just rolled over everything. Every damn gaming company wanted own Fantasy Series.

Blade Runner is so much cyberpunk that Gibson was afraid that people will blame him for ripping it off, but then, happily for him, the movie tanked and nobody saw it. My interest in the genre comes from my love for this movie, but I'm not that impressed by the few books I read so far.

Blade Runner's creators and Gibson were greatly inspired by the comic book The Long Tomorrow. It is from the 70s and Cyberpunk 2077 as well could have been called Cyberpunk 1977, because it is sooooo derivative of what cyberpunk already was right at its birth.

There is no such thing as too dystopic. That's why we love cyberpunk settings. A nice change of pace from all these fantasy boredoms

Players are already complaining about nudity, so what if someone is a nudist. CDPR gotta be careful here. Too much is too much. Cyberpunk itself can get extremely wild. Yeah, keep it at fiction and fantasy, dont go too far into realism and immersiviness,. Do what modern media do and spice it up but avoid all political stuff.

I think you can go into political stuff, you just have to be honest with yourself. If you start preaching, people won't like that.

The best 'political' game I ever played was Alpha Centauri. The different factions there were depicted in a 'honest' manner, with advantages and disadvantages - you had money grubbers, religious fundamentalists, dicatorships, tree hugging hippies.

The game's creators didn't take sides. You, the player, chose a faction and played with it. And throughout the game, you were shown both the good and bad sides of everyone. The pacifist factions were nice, but ultimately sucked at war. The dictatorships were brutal, but could survive at higher difficulties.

But we are living this right now, unless you live in a self-sufficient bunker... o_O

When you consider the lore of the setting, you'd be surprised that it isn't actually much much worse than it is.