[conspire] Dept. of Fsck It, Ship It: Cyberpunk 2077

[Rick Moen]

Recommended reading for entertainment, irrespective of whether you have
any interest in this game product -- this review:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/22/948827323/in-cyberpunk-2077-the-only-truly-punk-move-is-not-to-play

  In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' The Only Truly Punk Move Is Not To Play
  December 22, 20207:00 AM ET
  JASON SHEEHAN

I've long considered a truly well written pan review to be a delectable
art form.  This one's definitely a contender.  There aren't a lot of
small snippets worth quoting; the whole piece is just... good.  But
anyway:

  [...]
  Cyberpunk 2077 is about ... nothing.  There's a plot of sorts.  A kind
  of threaded narrative about a heist gone wrong in such a way that V
  ends up with Keanu Reeves permanently stuck living in his head.  But
  it isn't _about_ anything.  You run around collecting guns and meeting
  people and (mostly) killing them and (occasionally) just talking to
  them, and both options are terrible because the killing is almost
  always pointless and the talking, somehow, is even worse because the
  writing is so, so bad.  
  [...]

And I'll just quote Sheehan's concluding bits:

  The game tries so hard to be cool — to come off as crass and edgy, to
  talk tough and play like some kind of anti-capitalist anarchy generator.
  But you lean too hard into that act, and it will always come off more
  like a desperate pose than anything honest.  One of the reasons I
  think I had so much trouble getting into the game is that all the gloss
  and chrome and affected, fake punkery gelled together like a hard shell
  in the first hours.  No matter what I did, I just kept bouncing off,
  unable to get past the surface of it, told to act punk and do whatever
  I wanted, but then offered only a narrow spread of pre-approved
  systemic options that usually broke down to a) shoot everyone, b) have
  sex with a robot, c) buy things, d) quit.
  
  I hung with it, but honestly?  Quitting is the most punk option of them
  all.  I wanted to love this game.  I really did.  I've been waiting
  decades for someone to take my teenage techno-dystopian fantasies and
  turn them into something I could play around in.  But names and labels
  aside, this ain't that.  It's all surface, no depth.  All signal, no
  content.  You wanna stick it to the mega-corps and hit 'em where it
  really hurts, choom?  Just turn the game off and walk away.  You wanna
  burn it all down?

  You do that by refusing to play.