I like at but at the same time it's just so...extremely, exactly, stereotypically cyberpunk.
I agree with your sentiment, but I also would like to bring a counterpoint:
I find that Cyberpunk, even the close to the source-kind, has not really been that represented. (Yes, there a number of good games in the indie scene but by definition their impact is limited.)
When we now get a back to the roots of the genre game, it might help to lay out the fundamentals of genre to an unexposed audience - both on the consumer and the creator-side.
If you allow the metaphor: It can be soil form which better things may grow.
It seems cynical and meaningless.
Gimme something, CDPR. Something to care about. Some actual beauty. Something that despite all the ugliness of Gibsonesque proportions makes me want to fight for it. Because as far as I've seen, all you have shown us is how you were able to build an incredible trope-filled dystopic cyberpunkian world that I just want to burn all down to shreds.
No, I'm not interested in joining the mafia. But I would, if I had to in order to get the tools I needed to save or create something beautiful. See what I mean?
No, I don't. See, Years ago, I have come to realize that most games so far fail to deliver a true tragedy, instead delivering the things you describe.
Of course, games have utilized the tools of the tragedy - they are littered with Impossible Choices, Rug-pull Moments and Sacrifices. But they rarely utilize them in the manner of the tragedy: For games a tragic moment is catapult, to vault you to even greater heights of empowerment and control without losing a step in the process.
But rarely do all your efforts as player ammount to nothing, seldom all your accomplishments remain as meaningless on the last day as they were on the first day, and nearly never virtue falls back into the ash from which it was molded.
And even rarer is the healing that seeing the failure of hero can bestow.
In a tragedy you don't tear down a hero to deconstruct their heroism intellectually, for the hollow pleasures of shadenfreude, or because we could not abide a hero in their purity: It is about us, who sit as audience to the act; to make us see that can project all our own wishes into a heroic figure but even those cannot run or fight the most basic of inadequcies - which they share with us.
This is meant to make us, as the audience, whole and at peace with ourselves. Fostering the simple acceptance acceptance of our limitations and in turn giving us new apprication of the power we do have.
While I personally think such a style always be accompanied by media that calls us to action in equal measure, there is a point that right now might be the best time to champion this kind of narrative: We are surrounded by monsters of our own collective impotences with seemingly no way out.
We called out for saviors,
we grasped at nothingsness for something to hold,
we kicked at the void for somewhere to stand.
If we could stop that and endure that it does not, never has and never will serve us.
Then we might just realize the power of our voices, the strength in our arms and reach of our stride.
We could finally
make.
*blinks* *shakes head*
Sorry, kinda went of the rails there for a moment....
