Cyberpunk 2077's E3 demo has weak gunplay and unimaginative stereotypes

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Well, according to Rock Paper Shotgun, at least.

Here are some of my favorite bits from the article:

The stabbing causes V to level up, and the person playing the demo opens up a menu with twelve options for skill points, though we don’t get a good look at them. Once the menu’s closed, a man comes at us with superhuman speed, but we grab hold of him and advance on a turret as it riddles his body with bullets. Then – because again, we’re very strong – we rip the turret off its base and turn it on the Animals. At this point, I feel increasingly uncomfortable that we’re shooting at predominantly black people labeled as animals

I want moral dilemmas and thoughtful exploration of transhumanism. More importantly, I want the game not to lean on racial stereotypes

He told me that nuance would appear over the course of the game and that the Animals would appear again under different circumstances. He didn’t give me any examples of that nuance, mind

We’re discovered soon after, as a stealth attack goes awry. We punch that man to the floor, then stab another Animal many times with a broken bottle as they try to run away from us. It’s horrible

Once our cover’s blown, we start hacking people’s robo-arms, making them prematurely pull grenades or shoot themselves in the head. It is, again, horrible

I asked Tomaszkiewicz for examples of quests that explored the kinds of questions I’m interested in. Questions less like “how many people can I chop to bits at once with my Nanowire”, and more “what are these cranial augmentations doing to my identity”

I’m also increasingly concerned about Cyberpunk’s handling of non-white cultures... I asked Tomaszkiewicz if he was concerned they weren’t treating certain cultures with enough respect

Welp, time to cancel my preorder then.

On a serious note, I agree with what someone wrote about this article elsewhere: "Isn't that a fluff piece? They write those as they know it will give them traffic. Be it from people who want to agree with them, or people who want to be outraged by them.
It's proven to be a pretty effective way of actually getting "engagement", and in the long run advertisement revenue, and is basically what keeps the lights on at many of those video game "news" outlets. Most of them have like 80% fluff, 20% "real" articles. (Numbers were made up on the spot, don't read too much into them, but the majority tends to be fluff).
The best thing we can do if we want to change things is to focus on the actual news articles, the ones that are not just fluff and spread those, and hope that other people will follow. But sadly clickbait is just such an effective way of getting views that I doubt we'll stop seeing mostly fluff anytime soon"

In any case, I got my fun out of this article, what about you?

4 years ago

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icaio

(what's that archive.fo thing? :o)

edit: BOOKMARKLET < -- the <3

4 years ago