I was refering to people who thought CP 2077, a game made by the people who made the wticher games, rpgs.... was going to be some next level rampage simulator where you hire prostitutes then murder them to get your money back.
A lot of the backlash to CP 2077 was people who the marketing campaign had trained to think it'd be GTA... but in the future and with a full cybernetically customizable character.
I'm not even that fond of Rockstar personally. Their worlds always felt dull and uninteresting once you got past the initial jokes.
.
My contention isn't love of the tabletop rpg is what drives the continued interest in the world. Its that CDPR and StudioTrigger's close hewing to Pondsmith's rules of storytelling and aethetic commitments is what drives their success.
The franchise is remarkably consistent in resisting every temptation of bad modern storytelling/superhero bullshit that defines basically every other franchise, and instead hewing to Pondsmith's original narrative commitments.
I'm not even that fond of Rockstar personally. Their worlds always felt dull and uninteresting once you got past the initial jokes.
Feel the same. Don't understand the hype behind any Rockstar game's story and aesthetics. It always feels like they're trying to be Tarantino but then, they also want to be taken seriously like some top HBO drama.
Always comes off as inauthentic and shallow.
For example, in Red Dead 2, I remember the mission where you help the Native Americans fight off US soldiers and it's like....this is no different than some goober saying they would've stood up to Hitler in Nazi Germany. It's moral wish fulfillment and retrospective snobbery. In reality, if they wanted to make it more meaningful, they should have it as a 'you can't win' type scenario where you try to help Natives set up their society but either you help them and die in battle OR you sell them out so that your gang can survive. Then, maybe you can make it even somewhat morally complex here with, say, a former Confederate soldier type character who hates the Union to this day and though he may be racist or whatever, owes his life to Confederate aligned Natives who saved him during the war and therefore, empathizes with and respects Natives. That would add weight to the situation, at hand.
But games by Rockstar (and much of modern writing) feature none of this type of writing and nuance.
That's why I think Cyberpunk and CDPR is superior here. As Pondsmith says, the goal of Cyberpunk isn't about saving the world, it's about saving your soul. It reflects a more 'realistic' outlook as you deal with entities beyond your control that work against your sense of agency. That doesn't mean you don't fight for what you believe in within the Cyberpunk/CDPR universe but rather, for a 'serious' oriented story about the human condition, there isn't a wish fulfillment power fantasy thing dictating the events in your story. Sure, in game, Geralt or V can fight off 30 people at once but it's not central to the narrative that Geralt or V fights off an entire army and changes the world.
Now, I'm not saying power fantasy games or stories shouldn't exist. No, they can be equally as good but just don't pretend they're something they're not.
You realize they could have just written their own world if that was the case...
Not like even Gibson came up with anything expecially unique, he just brought all the elements together that other writers had put out in the 70s and layered a cool style over it.
No individual sci-fi elements hadn't already been done by someone else.
.
And honestly if anything they turned the silliness up... the Chainsaw arm became the mantiss blades or monkey arms, They explicitly made all the goofy rockerboy stuff Canon and made one of the main characters a rockerboy who did 9/11 but with nukes, played by Keanu reeves.
Like there are entire flashback missions in game that plays out exactly how they played in the 2020 corebook.
Hell the only 2 character from the corebook who aren't one to one transplanted into the 2077 game are morgan blackhand who doesn't appear, and Johnny silverhand, who's character design they had to redo to look like Keanu reeves.
Aside from that Rose, Alt, Rache Bartmoss, Spider, Adam Smasher, Saburo Arasaka... their character designs haven't even changed. Rose even has the big 80s hair and leather jacket in the flashbacks.
Its actually incredible how much CDPR leaned into the silliest aspects of 2020 and managed to make them work in a serious and dark setting
and I don't see how a knife blade that folds into a forearm compartment is somehow more silly than a chainsaw.
It's less silly, by a lot actually. Kinda plausible, though I think something like a shotgun or maybe a huge captive-bolt style system would be more popular.
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Notes -
I was refering to people who thought CP 2077, a game made by the people who made the wticher games, rpgs.... was going to be some next level rampage simulator where you hire prostitutes then murder them to get your money back.
A lot of the backlash to CP 2077 was people who the marketing campaign had trained to think it'd be GTA... but in the future and with a full cybernetically customizable character.
I'm not even that fond of Rockstar personally. Their worlds always felt dull and uninteresting once you got past the initial jokes.
.
My contention isn't love of the tabletop rpg is what drives the continued interest in the world. Its that CDPR and StudioTrigger's close hewing to Pondsmith's rules of storytelling and aethetic commitments is what drives their success.
The franchise is remarkably consistent in resisting every temptation of bad modern storytelling/superhero bullshit that defines basically every other franchise, and instead hewing to Pondsmith's original narrative commitments.
Feel the same. Don't understand the hype behind any Rockstar game's story and aesthetics. It always feels like they're trying to be Tarantino but then, they also want to be taken seriously like some top HBO drama.
Always comes off as inauthentic and shallow.
For example, in Red Dead 2, I remember the mission where you help the Native Americans fight off US soldiers and it's like....this is no different than some goober saying they would've stood up to Hitler in Nazi Germany. It's moral wish fulfillment and retrospective snobbery. In reality, if they wanted to make it more meaningful, they should have it as a 'you can't win' type scenario where you try to help Natives set up their society but either you help them and die in battle OR you sell them out so that your gang can survive. Then, maybe you can make it even somewhat morally complex here with, say, a former Confederate soldier type character who hates the Union to this day and though he may be racist or whatever, owes his life to Confederate aligned Natives who saved him during the war and therefore, empathizes with and respects Natives. That would add weight to the situation, at hand.
But games by Rockstar (and much of modern writing) feature none of this type of writing and nuance.
That's why I think Cyberpunk and CDPR is superior here. As Pondsmith says, the goal of Cyberpunk isn't about saving the world, it's about saving your soul. It reflects a more 'realistic' outlook as you deal with entities beyond your control that work against your sense of agency. That doesn't mean you don't fight for what you believe in within the Cyberpunk/CDPR universe but rather, for a 'serious' oriented story about the human condition, there isn't a wish fulfillment power fantasy thing dictating the events in your story. Sure, in game, Geralt or V can fight off 30 people at once but it's not central to the narrative that Geralt or V fights off an entire army and changes the world.
Now, I'm not saying power fantasy games or stories shouldn't exist. No, they can be equally as good but just don't pretend they're something they're not.
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You realize they could have just written their own world if that was the case...
Not like even Gibson came up with anything expecially unique, he just brought all the elements together that other writers had put out in the 70s and layered a cool style over it.
No individual sci-fi elements hadn't already been done by someone else.
.
And honestly if anything they turned the silliness up... the Chainsaw arm became the mantiss blades or monkey arms, They explicitly made all the goofy rockerboy stuff Canon and made one of the main characters a rockerboy who did 9/11 but with nukes, played by Keanu reeves.
Like there are entire flashback missions in game that plays out exactly how they played in the 2020 corebook.
Hell the only 2 character from the corebook who aren't one to one transplanted into the 2077 game are morgan blackhand who doesn't appear, and Johnny silverhand, who's character design they had to redo to look like Keanu reeves.
Aside from that Rose, Alt, Rache Bartmoss, Spider, Adam Smasher, Saburo Arasaka... their character designs haven't even changed. Rose even has the big 80s hair and leather jacket in the flashbacks.
Its actually incredible how much CDPR leaned into the silliest aspects of 2020 and managed to make them work in a serious and dark setting
It's less silly, by a lot actually. Kinda plausible, though I think something like a shotgun or maybe a huge captive-bolt style system would be more popular.
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More options
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