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Friday Fun Thread for April 14, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Finally finished Cyberpunk 2077. Had a hard time choosing an ending - they all made sense! - and when I did choose I couldn't bring myself to go through with it because it seemed no better than the others. Picked it up again, couldn't play because all my mods were outdated, stoically updated them one by one, got it to run again and finally finished that thing.

Damn. That was nice. I watched some videos showcasing the other endings, and yea, I do have to say this was a good game. Faulty, sure. Coming up short relative to the expectations raised by its marketing. Inconsistent and mis-paced even in its storytelling. Trivially easy. But the actual story was, I think, the best and cleverest I've seen in any game so far, and a very good choice for a narrative game with branching storylines and endings. In other games that ran along similar structures, the preferred path usually seems clear from start to finish, and choices are foregone conclusions. Some games are narratively so bad I just pick the most destructive options to get them over with, or more likely just quit. But C77 actually made me question my choices, and revise them, and in the end I was unsatisfied with them not because they were bad or suboptimal, but because each path offered trade-offs and each seemed valid.

I'll lay out my rough progression of impressions:

Let's just play this for the gameplay. It'll probably suck anyways, like most games, but let's give it a shake.

Okay, at least it's well-made. Gameplay is pretty basic for an immersive sim, though.

Characters are surprisingly relatable.

Except for Johnny Silverhand, long-dead terrorist, played by Keanu Reeves. His acting seems disinterested and the character is an ass. I aim to get him killed out of spite.

So here's the plot: By some accident, a recording of Johnny's mind will replace your mind. You have some time (enough to do all the sidequests in the world), but by then you need to have found some solution.

As said, I hate the guy, so no way will I let him have my body. I resist him and try my damndest to make it clear who's the boss. My goal is to kick him out.

The rest of the game happens.

I am honestly dumbfounded by how I am now fast friends with the guy. In any other game this would seem contrived, and would ruin immersion, but somehow the writers pulled it off and I actually went from hating Johnny to seriously considering donating my body to him. Character development done well.

There's some slight chance that I'm just nostalgic because the game is ending and I actually enjoyed myself and seeing everything through rose-tinted glasses, but I think that's at most a part of it.

In the end I kick Johnny out not out of spite or a desire to retain my body, but because he and I actually agree on some of the principles behind the decision and it's an amicable separation.

What makes it so difficult to choose between letting Johnny have the body and keeping it for yourself is the following: It's been altered so that if you keep it, it's going to die soon. You get a little more time to live your life, but it'll be a short one. Johnny would get the full lifespan out of it. Early on the in the game, with me still hating his guts, that'd have been an easy choice to kill him and take what's left of mine - but a lot of interactions later, I may still not want to be him, but I'd seriously consider giving up a few months of dying to grant a new friend a new lease on life.

There's also the other choice to make, which is how you'd want to spend your last months. Kill yourself immediately? Try to save yourself by getting the highest-tech treatment available? Go out in a blaze of glory? Or wander out into the desert and die under an open sky, surrounded by friends? I chose the latter because it suits my temperament (honestly how I hope to die IRL, unlikely as it is), but each of the other choices had sound reasons working in their favor as well.

Media usually fails to get me on board with such plots. This one managed. Nicely done. Maybe it's just because its themes of identity and death are relevant to my mid-life crisis, but even then I think it did a good job of it.

Gameplay's still too easy though.

Here's a comfy song from the game: https://youtube.com/watch?v=P39hce9IMiw

Had they not promised the moon, I think the game would have been received much better. Also, it was broken on consoles at launch, so there's that. Most of the discussion not being about the game's writing frustrated me, because it's really quite something.

Honestly, as fine as the main story is, a few of the smaller side quests in the game have writing that haunted me for long after the game was over. Dream On in particular actually stopped me in my tracks near its resolution and had me thinking about the right course of action in a way I haven't been challenged by any piece of media in years.