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Anon romanticizes Night City
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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I love the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. Ive played the TTRPG, the Game from CD Project Red, and loved the anime. But no way in hell would I want to actually live in Night City...
Cyberpunk 2077, the video game, is a great story partially because Night City is practically more a character than a setting. It consumes and shits out all who are bold or stupid enough to think they can make it there.
The person romanticizing their world has somehow missed every theme of the story. Immortality is only achievable by sacrificing every last bit of your humanity through either replacing every part of your body with chrome (Smasher), or through horrific body snatching tech (Soulkiller).
Illness does exist in Cyberpunk, many characters through the story refer to their sick relatives. V themself is portrayed as being sick after installing Soulkiller after the Arasaka heist with Jackie. Indeed, Soulkiller is portrayed like a high tech, fast acting cancer.
The world in Cyberpunk reflects a kind of criticism of capitalism in showing us how excessive the divides in economic and power dynamics can become if capitalism is left to rule unchecked by governmental power (i have not yet played phantom liberty, which I assume addresses in part the corrupted and futile attempts to restore governmental agency in a world that long has handed off the reigns to unfettered capitalists).
The characters generally live in squalor. Vs initial apartment is little more than a glorified closet in a bleak concrete monolith. Quality Health care is only available to those that can afford an ultra Premium plan, executed by a Military Style Medical Corporation. Otherwise, you're lucky if your loved ones' ashes are dispensed via a Vending Machine, as seen in the anime Edgerunners.
Again, love the game, love the anime and TTRPG. NEVER in a million years would I want to live in that universe... unless maybe it was a choice between there and literal Hell, cuz at that point the line of difference befween them starts to blur...and they end up looking the same.
V's apartment isn't actually that bad though is the funny thing. That's like 4k a month in San Francisco.
Yes, but is it inside a Brutalist monolith concrete building with a single small slit of a window? I get what you're saying, but my point in regards to Vs initial apartment is that despite it's small niceties, the harshness of the world that exists just right outside their door is mlre prison like than almost all modern 1st world apartments today.
I love the gig where you have to comfort and console your neighbor, Barry, because you get to see that his apartment is slightly smaller, slightly lower scale than yours, but more or less the same.
A similar portrayal can be seen in the apartment of K in Blade Runner 2049. Sure the interiors are nicer than some, but the apartments, to me, feel like the architects intended to treat the tenants like prisoners with nicer digs than actual prisoners. Space efficient to the point of just barely not cramped. Nice enough that initially you don't complain. Isolated enough that you don't connect with your neighbors.
Grant you there are community spaces like the boxing gym, but again, it reminds me of a prison gym mainly because of the Brutalist concrete foundation of the building.
Youtuber Dami Lee does a much better job breaking down Cyberpunk style architecture than I ever could. Id highly recommend you check out her video on the subject.