this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Cyberpunk 2077. The setting is perfectly competent cyberpunk, with all the capitalist reality heightened to the point of absurdity, but V is the fucking ur-chud.
You're in an extreme late-capitalist hellworld; the climate and most of social order is collapsing beyond repair. Your character's reaction to this is to be a mercenary whose principle preoccupation is their own legend. Your connection with humanity at large is limited to a cobbled together network of a handful of people who morally vindicate your every action. Your story is mostly about the trail of bodies left behind by a quest to do nothing but save your own life. The most pure version of your final arc is to eschew entirely any form of collectivist solution in favor of dialing up the rugged individualist power fantasy to 11 with a on-person guns-blazing assault on a Japanese corporation (alternatively there's now an expansion where you can sell out and be offered to become a fed because of how cool you are).
All of this while maintaining a pretense of being a morally neutral person just driven by common sense and your second amendment-given right to self-defense from hordes on interchangeable sheeple.
this annoys the living shit out of me every playthrough i do. no matter what options you choose, its always about V's constant sense of self-importance and becoming a "legend" while casting the anti-corporate and anti-capitalist sentiments as crazy (you can lean into silverhand, but i feel like V's dialogue options always imply that silverhand is a little crazy for believing what he believes. and by no means is he a great person, but if i was in the cyberpunk universe i would be on the exact same page as him regarding action against the corporations.)