Starker on 2/3/2020 at 20:06
It's like saying Lord of the Rings is fiction rather than fantasy. Sure, you might choose to look at it that way, but a game where you play as a hacker who gets caught hacking into a megacorp and has an implant that lets him jack into cyberspace is going to look a lot like cyberpunk to everyone else.
chk772 on 3/3/2020 at 07:32
That's not at all a definition of Cyberpunk...
Pyrian on 3/3/2020 at 07:44
The definition of cyberpunk is high-tech low-lifes. It's got cyber, crime, cyberspace/hacker, and a megacorp. That's pretty damn cyberpunk. Probably it's only failing is that it really isn't all that into the low-life/crime angle of it, especially past the opening sequence.
chk772 on 3/3/2020 at 07:51
Where is the crime? Where is the low-life? Where is the earth setting?
It's pretty damn sci-fi to me, nothing more nothing less. Maybe it has Cyberpunk elements, but, surely not pure Cyberpunk to me.
Pyrian on 3/3/2020 at 10:05
Quote Posted by chk772
Where is the crime?
...Seriously?
Quote Posted by chk772
Where is the low-life?
You're playing him.
Quote Posted by chk772
Where is the earth setting?
Not relevant. It's not like space stations aren't settings used in classic cyberpunk like
Neuromancer.Quote Posted by chk772
It's pretty damn sci-fi to me...
Cyberpunk is a subset of scifi.
Quote Posted by chk772
Maybe it has Cyberpunk
elements, but, surely not pure Cyberpunk to me.
Meh? Genre isn't a purity test. It doesn't
focus on the "low-life" aspect as much as traditional cyberpunk fiction, but it takes the vast majority of its inspiration from cyberpunk, to the degree that it's hard to point to
any elements in it that aren't also present in classic cyberpunk literature. Rogue AI? Cyberspace? Cyberware? Hi-tech weapons? Tech that seems like magic? Yes, space stations? Mutants? Problematic megacorps? What else?
chk772 on 3/3/2020 at 10:14
Well... I'd be OK with saying that SS has Cyberpunk elements. It's just not a pure Cyberpunk franchise for me. Rather classic sci-fi horror. Deus Ex is as pure Cyberpunk as it gets for me. Same with Blade Runner.
Starker on 3/3/2020 at 13:26
Where is the crime? A megacorp executive conducting illegal bioengineering experiments and hiring a hacker to cover his tracks by hacking an AI is not just crime, it's as close to cyberpunk crime as it gets.
Sulphur on 4/3/2020 at 05:01
Quote Posted by chk772
Well... I'd be OK with saying that SS has Cyberpunk elements. It's just not a pure Cyberpunk franchise for me. Rather classic sci-fi horror. Deus Ex is as pure Cyberpunk as it gets for me. Same with Blade Runner.
Maybe look past the strictures of genre elements as a requirement? The thing about cyberpunk and proto-cyberpunk is that it's generally a comment on society through technological stratification. You can't have the 'low-life' without having the other well-off classes, and so the chopshop back alley body mods and struggle to live while existential problems spin out from the corporations and their use of tech that, generally, the average Joe living in squalor has to fight back somehow. SS1's primary theme is dealing with a literal existential threat from an AI because an executive had the bright idea of unshackling it, and you do that with the squishy low-level (yet high-tech) tools you have. It's both inspired by and themed after cyberpunk, and while its story doesn't make much of a point in the end, its ideology clearly exists in the same genre framework.
heywood on 5/3/2020 at 20:24
I started playing Prey again, this time judging it less and enjoying it more.
I'm still disappointed about SS3. I wasn't expecting or even hoping for a AAA game. Rather than go for a horror theme with pseudo-realistic graphics, I would have been happy with something closer to SS1 with stylized low poly graphics ala Void Bastards. But it seems like there's little room in the market for games that fall in between indie and blockbuster.
voodoo47 on 5/3/2020 at 20:45
I'm strangely ok with this - they clearly were starting to steer the game in a wrong direction, and I don't mind waiting for a more responsible team picking it up. which is simply going to happen at some point, and hey, it's not like I have anything better to do for the next 20 years (or whatever I've got left).