This is a universe with faster than light travel and near infinite resources. There’s a homeless shelter in one of the major cities. I helped them out. Why the fuck is there a homeless shelter in a universe with FTL and near infinite resources?
I’m starting to think Fallout under Bethesda isn’t a satire and their writers are just incapable of imagining anything beyond capitalism.
It would have been worse if they made a game with space capitalism that didn’t have the problems of capitalism in it. I would have also enjoyed the shit out of a game that let me play in a fully automated luxury gay space communism universe but I’m also ok playing a pirate in the space capitalist one too.
That’s what puts me off of so-called “post cyberpunk.” It decides that cyberpunk is over… without even trying to get past the inherent contradictions of capitalism. It’s just superficially nicer looking and the ego-insert protagonist gets a holo waifu.
I haven’t done any of the cyberpunk stuff yet. I spent like a minute in that city so far. It’s not good?
I’m not saying Starfield is post-cyberpunk. I’m saying that post-cyberpunk as a literature genre tends to bleach all the social issues framed in cyberpunk under a firehose of hopium instead of seeing those issues resolved meaningfully.
Starfield just rocketed past those issues and left them still sitting out there.
I always thought of Post Cyberpunknas things like The Diamond Age or Mirrors Edge or Glasshouse, which critique the individualistic response of a Cyberpunk protagonist vs social responses.
I am familiar with Mirror’s Edge, and if that’s post-cyberpunk, the setting has promise.