Let’s be honest here CDPR’s Cyberpunk is very mild in its criticism of capitalism. It uses it more for the aesthetics than for any kind of critic of society.
There’s only one mission I remember where you engage with any sort of revolutionary rhetoric. It’s the one where you’re tracking down hidden messages calling for an overthrow of capitalism. Johnny’s there commenting, and despite how he’s supposed to be this militant revolutionary himself, he completely mocks the hidden messages. He goads you to find the rest and where they’re coming from, I think he says they’re probably written by some dumb angsty kid. I thought it seemed really out of tone, but now I realize the game’s writers completely missed the point of the setting.
Then again I’m losing faith in cyberpunk as a genre to begin with. William Gibson turned out to be the biggest liberal on Earth. Mike Pondsmith doesn’t seem much better.
Johnny also does this during Judy’s quest line to start a revolution at Clouds, a brothel.
Despite being portrayed as a revolutionary and a rebel, Johnny spends the entire time shitting on Judy and the other sex workers specifically because they’re sex workers - the plan isn’t good, but Johnny’s problems aren’t with the plan at any point.
All cyber, no punk.
The game does go out of its way to attenuate or neuter a revolutionary message every chance it gets. Hell, V recognizes the problems with unfettered capitalism (conversation with Takemura outside Arasaka warehouses), but defends the status quo every chance they get (convo between johnny and V in Pacifica after Placide). The game always defaults to implying the system is fine for most people.
Not like he is literally dying because of the system. I wish I could play V as a fledgling socialist, honestly.
V isn’t really portrayed as dying because of systemic problems, though, he’s dying because of his weird individual problem of installing a prototype brain chip. He could just as easily have not installed it and been no worse off: the run’s already fucked and he gets killed by Dex anyway.
I’ve never played it because I’m not sure if my computer could handle it, but also even though I’m not super knowledgeable about cyberpunk I think an entire world of it that you’re thrust into would be a little much. Outside of that though I’m still surprised how much content of any kind people consume but don’t really think about. I know art for arts sake is still valid, but I’ve always tried to look for meaning in any piece of art I’m experiencing and it’s just wild to me that other people not only don’t do that, but are almost proud that they don’t? Idk it’s just very foreign to me anytime I see it.
A lot of people really fail to pick up media literacy skills, even if they’ve been to university. I think a lot of focus on STEM being the most important thing leads people to look down on and not engage with lit and media studies classes in a way.
I know it took me an embarrassing amount of time into my young adult life to start engaging with the media I consume lol.
My teachers tried, but I really think my media literacy was developed by brute force by polishing off a novel every week or so for several years.
