{"id":4608,"date":"2024-04-28T15:04:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-28T15:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/modernisms\/?p=4608"},"modified":"2024-05-07T18:09:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-07T18:09:06","slug":"revised-life-in-night-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unewhavendh.org\/modernisms\/2024\/04\/28\/revised-life-in-night-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Life in Night City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What up Choom?<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year is 2077, and dystopian America is filled with megacorporations, criminal activity, and Cyberware. When I first started playing the newly revived game<\/a> \u201cCyberpunk 2077\u201d I was wondering just what role I\u2019d play in this world, I really hadn\u2019t seen much of anything like this since maybe the old Blade Runner<\/a> movie that my dad watched when I was a kid. Well, CD Projekt Red decided that I\u2019d experience this world through a mercenary named V. While the player could ultimately choose one of three backstories to begin the game from, each of your previous lives ended up fucked (As most lives in Night City often do). I picked the start of a Nomad, and where you\u2019d assume maybe some type of monk<\/a>, that is not exactly correct. Nomads in the Cyberpunk universe were more like the drivers in Mad Max.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Still from the Movie, Mad Max: Fury Road<\/em> by Warner Bros. Pictures. All Rights Reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

 While these Nomads are a good inclination on what life is like outside of these corporate megacities like that of the game’s central location, they don\u2019t spend a lot of time dealing with Nomad life out on the open road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the game tends to focus on, is the relationship V has (Or should I say, Johnny has? Don\u2019t worry it\u2019ll make sense in a second) with a massive corporation called \u201cArasaka\u201d. I got a chance to enjoy the games beginning as it explored a heist gone bad. I am a big fan of putting characters through as many shit situations as possible, so I really enjoyed the beginning of this game. Essentially, the heist was to recover an experimental Cyberware relic that I assumed was some type of enhancement to the user’s brain \u2013 Something like Elon Musk\u2019s Neuralink<\/a>. In order to maintain hold of the item, V ends up having to put the relic into their own head. What follows is the catalyst to the entire story. Inside of that relic there was a downloaded construct of a former terrorist’s memory. This rockstar turned terrorist, played by Keanu Reeves, is Johnny Silverhand. The remainder of the game is spent with V and Johnny trying to figure out what they\u2019re going to do about their new shared space because removing the chip normally would kill them both. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Still of the character ‘Johnny Silverhand’ played by Keanu Reeves from the video game, Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> by CD Projekt Red. All Rights Reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The story was long enough to me that it really felt like a journey, and the characters I met along the way seemed to be fleshed out, with stories of their own to take care of. The game introduced me to multiple options that could potentially save V from the seemingly inevitable fate of death with Johnny taking over their body permanently. Playing through a character who is essentially dying is always a treat because they usually do everything to their full capabilities or without any real semblance of self-preservation. This continues to be the driving force of my experience as I took on insane tasks and missions with the sole purpose being \u201cMaybe V will live?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The missions in the main story gripped me to where I played through most of them without exploring the rest of Night City. I came up to what I didn\u2019t know was the finale of the game and before I stepped onto an elevator which would trigger about two hour’s worth of a game ending mission, I got a pop up notification. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Still from the video game, Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> by CD Projekt Red. All Rights Reserved.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This was perfect for anyone who gets tunnel vision and nose dives into the thick of whatever story is happening. The pop up gave me the opportunity to turn around and explore what this massive world had to offer. Night City isn\u2019t just the background of V\u2019s struggle, it\u2019s a living cyberpunk city with tons of characters and storylines that are much more human. One of the most memorable missions for me came from a side mission with who is essentially a cyberpunk porn editor named Judy Alvarez. The game has romance paths set up with certain characters, Judy being one of them, but you can also just do these side missions as their friends. This mission is around thirty minutes to complete and features no real threat or direct combat at all. It was very surprising to me just how much time the team at CD Projekt Red took to make the world feel real. In this mission, you scuba dive with Judy to visit the town she grew up in. This town was in a valley and is now completely submerged under a lake. It was nice to take a little while to just enjoy the humanity put into the game and listen to Judy tell me about growing up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I linked the Mission below, but like I said it’s about thirty minutes long and without context will likely be a little boring to watch: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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