115 - Cyberpunk 2077

So this game is a remix of fight club basically

The Brad Neely reference when Gommorah was mentioned was such a welcome blast from the past

At 1hr 45 min or so I'd like to point out there is one reason to have a non-lethal weapon. Regina Jones wants the cyber psychos taken alive so finishing a fight with a non lethal weapon is preferred

fucking destroyed by the professor bros. reference out of nowhere

One thing that I really appreciate about The Witcher is being that wedge what drove a little more adultness into RPG romances. High art? Not at all. But you go back to things like Baldies Gate 2 and you will see some incredibly problematic, weird, and oddly chaste relationships. Meanwhile, we finally get something like Baldies Gate 3 where- yeah. Love exists. But there is also casual sex. People speaking about sex without being oblique or ashamed. It's a more open and frank acknowledgement about a fundamental piece of human relationships that was strangely absent from games all about people and their relationships to one another.

What song did y'all use for the intro?

It must have taken an incredible act of restraint to not play the trailer music for the full runtime of this episode in the background

today's update added the NCART Metro! replete with monks of course :)

The “recorded experiences you can buy” thing is an old cyberpunk trope (the plot of Strange Days hinges on a missing recorded memory) but “experiencing the feelings of someone undergoing a crucifixion” is pretty directly from Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep (the source material for Bladerunner) where regularly experiencing that suffering is the basis of a major world religion

Oh! Wanted to mention that the plot point of old rich people wanting to "live forever" by cloning themselves digitally was used in Tad Williams' (one of my fave authors) 90s cyberpunk series Otherland. Very Snow Crash with the virtual reality stuff.

Okay I’m going to use this episode to determine if I should play the game

To answer one of the questions at the end about what visions of the future exist in fiction, I think the answer to that right now is similar to what you're getting at; in some smaller communities, the idea of Solarpunk has started to take hold as the alternate vision of the future as compared to Climate Apocalypse. It tends to blend Afrofuturism, indigenous cultures, and generally realistic (though occasionally fantastical) techs. It's a really small genre right now (mostly existing in short stories and concept arts), but some people have argued that things like the depiction of Wakanda in the Black Panther films could arguably be some of the few mainstream examples of it. It's not a genre I know a *lot* about but it's one I want to learn more about and embrace as a vision of the future and think people should look into! Rant over lol

Female V is the superior V

I spent so many hours on my first playthrough just full psychomode and wandered the streets looking for gangsters to maim with monowire. Just going full on Zorro, whipping and stabbing hoards of cops.

10 good Dutchmen? I'm looking forward to the 12 angry Dutchmen episode

I'd never thought of Leon as a rogue AI but now you mention it

Damn what a fantastic ad read that guy sounds hot

the fish... Koi...

Enjoyed the brief overview of CDPR. I freaking adore Witcher 1, and have been really interested in the company + their work since. I followed Cyberpunk starting with it's announcement eons ago at the joint GOG/CDPR conference (back when they still did those). Haven't actually played it as I'm more of a fantasy person. May need to give 2077 a try after all.

Holy Fucking Shit, Brian KILLED that opening 😳 👏

_3 hours_ let's fucking GO