🎶 Grimes - "Delicate Weapon"

The cyberpunk way of life.

We should get this out of the way right from the start: this song’s chorus—(the first one in particular)—is awesome. Whenever I hear it, I immediately think of the game it’s from and for good reason: the two fit each other like identical gloves. But this post is less about the song itself and more about the place it inhabits.

Cyberpunk 2077 is the second most expensive game ever made. And it shows. The neon-drenched world of Night City is enormous. I’ve already racked up a dozen or so hours and am only 20% of the way through the main storyline. There are countless videos of “Night City Walking Tours” where the player does just that; walk around at a slow pace and look around the gorgeous environments. They work too, because the level of detail is astounding.

While I’ve usually shied away from first-person titles in the past, I certainly had to make an exception here. Though the POV completely immerses us as it should, I do wish from time to time that I could see the half-shaved hairstyle of female V with her smeared mascara to match. It’s a small trade-off though, as once you get past the game’s prologue and are free to explore every inch of the city as you so wish, you realize why it needed to be a first-person adventure.

I’ll admit that I’m not as well-tuned into the “cyberpunk aesthetic” as I am toward other subculture styles, but from what I can grasp, it’s not so far-fetched that one day in the near-future, we’ll all be modified with some type of technology implanted inside our bodies while rocking designer leather jackets on the outside. Ultra-smart cities plus high-level corruption will eventually equal wide-spread revolt, chaos, and urban decay. Or at least, it did for V and the rest of Cyberpunk’s cast of colorful characters.

Like most dystopian-centric journeys, it’s best experienced from a safe couch, where one can just put their console in Rest Mode should the shootouts and espionage ever become too overwhelming. Action is fun, when it’s just pretend and on a screen rather than an actual reality that we’re forced to face on a minute-by-minute basis. Nobody can really live that way for long. So we get the rush vicariously through these antiheroes instead. At least it’s something.

What seems inescapably vivid on the surface however, is actually a merciless way of life underneath. Weaponry is readily available at most vending machines inside seedy establishments. Beyond the skyscraper rooftops are holographic projections for advertisements of all types reaching high up into the dark sky. Fluorescent romance is everywhere. Danger, too. But that’s what makes it all so appealing. That a cyberpunk society—as opposed to other fantasy-filled worlds—is actually plausible. While we may not live to see many of the style’s staples in person, there is the exponential possibility that virtual and augmented realities will soon become the norm. So whatever type of experience you may ultimately be looking for, you probably won’t need to wait too much longer for it.