Keanu Reeves is no stranger to
bleak sci-fi visions of the
future. He was, of course, the
star of The Matrix—the story of
an office drone who learns that
the world is a simulation
created by machines. He also
starred in Johnny Mnemonic
(the film The Matrix could havebeen) as a cyber-hacker in a
world dominated by
megacorporations. And in the
movie adaptation of Philip K.
Dick’s A Scanner Darkly he
played an undercover agent
working for a government
engaging in invasive high-tech
surveillance of its citizens.We also get a sense of the
day-to-day lives of its current
inhabitants, thanks to an upgrade to
V’s scanner that translates the
Haitian Creole spoken by
its residents in real-time.
Placide stops to point out a giant
building in the distance. The Grand
Imperial Mall, once envisioned as the
main attraction of the district, is now
a half-finished monument to
corporate greed. It’s recently been
taken over by the Animals, a gang of
juiced-up beefcakes who value
strength above all else. It seems like a
quest is starting to form.
Sure enough, back at the Voodoo
Boys HQ, Placide states that he’ll only
let V speak to Brigitte if he helps
solve the Animal problem. After
jacking into the Voodoo Boys’
subnet—allowing Placide to watch V’s
every move—he explains that
someone has been supplying the
Animals with military-grade gear. V’s
job is to find out who’s driving the
van that’s been making the deliveries.
Even this basic scene, which
ultimately serves to give the player a
new quest, is fraught with tension.
Not only is Placide pushy and
demanding, he’s clearly hiding
something, likely related to a
commotion in a nearby room. The
player has plenty of opportunity to
call him on his bullshit, and to
demand an explanation for what’s
really going on, but doing so might
only serve to piss off the person we’re
reluctantly helping.
But maybe that’s worth the risk.
Sasko summarizes Cyberpunk 2077’s
philosophy as ‘freedom’. “If the
player feels like they should be able
to do something, they probably
should. We are always doing our best
to let you do it in our game. If a
character pisses you off, there’s
probably an option to shoot him and
all kinds of things like that.”
Naturally that freedom extends to
how you execute your missions. On
reaching the Grand Imperial Mall,
we see V attempt some stealth,
sneaking past gang members before
coming to a corridor guarded by a
camera. As a Netrunner, this V can
make use of a cyberdeck to hack into
a nearby access point, gaining control
over some of the buildings systems.
Not only can V disable the camera,
but, in the next room—a gymWOAH
Keanu Reeves is a true cyberpunk