Yea, from what I've seen, it doesn't look that much dystopia at all and more just like first person GTA with rpg elements in a "cool future city". So that makes that defense (which is already bad), even more null.
Think it's quite clear the people who made this game grew up on the level of satire GTA has taught them. A cis-male perspective irony that's been quite common place since the 90s and is a very harmful substitute for actual politics or just even a tiny amount of critical thinking.
There is nothing dystopian about what CDPR has shown of Cyberpunk so far (and I really don't want to engage with their story-telling any further to disprove my suspicions of their lack of telling any kind of interesting "future" narrative).
If anything, CDPR has shown us a very REDUCTIVE mirror of current opinions. Reductive, because it is seen from a privileged cis-male perspective that can only ever understand the world through their own bro-goggles.
Cybernetics turn to toys for men in aid of jizzing rather to question the supposed nature of their identities.
A dystopian city becomes the set for yet another rag-to-riches (with unexpected tragic twist at the end) story.
Non-English language is, as always, just a flourish for aggressive male cursing.
In contrast, here's a snippet of Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto (published in 1985):
"The cyborg does not dream of community on the model of the organic family, this time without the oedipal project. The cyborg would not recognize the Garden of Eden; it is not made of mud and cannot dream of returning to dust."
Oof. Imagine a company with the cultural reach of CDPR made a game just HALF as interesting as that quote. Holy shit, the progressive discussion we could have that would actually ENRICH us, rather than having to minimise the actual harm CDPR's cultural output is doing.
Just imagine any kind of utopia looking back at this year - so what did they do culturally in that year 2020? The year that changed our world so drastically? What kind of vision of the future did these people have during these times of turmoil and hardship?
It is highly disappointing that we live in a dystopia of tech-billionaires, proto-fascist businessmen and a patriarchal cultural industry - and what we are looking forward to the most this year is an even lesser version of that, set in a supposed future, which feels more like the fan-fiction mirror world as seen by a 40-year old man-baby.
Your escapism is shit. Your dreams are boring. Your future is fucking dated.
