Cyberpunk is not Blade runner. And that's ok, it's ok if it isn't what you are looking for.
-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
Cyberpunk’s dialogue and voice acting are embarrassing
- Thread starter Vire
- Start date
I'm not shocked, but it is sad to see people still think punk just means having a bad attitude and cursing.
I don't really get this thread at all. I'm not saying that someone shouldn't have an opinion on the quality of the voice acting etc. But the game isn't even out yet, it's a massive game and not really fair to judge it based on a trailer and a few gameplay snippets...
It really hurts me. Post-punk and hardcore mean a ton to me and influenced my own writing, but also helped me out of deep depression. To see so many just ignore what the movement meant and why it collapsed is somewhat disheartening.
Since when do we not judge games based on trailers before their release? Especially ones that have had multiple 30+ minute segments shown? I'm not saying to judge the whole game, but that's literally the point of the trailer to give an impression of what the whole thing is gonna be.
If I show you a trailer CrossCode you're not gonna go, well it could turn into third person shooter, we won't know until it's released.
Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner are very different styles of cyberpunk to what Cyberpunk 2077 is based on. Please look at the actual source material and set expectations accordingly. You can get the Cyberpunk 2020 RPG book right now, in fact.
I mean it's fine IMO. The trailer isn't going to win any awards for writing or anything but it's passable I guess. The amount of swearing can seem a little juvenile but I really don't think you should be taking those lines particularly seriously, they seem like they're meant to be humorous, like the one-liners you'd find in an old-school FPS. This might also just be mostly out-of-context clips pieced together in a way that seems weird but will probably work better in context.
On a side note, does anyone know if there's any explanation for why all the "recent" trailers look and feel so different from the original teaser 7 years ago? Was the game rebooted mid-development or was that trailer showing some early conceptual stuff?
On a side note, does anyone know if there's any explanation for why all the "recent" trailers look and feel so different from the original teaser 7 years ago? Was the game rebooted mid-development or was that trailer showing some early conceptual stuff?
Last edited:
I've had a hard time deciding if the writing is the problem or the VO performances. Either way the end result has often fells very amateurish and this is a problem I've noticed with the game since we've first heard VO.
OP
OP
I admit my own ignorance with the source material within the OP, that still doesn't change the fact that I find it cringeworthy. Weird how things can't progress from nearly forty years ago.
Blade Runner isn't also strictly speaking, Cyberpunk, more like a precursor. I would say RoboCop is just as much on the same level of proto-cyberpunk as Blade Runner, but on a completely different tone.
RoboCop is a violent, bombastic, satire, but it is not for a second not about transhumanism.
RoboCop is a violent, bombastic, satire, but it is not for a second not about transhumanism.
Well, the original was more of a proof of concept as the game had barely entered preproduction at that point. There have been rumors of rebooting several times in development as well as major design changes (pov switching form 3rd to 1st person).
The dialogue isn't bad. Every game can't be RDR or TLoU and that's okay. A game with bad "embarrassing" dialogue would be NBA 2K15.
That was basically "Hey, we are doing this thing... interested?" trailer and not much to do with anything else. Some very early concept art is also far more colorful than that CGI. Either way at that point game basically didn't exist in any form other than title and some basic ideas.
CP77 as we know it now has been in development since 2016.
I love Robocop (it's in my top 50), but it is totally using transhumanism as a metaphor for corporate control and dominance.
Yeah, shure. It just feels juvenile, and kinda toxic in todays landscape?
And im not saying it IS. its just the feeling i get. and the thing it radiates is the reason why im not interested (also, first person instead of third).
Just wanted to post my opinion as a person that has no clue about the original tabletop.
(Also i would argue that the argument "it was so back then" is usually not a valid response to criticism, since the action movie atitude from the 80ties did not age well and pushed a lot of toxic masculinity)
This "cursing is bad" argumentation is super weird to me. You don't explain at all in your OP why exactly it's an issue. Something like Disco Elysium has plenty of obscenities. Yet it's better written than any AAA game, better than what Naughty Dog, Rockstar and (old) Bioware etc have ever accomplished and probably ever will. It even includes homophobic slurs (most of them censored), but it's still philosophical, deeply explores political themes, it's clever and funny as fuck. I'll reserve my judgement of Cyberpunk after I've played it.
The grittiness and edginess is baked into the source material of CP77.
The grittiness and edginess is baked into the source material of CP77.
Last edited:
I'm not saying we don't or shouldn't judge games based on trailers, but to make such a judgement on quality of voice acting and dialogue of the game based on limited gameplay and selective gameplay segments is a bit much.
Yeah I agree. Double negatives are awkward. Bad written sentence on my part.
People can recognize dialogue as not good without comparing to the top of the medium. You simply disagree, that's fine.
My problem was people going "oh so you expected the best writing and performers of all time here where everyone talks liked scholars and academics" in response to a criticism people also had in May when the game was first shown.
No problem, friendo. Also, look up "Our Robocop Remake," a fantastic spoof.
It's not much when what's been shown hasn't been that limited. And this isn't even a new opinion or the first time we've seen a section of the game.
Cyberpunk is supposed to be edgy, but it's missing the ubiquitous tech-influenced and ornate language native to cyberpunk.
Cyberpunk is more like "All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void"
Cyberpunk without the tech analogies littered in isn't cyberpunk. This is more GTA fare.
Cyberpunk is more like "All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he'd cut in Night City, and still he'd see the matrix in his sleep, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless void"
Cyberpunk without the tech analogies littered in isn't cyberpunk. This is more GTA fare.
RDR II and TLOU II are so far ahead of the rest of the industry in terms of writing, characterisation, voice acting and cut scene direction (as well as overall visuals) that almost every other game feels way, way behind them. A mixture of talent and unlimited budget goes a long way.
It works with the type of setting Cyberpunk 2077 is trying to convey. If you want the high brow talk, then Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell is down the hall.
This is so far a lot more punk. Fits the source material and of settings like Shadowrun. And I dig it.
This is so far a lot more punk. Fits the source material and of settings like Shadowrun. And I dig it.
Last edited:
What I didn't like about it is that it was cut together and sounded like a game from the PS3/360 era. It looked great, but a lot of aspects like the tone and character behavior felt like relics. Muscle dude with a gun likes to shoot people and blow shit up, great character...
That's fine. I prefer the more thoughtful style of cyberpunk myself, I could listen to the Major discuss philosophy of the self for days, but the dialogue and writing I've seen so far from Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely nails the style of cyberpunk that Cyberpunk 2020 embodied. That high tech, low life, style over substance, punk aesthetic.
I think trailers sell games. It's smart marketing for your game to look like GTA V or CoD. GTA V is one of the best selling games of all time. CoD does crazy numbers every year. CDPR is trying to sell their game with their trailer, not try to make some grandiose statement on transhumanism or capitalism in general. That's all very likely baked into the game and narrative.
You're all going to buy it anyway. They don't need to sell it to any of us. They need to sell it to the masses that play CoD and GTA who don't really follow gaming and might not know this game exists at all. If the tone of the trailer comes off as too artsy, the people they want to buy it will just keep playing Warzone or GTAO. Blade Runner was a commercial failure. CDPR can't afford CP2077 to fail. They have 10s of millions riding on it.
You're all going to buy it anyway. They don't need to sell it to any of us. They need to sell it to the masses that play CoD and GTA who don't really follow gaming and might not know this game exists at all. If the tone of the trailer comes off as too artsy, the people they want to buy it will just keep playing Warzone or GTAO. Blade Runner was a commercial failure. CDPR can't afford CP2077 to fail. They have 10s of millions riding on it.
Have you seen Texhnolyze? It is easily the most depressive work in the genre I've seen
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt even though every bit of promotional material they've released has been incredibly lame. I refuse to believe the team that wrote and designed The Witcher 3 can fall off as hard as the trailers for Cyberpunk would suggest, and I can only assume they've been selective about what they advertise because this shit appeals to a wider audience. The cyberpunk genre is notoriously niche and you only have to look back a couple years at Blade Runner to see how difficult the task of marketing cyberpunk to a mass audience can be.
What no one seems to want to talk about or acknowledge is that cyberpunk media sells like shit. So it's no surprise that a project of this magnitude is being marketed in such a way as to highlight the things the masses care about because in order for the game to be successful it needs to expand the market for this subgenre.
Let me recycle the Breaking Bad analogy to also said that, it doesn't matter how great Gustavo Fring and the plots of season 3 and forward are, if someone is too sick of Jesse Pikman to finish season 1. One can legitimately hate how a character is written to the point that you drop the story that you would overall enjoy. No one is obligated to like anything.
It is fair to really dislike this Jackie character.
It is fair to really dislike this Jackie character.
Based on the CGI trailer, I understand he dies in the prologue, but that's at least 4 hours long going from how much the press was able to play.
Last edited:
Disco is great, but I think that's underselling TLoU a bit. There's a reason HBO has Druckmann on the writing team for The Last of Us. He's a good writer and when it comes to games, TLoU is certainly among the best.
But I guess this is all a bit off-topic.
Him dying or not is directly tied to your actions as player. He can live through it.
Hmm I don't know. I've been sort of down on Cyberpunk 2077 so far because the setting hasn't excited me, and I'm upset we aren't getting The Witcher 4 right now instead.
But I'm actually happy to see that the writing is more light hearted than I expected and even a little campy. The thought of a dark dystopian noir world was not appealing to me.
But I'm actually happy to see that the writing is more light hearted than I expected and even a little campy. The thought of a dark dystopian noir world was not appealing to me.
Honestly, going by that trailer, it just sounds like the big guy with the pony tail just has an obnoxious personality, and that's okay.