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Posters are essential to the player’s experience in Night City, the dystopian setting of Cyberpunk 2077. I always thought they would be the most telling element in the construction of the game world, the biggest indicator of the ideas behind the game. For better or worse, I was right.
Even before the game’s launch, posters were a key feature of the game’s marketing. In particular, one for the fictional energy drink Chromanticore, which features a female character with a huge bulging crotch and the tagline “Mix it up”. The poster and the toxic marketing campaign that developers CD Projekt Red built around it, have been discussed several times, including by myself. By examining Cyberpunk posters, we can begin to see the issues – not just with the game’s themes – but with the direction of the AAA scene over the past decade.
When we think of world building in games, we tend to think of it on a more macro level. According to this metric, there are certain things Cyberpunk 2077 ranges from the fantastic and entirely original soundtrack to supporting characters like Panam Palmer. However, there are also a lot of issues, such as the mixed messages about the role of the police in perpetuating dystopia, endless movie references that undermine the game’s ability to tell stories, and most of the characters. which are not closely related to the narrative sentiment. underdeveloped and empty.
While the general ideas are hit or miss, the posters themselves are great, but that might not be a good thing. I counted nearly 100 posters in Cyberpunk 2077, with several coming from different variations. If you pick four at random, you’ll end up with a solid idea of ​​what Night City is all about. The problem is, Night City isn’t particularly deep. It has different areas controlled by different gangs, but other than the Badlands on the city limits – which hardly features any posters – the posters don’t differ thematically from cover to cover. The CDPR did a lot of posters for this game, but it feels like they just picked a hundred of their favorites and randomly scattered them around town. While there are distinct geographies in the game (some places are close to the coast, others the desert, other crowded cosmopolitan centers), the soul of each area in Night City feels remarkably similar.
Besides understanding Night City in an instant, there’s a good chance that these randomly chosen posters will contain explicit and exploitative imagery, much more than the “Mix it up” poster. They are full of sex, violence and often sexual violence. They contain racist images, dehumanizing images and shocking and bloody images. Although hyperconsumption is Cyberpunk 101, there isn’t too much of “Buy New Sneakers!” posters. It’s all made up to 11. If they tell you to buy something, it’s usually something sexual, something violent, or they sell it to you through sex and violence.
Cyberpunk the posters, according to Piers Robinson, co-director of the UK Organization for Propaganda Studies, can be understood as “at the surface level.”
“They build the feel of the game by focusing on a dystopian world dominated by, in his own words, ‘power, glamor and body modification,’” Robinson said. “Whatever moral stance one has regarding the images, which for some will be shocking and provocative but not for others, they likely work well in terms of creating an appropriate visual backdrop for the fantasy game. .
Robinson suggests that the constant use of such extreme imagery throughout the game can build tolerance for these ideas among players, in much the same way. Call of Duty reinforces a tolerance for war. “They can be used to establish truths by which particular beliefs and understandings become accepted as correct or normal,” says Robinson. “While the intention of game producers is only to provide a simple ‘showcase’ for the game, they can also communicate in an ideological way that, at least potentially, has important consequences.
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