Cyberpunk Video Games

[Grottnikk]

@krazykidd: look up some William Gibson works, especially early stuff like Neuromancer. Cyberpunk is about near future dystopia type settings where technology is advancing quickly and society and morals are eroding equally fast. That's as close as I can get in one sentence .

 

[Seishisha]

Firstly i would like to appologise as this post is largely a tangent and mostly unrelated to the original question but its somthing ive been thinking about for a while and in all honestly ive not seen many threads even mentioning the use of cyberpunk in games.

I often have crazy ideas about what i'd like to see from a game, more recently i was thinking there should be a real cyberpunk rpg, i dont mean like deus ex, i mean an rpg with all the traditional things like warrior/rogue/mage but in a cyberpunk setting, i mean the two things would mix quite well, allow me to list a few reasons why.

Story: traditional rpgs have you starting of extremely weak but building up and saving the world, what could make more sense than litteraly building up your character with bionic arms and all that cool stuff and then saving the world, i mean cyberpunk is almost always very dystopic so embarking on a world changing quest while gaining new upgrades fits nicely.

Class division: Most rpgs have set classes like mage or warrior and these would translate into cyberpunk pretty easily, let me just throw a few names around like the technomancer and the cybarian.

Gameplay: Rather than having magic spells like fireballs or demonic pets, the character could use robot minions and have electical attacks and so forth. The warrior arch-type could still use large amounts of melee but they would perhaps be extensions of his bionic arm, or maybe some sort of nano based moldables.

The possibilities are certainly there and im suprised no one has tried this already, or atleast no one that i am aware of. I guess its just a silly idea but honestly if someone like bethesda said "our next rpg is gonna be set in a futuristic world" i'd be all over it like jam on a doughnut.

Again appolgies for going extremely off topic.

 

[SquidVicious]

You've pretty much just described the pen and paper role-playing game Shadowrun, you should pick up a copy, you might just find everything you're looking for.

 

[SquidVicious]

Tex Murphy series
Syndicate series
System Shock series
Hell: A Cyberpunk thriller
Blade Runner (same universe, different story and protagonist)
Beneath a Steel Sky
Perfect Dark
Deux Ex series
Oni

It would probably be easier to explain why games like them were made, then why they faded away for so long.

First of all, Sci Fi had been very popular in Film and Literature during the 80's and it was only natural that games Like Tex Murphy appeared towards the end of the decade when gaming technology was allowing for more involving plots and settings.

Games like System Shock spawned from the successes of Doom while also trying to input a higher level of interactivity that approached the old point and click adventures. Again, Sci-Fi was still going strong so the setting was a giving. System Shock 2 arrived as a heavily plot driven game, with tense atmosphere and total immersion... essentially building on what Half Life 1 got so right.

Deus Ex was living in the wake of the godly Half Life and ground breaking games like System Shock 2 and it logically took inspirations from them. I consider Deus Ex as much a tribute to the Sci-Fi genre as it was between the 90's and 00's in films, comics, animes and novels. The game is littered with references (stealth Pistol is modelled off of a weapon in GiTS as an example) and nods (MiB referencing the Matrix... long coats and indoor sunglasses too) to the genre as well as standing on it's own legs as a Sci Fi and gaming tour de force.

Most of these games were made during the Golden Age of gaming, each one pushing aspects we take for granted now, to their very limits back then.

Games like Oni, are more directly influenced games... Oni is obviously inspired by GiTS.

During the mid 00's the industry fell into a slump. Graphics were being pushed (but looked arse ugly even back then), while gameplay, atmosphere and plot integrity took a nose dive across the board. What some called the "consolisation" era, where the industry strived for shiny graphics, sacrificing precious space on the Consoles and consequently chipping away at the quality of the overall product, was probably the main reason why these relatively niche genres fell into decline. Sci Fi requires investment beyond shiny FX... more so then most other fictional genres. It needs to be believable at a contemporary level, evolving what we know now and what could possibly exist in the future.

Unfortunately, the Sci-Fi industry as a whole fell into decline at this point seeing many old favourites shat upon by morons (Star Trek: Enterprise series, AvP movies [2 birds with 1 stone for fuck sake]) as well as successively weaker sequels (Matrix Reloaded, Star Wars prequels) which carried over to games too (Deus Ex: IW, Fallout: Brotherhood [oh dear god], Warhammer 40k: Fire Warrior [*Vomits*] and so on)

This went on for years and sadly, damage was done... and only now do we see any form of recovery.

Fingers crossed, Deus Ex HR was good, maybe EA's Syndicate Reboot might be a hit...

You raise some very good points here that I didn't even really think about the gaming slump of the mid '00's and the bombing of many sci-fi industry as a whole as a cause for the cyberpunk setting being largely abandoned. Nor did I really give a lot of thought to the '80's technological boom as the inspiration for the '90's to further examine that through a more visual medium.

I also wonder if one of the reasons is our comfort level with technology has risen sharply even in the 25 years I've been alive. I can remember people in the early '90's skeptical, confused, and downright afraid of what was happening with technology. I mean there was that NBC news clip from '94 that surfaced where the man was incredibly apprehensive about e-mail addresses. I remember a teacher in '94 went off on the guy who maintained the computer room at my elementary school because something she was working on went away.

This phobia still largely exists today, however it only really surfaces when something goes awry in the computer world. We've done such a good job at making technology user friendly on the surface, but without actually knowing what we're doing or how the technology actually works. Yet despite this ignorance, technology still plays a huge role in our lives. I think if someone were to design a game that exhibits this ignorance in a far more contemporary setting, while still having the overt overtones of the cyberpunk ethos, you could really recreate the setting that speaks to a new generation of people who have only known a world with the technology widely available.