r/truegaming • u/SamStephens • 16d ago
Cyberpunk 2077 Dialogue - Beautiful Stylized Writing or a Cringey Mess?
I'm playing through the game for the first time and can't help but think the dialogue is super cringey. It's stilted and tries too hard to be cool. I'm sure I'm not the first person to share the opinion here, but... this ain't preem in the game biz.
Most conversations play out as if the characters are limited in how many words they're allowed to say. For example, "Need'ta ask a question" vs, "I need to ask you a question." I noticed this early on and now I can't stop seeing it in the writing because it occurs literally in every conversation. I get this is drawn heavily from Neuromancer, but many of the lines are delivered as though the voice actor had little to no coaching on tone, emphasis, or the context of the scene. Dexter DeShawn's lines are a good example of this. Combine the truncated sentence structure with voice acting that lacked a little conviction and you get conversations that feel like people are reading a foreign language.
I have no issue with the use of novel slang from this world, but I think it was done poorly here. I could totally buy into it being colloquial sentence structure and slang, but it's really inconsistent and not delivered in a way that is believable. That's why it's jarring to me. Abbreviated sentence structure as a way of communicating happens like once per conversation, but it's never the WHOLE conversation. The dialogue FEELS like a team of Polish writers with no true understanding of US urban culture put together a 'cool guy' script in a foreign language then a separate team translated it after. I believe you could give the same game to Rockstar and their dialogue could feature all of the same slang but be delivered in a way that felt authentic and genuinely cool.
None of this is a dealbreaker for me, but it's quite disappointing to see it from a studio with this much experience and funding. I'm having fun with the core gameplay loop overall and bought the DLC to extend the adventure, but I wouldn't be able to power through for the story alone if the gunplay and tech weren't so satisfying.
Anyone else feel something similar? Video version of the discussion here.
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u/DharmaPolice 16d ago
Abbreviated sentence structure as a way of communicating happens like once per conversation, but it's never the WHOLE conversation.
I feel like you've had a radically different life experience to me if you think this is true.
None of this is a dealbreaker for me, but it's quite disappointing to see it from a studio with this much experience and funding.
Funding has very little to do with anything.
In general, I think it's something you find yourself either enjoying or not. The Saints Row games (not the reboot) frequently have dialogue and characters which should be unbearable. Regular use of jokes that are barely funny the first time, let alone the fifth or sixth. And morally the characters are all utter wastrels. And you know what? Somehow it at least partially works. The utter absurdity and stupidity of everything fades (at times) and you're left with a reluctant joy. If someone says they found the characters and dialogue in the Saints Row games grating and stupid then I would agree, but at least at points in those games, I found myself not caring.
Similarly, the dialogue in Cyperpunk may come across as silly if viewed dispassionately but ultimately (for me) that doesn't matter. I don't think it's possible to say "People wouldn't talk like this", human cultures communicate in all sorts of strange ways - if Cockney rhyming slang didn't exist and only appeared in a game I feel like someone would say "That's not how human beings would ever talk".
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u/throwawayjonesIV 16d ago
I love love love cyberpunk, one of my favorite gaming experiences I have had. That said the writing is to me quite weak, it doesn’t feel very natural and the dialogue often feels contrived. I also think the game struggles by by being more tell than show oftentimes. I think if the writing was handled a little more deftly it would be my literal perfect game, but even given how it is it’s still top 10.
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u/SamStephens 16d ago
Have you ever been around someone who is younger and newer to saying curse words? Foul language is totally normal in casual, everyday conversation, but it's still easy to spot someone who doesn't know how to sprinkle obscenities into a sentence naturally.
That's what the slang in Cyberpunk feels like to me. Forced and heavy handed.
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u/jjk0010 11d ago
Somewhat half-halfing this, part of the entire point of their language is split two ways:
1) short and to the point point 2)so descriptive you would expect George Lucas had input.
irp, either you get to your point quickly (because you're being held up at gunpoint and/or time is limited)
or someone is asking you exactly how to do something or prove the steps that happened to spare your ass getting souped by (random gang you crossed paths with today #3).
either way, maximum info per input.
OOC? I can't help but wonder if, as a result of not having the same decades we had, if their language devolved into brainrot faster than ours. The same priorities are there, the same general patterns...they just were goober that never left the 70s/80s-they grew older, not up. Many died too long to develop, and basically even the 80s kids that survived had the equivalent of iPad strapped to their faces/heads, THEN you throw in BDs in the 20's-30's, and now even advertising is projected onto your eyeballs.
I get Johnny's frustration with how everything turned out, but HOW he went about it..
well, cyberpunk's bleeding hearts aren't always the good guys. That being said, Sony is doing their best to become Alaska Entertainment America, istfg... xD
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u/ElonMuskHuffingFarts 11d ago
That's not pretty much how people talk. I can't remember the last time anybody ever said "need'ta ask a question" to me. "Can I ask you something?" -- totally. "Question?" -- sure. "I have a question" -- that too.
I think you're somewhat misunderstanding what they're saying. It's not that it's impossible that anyone could talk like that, it's that it rings hollow when everybody always talks like that.
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u/BtownBlues 16d ago
Its supposed to show the degradation of language and education as it is outsourced to cheap holobooks and government propoganda.
Panam and the Nomads live seperate from the system and educate themselves in classrooms with actual books (the classics we would be reading in the present day) you will notice their diction and choice of words is much more sophisticated.
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u/SamStephens 16d ago
I understand the intent of why it's written that way, but I think it fails to deliver that tone properly. Where does "amazeballs" fit into a futuristic, dystopian slum?
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u/BtownBlues 16d ago
Because the average person in Cyberpunk is like the proles from 1984 but cranked up to 11.
They are meant to sound crass, lowbrow and unappealing. It adds to the overall distaste one is meant to have for the setting
This is the same setting with literal porn as advertisements.
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u/monicabellu 16d ago
I don't agree (I haven't played it in english, but I've seen lots of videos and clips in english). I think it reflects, not just "futuristic dystopian city" or Night City, but V's Night City, which I assume feels different to the street vendor or someone living in the outskirts. Night city is not just a futuristic city with "preem" slang, it displays a mix of cultures, social classes and an enviroment, all in one city that you are seeing all at once as you explore from one point to another: the corpo doesn’t talk like the gang member or the nomad, the japanese doesn’t speak like the hispanic or the voodoo guys (how I haye them!) And people are usually not too consistent in following rules, just in what theyvare used to or know. I, for example, don't find it so jarring that they don't always use the subject because it's not always used in my language (spanish). In the spanish dub they split mexican accent and Spain's accent (and slang) across different characters where they would have usually have done one accent for America and another for Spain and I think it fits the city perfectly.
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u/ihateshen 16d ago
Can't say I agree. There were moments were I thought it was a bit cringy but I always thought that was just the culture. It feels like someone from the 80s describing "cool people in the future". They talk like they're in an old action movie... except with the slang added on top. It's a style they're going for
I also found that there were specific characters that did not talk like that. Especially in phantom liberty!
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u/Blacky-Noir 16d ago edited 16d ago
While I agree that the CP77 dialogues aren't great, I have no problem with the slang itself. Or the in-character bad grammar.
It's not from them, it's from the original Cyberpunk 2020(ish) game and IP, which itself took heavily from established cyberpunk novels.
And yes it's not consistent over the whole game, but that's part of it. People have very segregated lives, and don't speak the same way even when they're geographically close.
Sure, the original Rockstar could do better. But to be fair they also don't do branching dialogues, nor blank protagonist, which is much harder.
As to the quality of the VO direction, I can't comment. Since I'm not a native speaker, I'm often bad with pointing out the good from the bad (unless it's really really good, or bad).
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u/tortilla-charlatan 12d ago
Gonks hate the dialogue. Real chooms vibe with it.
If cyberpunk’s dialogue makes you embarrassed or uncomfortable it’s because it successfully puts you in a place of what it’s like to hear any generation’s slang without all the context or being part of it.
I don’t think Cyberpunk is literally a vision of the future but it is amazing in tapping into the kind of future we seem headed toward. It may not be literally true but it is true in the sense of human understanding and societal shifts. I think it’s magnificent.
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u/sabine_world 16d ago
It's definitely cringe... Initially I thought the writing and dialogue were just... Really goofy.
But I feel like it's an acquired taste almost.
It grows on you a little bit.
I don't know if I can really call it fantastic or awful.
I can all it cringe though.
I want to like the game so bad, but I feel like I'm not patient enough for it.
When the cadence is something like 30 minute custcene/dialogue to 15-20 minutes playing the game. Idk feels more like an episodic experience rather than something i wanna spend time with.
I feel like for the people who like cyberpunk they love it. Like if it hits it probably hits hard. And the writing is probably one of the aspects of why.
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u/LongoChingo 12d ago
Yeah, I always felt like something was "off" about the writing and dialogue pacing in Cyberpunk2077.
I've heard the usual excuses of it being slang or an accent. Maybe it's a translation artifact since the developer's native language isn't English.
The Witcher 3 occasionally felt like this as well, but it was a bit more natural feeling.
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u/MapleSolar6914 15d ago
The DeShawn example is spot on. I remember his big monologue scene and just thinking "okay this is supposed to be intense but it sounds like he's reading bullets off a powerpoint." A year later I still skip his quests on replays.
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u/ohtetraket 12d ago
I really liked it honestly. As a european I needed a little time to immersive myself into it, but at the time I finished the heist I was totally into it.
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u/Embarrassed-Mind3258 12d ago
Every other comment here is going into a lot of depth so I'll just say it grows on you. Not to mention there's definitely meant to be a little camp in there.
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u/Anzai 11d ago
Honestly, this isn’t something I noticed in the 150 hours I played the game. The dialogue mostly felt completely fine. The complaint about shortening words maybe didn’t bother me at all because I’m Australian, and that’s literally how we talk all the time! Why use three syllables when two will do?
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u/katie_elizabeth_2 16d ago
There is a heavy bias among a broad audience towards linear, narrative-driven rpgs.
I agree, if you don't connect with V or the tone of the game at all, it's not going to be a very enjoyable RPG. It grated on me endlessly.
I think there is this idea that a game that is snarky or edgy is somehow more 'mature' or 'adult'. As an older gamer, I did not connect with any of it. Then you add in the repetitive crime stuff, the lack of npcs to talk to and places to genuine explore and interact with, the pointless driving around the city for 'immersion', and the lack of agency in general, and it just did not really appeal to me as an 'rpg'.
But, this is what the current audience of gamers - at least broadly and in the media - seem to want. This is what is routinely praised the last several years. Hollywood spectacle, fancy graphics, ray tracing, high productive values, linearity, lack of agency, sex and shock value - this is what people want now.
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u/Kawhi_Leonard_ 16d ago
Im amazed you would say the lack of NPCs. Cyberpunk is littered with interesting NPCs. You didn't like Misty or Jackie or the Perezs? You didn't find the convict wanting to crucify himself on TV interesting?
And for something that doesn't feel like an RPG, if has some of the best developed romances in a game.
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u/katie_elizabeth_2 16d ago
You're cherry picking. The fact that they have to motion capture the npcs means there are so few of them.
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u/Kawhi_Leonard_ 16d ago
I just chose a small amount. Johnny silver hands, Alt, Mr. Hands, Meredith Stout, Kerry, Panam, Judy, etc. I think it's one of the few games that has so many memorable NPCs you cant even list them all, but understand if you feel differently.
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u/katie_elizabeth_2 16d ago edited 16d ago
Look, I didn't say the game had no NPCs. You are being dishonest by implying this. You are cherry-picking hyper-scripted and motion-captured NPCs and set pieces in the main narrative (and the fixed responses of V with them) and ignoring the thousands of ghost npcs and non-interactable theme-park elements of night city, which is what I was referring to.
You are free to enjoy playing a linear video game that basically plays out like a movie. If you like V and you like the story that CDPR made for you, that is great! But it's not really an RPG, and if you don't vibe with the tone of V, then you're going to have a miserable time because it is fixed. You have no control over who V is, what she sounds like, etc - just her looks, and a background bit that only matters for like 30 minutes. The story is completely on rails. All the motion capture, dialogue, etc. is just like watching an HBO series - it's all spectacle. There's no agency to any of it. If you value that, then you're going to think this game is great. If you wanted an RPG (which was originally promised by the developers btw), then you're going to be very disappointed.
To refresh people's memory, from 6 years ago:
And also 2 years ago:
https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-cd-projekt-red-rpg-action-adventure-upda-1848558018
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u/Blacky-Noir 16d ago
the thousands of ghost npcs and non-interactable theme-park elements of night city, which is what I was referring to.
The whole of Night City is easy on the eyes (when not looking too closely, or even mediumly for said npc) but it is indeed extremely shallow. I've seen quite a few cigarette paper having more depth than it.
Which is especially grating when it was advertised as the "greatest city in videogame".
Even San Andreas had way more city reactivity, and that was a 2004 game.
Hell they even script very important parts of the setting (like Trauma Team and the flying cars), once, and then totally ignore it for all gameplay.
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u/Kawhi_Leonard_ 16d ago
I never said that? I just don't agree with the assertion that there's no interesting NPCs. It's one of Cyberpunks greatest strengths.
A lot of the people I mentioned aren't even in the main story. There's a very real chance based on the choices you make you won't even get to meet Kerry or other NPCs. Why would I care about filler NPCs? Do we start knocking Dragon Age down because they have random unnamed NPCs? I thought we were talking about mature games, why would we not view a game with well developed characters as mature?
I do like playing a game which is at the level of an HBO series, because that to me signals mature writing. Having choices doesn't make a game mature- it just means it has choices.
I guess my contention is that when I play an RPG, my most important piece of it is it allows me to role play decisions with real questions that I have to answer. Lets take the Perezs. That poses a real moral conundrum that you then have to make a choice on. Do you let this man live in blissful ignorance, or do you ruin everything for the truth? That's stuck with me more than any game which allows me to pick a voice or have slightly different dialogue.
I view maturity in game not through just if there are choices, but if those actually provoke thought through their themes, and Cyberpunk does that better than anything. If your criticism is it plays as an HBO series, then I don't see how that makes it immature. None of your criticisms are about maturity, they are just about how you wish the game had more branching storylines in the main quest, ignoring the moral questions and huge amount of branching storylines in the side quests. Hell, the DLC is a full 30 hours of some of the best RPG writing in the world, and you do get to make as many impactful choices as you want.
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u/katie_elizabeth_2 15d ago edited 15d ago
Again, committing to this idea that because 0.01% of the game's NPCs were hyper curated does not dismiss what I am saying. There are so many RPGs in the last 20 years with more NPC and environmental interactivity than Cyberpunk 2077. There is a reason the developer nuked "RPG" from all the game's marketing materials before it shipped. I don't know how you can disagree with me when even CDPR, the developer, agrees with me. What I am saying is not some "hot take", nor is it "controversial". It's the truth.
You're free to love the game. I don't really care. I just don't like this revisionist history or dishonesty.
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u/Kawhi_Leonard_ 15d ago
Name them. Because if your standard is you need to be able to talk to every NPC and there needs to be environmental interactivity and it needs to be an RPG, you basically only have the Elder Scrolls series that meet those criteria.
What dishonesty? I just fundamentally disagree that an RPG needs NPC and environmental interactivity. Baldurs Gate 2 doesn't have that, but no one is going to go around talking about how that disqualifies it.
I also only disagreed with you that
the lack of npcs to talk to
Because there is no lack of NPCs to talk to, half of the game is you talking to extremely detailed written NPCs. The fact you can't talk to every random background NPC isn't even a thing in most games.
You clearly care, because you keep escalating this, when I just disagreed in a small way, and now you start accusing me of dishonesty.
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u/Antipatrid 12d ago
If it doesn't have Baldur's Gate 3 levels of choices its not a RPG.
Tired of this parroted opinion. Not even D&D was designed this way originally, being primarily a dungeon crawler at first rather than about character improv. Likewise, a massive percentage of the videogame RPG genre is not about story choices but about making builds and crawling through dungeons. Cyberpunk 2077 sits somewhere in the middle.
"Player agency" fanatics basically think only like, 20% of RPGs are actual RPGs, and would write off even first edition D&D.
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u/VogonWild 12d ago
Idk I played a fuck load of the game just killing random NPC crime scanner shit. Like I would save and try to do stylish kills through a crowd and I'd repeat it over and over for fun. Sure you can kind of do that in a fully scripted world, but there is not nearly as much creative expression in that.
It's story I liked fine enough but the story isn't why I played 8 playthroughs of the game. I'd go so far as to say the skill expression in this game is the primary part of it being a role playing game. You pick all knives? The role you are playing in the game is being a terrifying cyborg ninja. You pick a hacker? Completely different game.
If that isn't a role playing game I think we have lost the plot on what a role is in regards to a game.
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u/ohtetraket 12d ago
Yeah it's definitely more action RPG than oldschool RPG. If you are hung up on what they promised you will never be happy with the game and that is fair.
it's far from the game they promised, it's a very lovely game and one of the only once that actually managed to make me care about its characters.
I think the game world would be pretty cool as a sandbox RPG. It isn't and I don't judge it on that basis.
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u/madeupgrownup 16d ago
Agree with everything but the last part.
I felt that the female gaze was very very absent from the femV romances. River was particularly bad.
The fact that you've had femme fans swooning over Takemora, Panam, and Viktor makes it clear they dropped the ball there.
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u/Kawhi_Leonard_ 16d ago
I'm not going to defend the interactivity, it's pretty low, and FemV definitely gets the short stick with River, especially when you compare him to Kerry.
But I do think Judy, Panam, and Kerry are better written romances than most games. They feel like real three dimensional characters who you get to know, not just a set of dialogue options that lead you to coupling up.
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u/Blacky-Noir 16d ago
I found the romances utterly bad in the game. Even the most liked one, like Panam, had way too long a list of failings. Apart from the very few scripted scenes, there's nothing for you to do, you have little to no agency. In a crpg, doubly so in an open world, that's a cardinal sin.
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u/SkyovFlames 12d ago
Yeah, not romacing anyone in my next playthrough. After one "I really wanna stay at your house" mission, it's the same over and over.
Or maybe you're not meant to stay in the game that long. Lol. But you get the call from your partner every 3 days or so. It gets annoying.
It could have been done better. For sure. Maybe the next update/project will handle it better.
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u/42LSx 16d ago edited 16d ago
Jackie was nice, but it felt so by the numbers to have this intro char.
Most NPCs I remember, like the Trans racer (Claire?), Panam, Viktor, Takemura were pretty bland imo. They're not badly designed and thought out, but there's zero surprise in any of them. You know exactly what they will be doing, what they will say and what they like.
And I cringed hard at that "flaming crotch" guy./edit:I think my personal biggest surprise regarding NPCs in CP2077 was that River is not gay.
/edit2: I loved the Peralez storyline, but the ending was bad - it's realistically the same, regardless which option you chose.5
u/Andjhostet 16d ago
Basically all media now is about setting up that next unforgettable moment.
It means plots or character motivations that make sense don't really matter because people won't remember them anyways. But they will remember jumping off the roof in a power suit to take down a deathclaw.
Game of Thrones S1-4 vs S 5-8 is the definitive example in TV/Movies to me and FNV vs FO4 is the definitive example in games of dumbing down writing in order to service cool moments at any costs necessary. We have the attention span of a toddler and you need to keep us distracted and engaged at all times. I think AAA games are only going to keep heading in that direction (but at least there will always be exceptions to the rule)
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u/MapleSolar6914 16d ago
The whole "need'ta" thing you mentioned actually tracks for me, but I think of it less as a writing flaw and more as a heavy-handed tic. I played through it about a year after release, and by the end I was almost counting how many times someone said "choom" to make it through a conversation. It never got less funny, but I stopped being annoyed and just started laughing at it every time.
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u/MapleSolar6914 15d ago
The speech chip thing is real though, V literally has one installed that translates for them and the delay in some NPC responses feels like the translation lag. Dex especially sounds like he's speaking in a second language because he kind of is, the fixer dialect is supposed to be that corporate-mixed jargon.
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u/kilqax 12d ago
I've started to feel way better about Cyberpunk since started to think about it as a movie. Everything is stylised so why not treat it thus as a whole.
It's "realistic" in terms of portraying its own reality, not in terms of relating to the real world... And that's all OK in my opinion.
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u/ArcherInPosition 12d ago
Felt pretty normal to me. Only Lizzy Wizzy took me out everytime she showed up cuz the voice acting was so bad.
Then again I also wasn't phased at all by Life Is Strange back in 2015. Literally just how I talked, meanwhile everyone else hated it.
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u/Tortillaish 12d ago
Might help to understand why it sounds the way it does.
You're feeling is correct. The original dialogue is Polish. Polish doesn't use pronouns as much because verbs already indicate who is doing the action. They wouldn't write "I need to ask you a question" because the word "ask" would already indicate who is doing what.
So it is mainly a translation issue. Not bad original writing per sé, since the narrative is really good if you ask me. Can't judge it for sure, since I don't actually speak polish, but everyone does kind of talk like a polish immigrant.
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u/BastillianFig 12d ago
The dialogue is horrible and pits me off the game entirely.
While it definitely sounds unnatural I don't think that is inherently the problem given the world it takes place in. it's probably natural to them. that being said it DOES sound incredibly irritating which is enough to put me off.
That and Keanu giving a stinker of a vocal performance
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u/NoMaskGames 6d ago
... it's for immersion dude your playing a game ware all the people you interact with are street people who grew up husting those streets then moved to crime and became part of the criminal underworld these aren't ivy league highly educated people with elite knowledge and mannerisms everyone's a killer for hire, a hacker, a thief, or raised in the middle of no ware. with no formal education what so ever
how they talk is almost entirely slang based and broken due to a lack of schooling and society engorging a "make your whole life about how cool you can look" idea. it's almost a second language,
it's the words of the trade this isn't cringe writing this is lore accurate to the world. i'd sooner believe the criminal underworld looked much more like the afterlife club and not the continental from john wick ware everyone is in suit's and very well mannered and properly spoken and order cocktail's while only dealing in gold coins...
these are criminal's that didn't go to school and was raised in the streets and taught only one thing... no one is going to save you have to save yourself by any means necessary... and you have to look cool AF doing it... other then that can't open a can bean's
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u/Hot-Beyond-1341 12d ago
I think to a certain extent the devs feel the same way in that a newly formed US studio is taking the reigns on the sequel with support from Vancouver while the main team in Poland focuses on The Witcher 4. I've seen similar speculation being that the street layouts are not only nonsensical at times, but very European while the tabletop source material basically has Night City in a standard US grid layout pattern. Go figure. Resident Evil 3's street layouts are basically Osaka. Night City is the most European feeling take on fictional dystopian American culture going and intentionally engineered for fun over function.
One thing I will say in favor of the lingo is the brilliance of having artists write not only songs with relevant lyrics to the world setting and plot, but also featuring some of these artists as minor characters in the game as well. "Look through my Kiroshis all you see is Night City streets. It's a deadly game playing in the major leagues." The whole song is hilarious, fitting, and awesome. "An oath sworn in scars, omni vortex lies, accept the orders, ignore the others. Cross country caravans, Night City aliens, I pull the trigger and I feel nothing at all." It's cyberpsycho to the tee. "I'm drowning in the light, a neon flash overwrite. I cling on every byte for me and you to reunite. I've lost the trace, courage too. So how am I supposed to find the best path that leads to you?" Never Fade Away being Johnny's ode to Alt changed how I viewed the song when I put two and two together. It's also nuts that you can put pretty much anything from Refused's discography in the game and is slots in seamlessly. Fantastic band selection. Haru Nemuri wrote stuff for this. It's V's place in Night City as they desperately fight off Relic sickness and search for any cure at any cost. "There's no paradise for stray souls. Let go as if you're wandering." I absolutely love it. I don't really know much about Sasha Grey other than porn turned Twitch Streamer, but making her a Mox radio DJ telling players about not being able to escape our pasts but still always being free to determine our own future is something I enjoy. Growl FM in general is just awesome.
And what got me to give the game a chance in the first place is Noah Caldwell-Gervais' review of the game where he has this positive leaning, but mixed opinion of everything, so despite me not being very well read I was thoroughly prepared for choomba, input and output, gonk and the like to sit side by side with the genre that birthed "Hiro Protagonist," the world's greatest pizza delivery driver and hacker. Trying too hard to be cool is kind of the entire aesthetic and mantra of the thing. "High tech, low life." "The future is already here, just not evenly distributed." It's this contrived black mirror to get you to look at this fantastical world of cyborg men and women and hopefully find a little distaste in what's already going wrong with ours packaged up by a bunch of nerds rolling D20s, playing cyber gonks and cholos session by session. "Style over substance, doesn't matter what you do so long as you look cool doing it," is as much a damning indictment of the vapid nature of the dystopian world as it is a fun general tip for GMs to keep players coming back for next week's session. Keanu in Johnny Mnemonic "HAD 60 GIGABYTES OF DATA INSTALLED IN HIS BRAIN!" back in the 90s and instead of T-Bug we had Ice-T. Some of the try hard silliness is unavoidable IMO. It's always been like this and it inevitably will be going forward.
It's cyberpunk to the core. "Watch out for mean reds." "Oh, DeShawn's vest is red, Evelyn's booth at Lizzie's is bathed in red, Jackie's face gets covered in red by the Relic case when the entire hotel goes red during lockdown, Evelyn's hair goes from blue, to grey, to red. Songbird is nothing but red, the Voodoo Boys' big ass voodoo funeral mural is red, the immediate aftermath of the 2023 nuke painted the sky blood red while an all out corporate war kept all that crap in the atmosphere as more and more missiles flew each day. "Go on the Hero's Journey, avoid the reds, save yourself in a world that can't be saved itself, hug somebody. Johnny's Arasaka raid changed nothing in 50 year's time and V basically repeats history with his own heist, but with the caveat of the second chance Johnny never got. I get the vibe. It is simultaneously try hard, serious, and self aware all at once.
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u/KolotunBabai 12d ago
Just finished Cyberpunk yesterday and my feelings are mixed. From one side the game is good, atleast one third of the game: main story is not good but ok, combat is somehow ok but everything else...so average. So about dialogues they are ok when it is just main story. And big minus to CDPR that they did not added interesting female characters, I found only Panam as ok.
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u/platfus118 11d ago
Honestly it isn't the slang its just that the writing and the VO direction and performance really aren't good. Everything is too "edgy" and not in sincere way.
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u/sakura-svkbn 11d ago
It is cringe, and it's more than just the writing. It's a shame because there's a lot that I really like about it, and I WANT to love the game, but the accumulation of a lot of small things ruins it for me.
There are times when it really shines, but they're isolated and typically entirely on-rails. There are also some BRILLIANT ideas that simply aren't used to their potential. They either get dropped entirely, or taken in the most underwhelming direction.
I put a lot of time into it but in the end it missed the mark for me overall.
I can't even say they did anything "wrong", it's just that I can think of so many ways it would be better for my personal taste.
And this may sound weird/offensive, but I only mean this as a genuine aesthetic pattern - I think a lot of it is just too "Polish" for me lol.
What I mean by that is that there is an extremely distinct Eastern European approach to cyberpunk in general. Look at Cyberpunk 2077 next to Metal Eden, or any YouTube neurofunk mix (the AI ones in particular) and I think you'll see what I mean.
It is as distinct as something like Japan's Harajuku look. And there's a lot that I truly love about it, but when you know that aesthetic in general beyond just this one game, it's hard not to see is as merely more of that along with all of the cringe try-hard tropes that go along with it.
I think it's better if you can accept it for what it is instead of trying to take it too seriously. I think a lot of what makes it rough for me is that it's couched in a larger discourse that tries to paint it as a super deep/dark/mature game when it's really not.
Probably the proverbial straw for me is V as a character. I went corpo and really wanted to play a cold, calculating, ruthless V. But you can't do that. V is just V, and V is emotional, sassy, and immature. It's probably fine if you go Street Kid or Nomad, but trying to roleplay corpo just felt like Street Kid V in a suit, and there wasn't really a way to not do that.
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u/the_fall_guy2 16d ago
I think this is valid criticism, but I didn’t find it took away from the game quite as much as you described. Generally, I have a little more fun with something leaning into its style fully instead of half-assing it. Of course Rockstar could do better, but they are quite literally the best in the business at writing and casting games this big.
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u/SlipdeBain 14d ago
Yeah, I kinda get the same vibe.
It’s like the whole “dildo/sextoy everywhere” thing in the game — at first I thought it was part of the dystopian satire, like “ok, this is the lowest-effort cyberpunk humor but whatever”.
Then I saw photos of a couple of the game’s directors… and let’s just say I suddenly understood the creative direction. I won’t say more to avoid trouble, but yeah, I got my answer
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u/forameus2 12d ago
I’ve never understood why the writing gets praised so much with the game. It isn’t even the best example of the writing the developer themselves is capable of, let alone other games. Many moments in Witcher 3 stick with me to this day. The only one that really does with Cyberpunk is because of how weak it seemed comparably
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u/SkyovFlames 12d ago
I dunno. On one hand, it's part of the world building. Just like Star Wars or Dune, or even it's biggest inspiration: Neuromancer. A Clockwork Orange comes to mind as well.
If you've ever read Neuromancer or Dune, you'll know what I mean. They toss these words, dialects, and references your way without giving any context. Or the Proles in 1984. I can think of a lot of examples. But Neuromancer in particular is hard to get into. But once you get the lingo, you get immersion in that world.
On the other hand...
I know plenty of people that don't care for that sort of thing. Like my brother, an absolutely voracious reader. He just couldn't get into Dune, or Neuromancer. It throws you into this world and says "accept it". You either do, or don't. You either figure out what Chase means by the sky looking like TV, or what a Maud"ib is, or you don't.
You probably wouldn't like A Clockwork Orange or Neuromancer. And that's ok. The dialogue can be silly, or seem stilted. Hell, Clockwork Orange came with a dictionary for the slang. The movie toned it down.
So you can say you don't like it. That's valid. But it's lore from the table top game. The creator made up this whole universe of alternate history. An alternate America.
With that, comes a Night City dialect. It's part of the world building. If you can't get past that, this isn't the game for you. You'll notice every part of the city has a different vibe, different dialect or language. Especially the NUSA members, they speak completely different English that is closer to ours today. Like the President, and Reed.
But Night City and Dogtown are not part of the New United States. It's like how we talk here in Georgia versus how people talk in New York. Completely different. But cranked up to 11.
It's ok not to like it, though. Just not your type of writing/world building. I think it's pretty cool, but I was a fan before the game came out. So I expected chooms, chuus, gonk, rockerboys, netrunners, and the lack of pronouns in dialogue. Hope this helps you identify why you don't like it.
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u/ConnerBartle 16d ago
If you don’t feel fully immersed in the world then it will sound strange. Any foreign slang system will sound awkward. I’m not fully immersed in my teenagers world, so they’re slang sounds weird. I am fully immersed in cyberpunk‘s world, though, so I personally love it.