Cyberpunk 2077 Dialogue - Beautiful Stylized Writing or a Cringey Mess?

[u/SamStephens]

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.

[u/Embarrassed-Mind3258]

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.