Cyberpunk 2077

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Cyberpunk 2077 is a Role-Playing Game developed by CD Projekt Red and based off of the Cyberpunk RPG by Mike Pondsmith. Released turbulently in 2020 after years of hype, a number of patches have since improved the game.

You play in first-person view as "V", a customizable former (depending on the Multiple Choice Past) Corpo, Nomad, or Streetkid turned mercenary in Night City, North America. When a heist to steal an experimental biochip from the Arasaka Corporation Goes Horribly Wrong, he/she awakens with the Virtual Ghost of infamous Rockerboy Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves) in his head, and must hurry to get to the bottom of things before time runs out.

Has a website here.

Tropes used in Cyberpunk 2077 include:

• Abandoned Warehouse: Several of these exist on the edge of the city.
• Ace Pilot: If propaganda encountered early in the corpo lifepath is to be believed, Saburo Arasaka was one of the most decorated Japanese Naval pilots of World War II.
• Advert-Overloaded Future: There are adverts all over the place.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Delamain refuses to deviate course to a ripperdoc, since that isn’t the route the client paid for. May be averted: Given his impressive medical knowledge, he may have just known Jackie was too far gone, and that getting his stable client to safety was the best option.
  • Played straight with some rouge instances of Delamain.
• Alternate Continuity: Shares a lot in common with the RPG, but also has a lot different.
• Alternate History: By 2013 brain uploading technology exists.
• Amusement Park of Doom: A shuttered amusement park occupied by gang members can be found in Pacifica.
• Analog Punk: Not a straight example, but there’s way more paper media and removable physical media then one would expect given how far in the future it is.
• The Apunkalypse: Society is heavily degrading, and many of the people on the streets are punks.
• Asshole Victim: Dexter DeShawn backstabs the player, but still gets killed due to events set off by a death he was only tangentially involved in, and one that he didn’t want any part in either.
• Attack Drone: These pop up in a few areas.
• Automated Automobiles: Delamain offers and inhabits these. Player owned vehicles can also be summoned to their location remotely.
• Back from the Dead: Happens to V due to slotting in the relic after the heist goes south.
• Bland-Name Product: The products that the player can buy are all made up, often complete with advertising for the product being visible in game.
• Body Horror: Some of the cybernetic implants, but especially Maelstrom, since most of their face is replaced.
• Bouncer: Can be seen at clubs.
• Brain-Computer Interface: V has one to jack into computers.
• Brain Uploading: The relic contains an engram of Johnny Silverhand.
• Bullet Time: There are ways to make the gameplay slow down a bit. Other characters can use the same mechanics against the player, dodging bullets in a blur.
• Car Fu: Even without vehicular weapons, ramming with a vehicle is an effective tactic.
• The Casino: An underground casino can be visited as part of a job.
• Character Customization: V's stats are selected by the player.
• The City Narrows: Some areas of Night City have a bad reputation, even for Night City.
• City of Adventure: Night City is the focal point of the game.
• Combat Medic: The player can encounter Trauma Team very early on. Even though they’re helping the same person, it doesn’t stop them from keeping a gun trained on the player once the body is laid down in the stretcher.
• The Conspiracy: There are several conspiracies ongoing during the game.
• Conspiracy Theorist: V must appease Clarice by destroying plastic flamingos, which Clarice seems to think are part of some dangerous plot.
• Conspiracy Thriller: Much of the plot derives from various corporate conspiracies, with V tied up or intentionally inserting themselves into them.
• Cool Bike: Jackie rides one.
• Cool Train: An abandoned nuclear powered freight locomotive can be brought back online and used in a heist. Despite being abandoned in the desert, its bright yellow paint job is intact.
• Coolest Club Ever: A few in game.
  • Jackie talks about the Afterlife bar like this, and in universe isn’t far off.
  • Lizzie's Bar is typically pretty active.
• Culture Chop Suey: Night City is an amalgamation of cultures on top of an American base, which is itself a melting pot of cultures.
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Its implied that too much cyberwear can have drawbacks.
• Cyberpunk: Exactly What It Says on the Tin, megacorps hold huge influence, technology is massively improved, but not in ways that benefit the average joe.
• Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: When it rains in Night City.
• Cyberpunk Is Techno: Not all music, but some of the tracks are quite electronic.
• Cyberspace: Can be visited when working with the Voodoo Boys.
• Cyborg: Cybernetic implants are extremely common.
• Dangerous Workplace: Being counterintel in Arasaka is dangerous, As corpo V learns.
• Decade Dissonance: The wealthy use incredible technology, while poorer areas often make due with obsolete technology. Because the wealth is highly concentrated in night city, different areas tend to have different levels of tech on display.
• Development Hell: Had a long and storied development.
• Disappeared Dad: V half heartedly accuses Delamain of this when dealing with one of his rouge cars.
• Divided States of America: The New United States of America is fractured.
• Down in the Dumps: A huge junkyard exists on the edge of Night City.
• Dying Town: Some of the communities surrounding Night City are incredibly small and depressed.
• Dystopia: There are massive societal problems that aren’t being addressed anytime soon.
• Enemy Civil War: Militech has a small scale internal conflict between management trying to flush out a mole.
• Establishing Character Moment: In the english version, Adam Smasher describes Evelyn as a "cut of fuckable meat" when he meets her on a flashback. From this single sentence, you can see he lacks any kind of etiquette or regard for human life.
• Everything Is Online: Not literally everything, but a surprising number of everyday objects can be hacked remotely.
• Evil Old Folks: Comes up a few times.
  • Saburo Arasaka is in charge of one of the most powerful megacorps, and Jackie comments that he’s 150 years old.
  • Adam Smasher was a highly known mercenary in 2023, and is still doing high profile mercenary work in 2077. Of course, he’s more machine than man.
• Expansion Pack: The Phantom Liberty DLC.
• Extreme Graphical Representation: A lot of tech is needlessly over the top in graphical representation, employing holograms and screens when a plain counter or button would work just as well.
• Failure Is the Only Option: Johnny Silverhand has a drink named after him at the Afterlife bar, so The player has a fair idea the mission will not play out well when he deviates from plan to make an upload.
• Flying Car: Favored by Trauma Team.
• Foreshadowing: Johnny Silverhand is brought up at the bar just before the job before he is introduced.
• Friendly Local Chinatown: Night City has a Chinatown.
• Future Slang: Lots, mostly in the form of Choom and Gonk.
• Gambit Pileup: The unexpected intersection of Arasaka family politics with the heist for the relic kicks off the events of the game.
• Game Within a Game: Some arcade machines are playable.
• Gang of Hats: A few of these exist in Night City, such as the Scavs that specialize in stealing cybernetic gear.
• Genius Bruiser: Viktor Vektor as a doctor and a boxer.
• Ghost Town: One is the site of a fire fight when getting Pan Am's car back.
• Gaia's Lament: The environment is seriously degraded, and it is discussed that many animals are scarce or extinct.
• Gone Horribly Right: Computer logs show that Delamain, an AI, was able to turn a struggling company around, automating more and more work until he simply bought out the rest of the company and no longer needed human employees. He was at least affable about this, treating his former coworkers fairly and with respect.
• Guns Are Worthless: Typically averted, as guns are typically an effective weapon. Against enemies who have enhanced speed, they can dodge most bullets with their own Bullet Time.
• Hacker Cave: The Voodoo Boys have one in an abandoned maglev station.
• Historical Domain Character: In Jackie's garage it is mentioned that Jackie thought that Ernest Hemingway was seen as tougher then Morgan Blackhand when inspecting his copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls.
• Hollywood Hacking: Quick Hacks. Just scan something electronic and it can probably be hacked near instantly.
• Industrial Ghetto: Parts of Night City.
• Japan Takes Over the World: Downplayed, it’s not Japan so much as their megacorp Arasaka being a major world player. A newscaster comments on their aircraft carrier being parked next to Night City.
• The Juggernaut: Adam Smasher is depicted as this.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: A ton of named characters exist in the game.
• The Mall: A run down one exists in Pacifica.
• Manchurian Agent: Mayoral candidate Jefferson Peralez and his wife Elizabeth Peralez are having their thoughts influenced and monitored by their own security team. They aren’t the only ones being targeted by such activities.
• Mega Corp: Quite a few in the setting. Arasaka is the most prominent example, but there are others such as Militech.
• Mission Control: T-Bug, while infiltrating the hotel and the events leading up to it.
• Multiple Choice Past: The player can choose one of three Lifepaths for V, each of which unlocks some unique sidequests and dialogue options.
• New Neo City: A data shard with flavor text explains that there is Old Dubai that is hard to live in but left alone from corporate oversight, and a separate New Dubai that is safer.
• Neural Implanting: Through use of shards.
• No-Tell Motel: An intentional example with the name No-Tell Motel.
• Nuke'Em: Johnny Silverhand did this to Arasaka Tower, dropping a duffle bag sized device down an elevator shaft.
• Obvious Beta: The initial release was deeply flawed, to say the least.
  • The game especially faltered on the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 at launch, which was a problem given that these were used by a significant portion of the player base, and that edition consoles had been released that were only barely able to play the game they were themed after.
  • For a time, Google Stadia was recommended as the platform the play it on if the user did not own a high end PC.
  • The YouTube channel Rerez has a video showing the unpatched state of the game on the Xbox One S.
• Older Than They Look: Justified: The wealthy can afford anti-aging treatments.
  • Some of the former members of the band Samurai look between 40 and 60 in 2077, but were at the peak of their musical careers by 2023.
  • Saburo Arasaka is 150 years old, and can walk around by himself, and is still a sharp schemer. Granted he looks closer to 90, but that’s not bad given his extreme age.
• Oppressive States of America: Enough that some states fought against the government for more autonomy.
• Precision F-Strike: Delamain, who normally never swears, tells "Beep Beep Motherfucker" during a hit and run on V's car in a Parking garage. It wasn’t the true Delamain, who is always polite, but a rouge aspect.
• Privately-Owned Society: The Mega-Corps clearly hold a lot of sway over the Night City government, and are the real power players of the city.
• The Rock Star: Johnny Silverhand was this, complete with groupies, attitude problems, and groupies.
• Ragdoll Physics: Pretty noticeable on corpses.
• R-Rated Opening: One of the first missions has the player rescue an unconscious person in the nude.
• Scenery Porn: The layout and architecture of Night City are fleshed out, featuring vibrant and distinct areas.
• Schizo-Tech: V needs to find a punch card to steal a nuclear powered locomotive, a cyberdeck that was top of the line in 2020 still has security countermeasures that nearly fry one of 2077s best netrunners, etc.
• Shout Out: Several:
  • An arcade machine can be found in the game that shows pixelated versions of Roach and Gerald from The Witcher.
  • One of the motorbikes looks somewhat similar to the iconic one from Akira.
  • A rouge Delamain voice is GLaDOS from Portal.
  • Some of the umbrellas reference the illuminated pillar design of those seen in Blade Runner.
  • At the end of a rail tunnel lies a bloodbath with a log. The contents and location are a clear reference to the memetic train mission from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
• An arcade machine depicting Johnny Silverhand escaping Arasaka tower is styled after Doom.
• Show Within a Show: Televsion broadcasts can be seen in game.
• Soul Fragment: The Relic contains an engram of Johnny Silverhand.
• Spin-Off media includes:
  • Cyberpunk 2077: Trauma Team: A Comic Book Adaptation published by Dark Horse Comics.
  • Cyberpunk: Edgerunners animated by Studio Trigger.
• Take Your Time: In most cases there is really no rush to do anything.
• Tarot Motifs: There are scannable punk themed tarot graffiti in different parts of Night City.
• Technology Porn: A lot of the high tech gear, cars, etc in the game is highly detailed, often with at least a short blurb about it.
• Used Future: A lot of night city has seen better days. Some neighborhoods exemplify this more then others, providing contrast.
• Vice City: Night City is one, with a number of vices plain to see in public view.
• Video Phone: Comms display a picture of the contact.
• Virtual Ghost: The Engram of Johnny Silverhand.
• Virtual Paper Doll: The player selects what V wears.
• Wrench Wench: Several are featured in the story.
  • Panam is first met working on a car.
  • Judy is a skilled braindance editor who also has a robotics workbench in her apartment.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Many characters have dyed hair, including blue hair.
• Your Head Asplode: Ozob Bozo has a grenade implanted where his nose should be. Keep punching him in the head, and it will go off.
• Zeerust Canon: Being based on the much earlier tabletop RPG, a lot of designs are clearly based on the design and expectations of The Eighties.