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toblix

Cyberpunk 2077

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They're talking about this:

Ah, I was thinking to literally. I thought there was a gun to head blade arm lady image floating around from 20 years ago

As for the trailer, I feel inclined to let them of the hook slightly. If you look at their body of work this appears to be the first overtly sexual material the studio has created and they must've been working from a brief from cd project red.

http://www.behance.net/platigeimage

http://www.platige.com/en/

If you look at the cyberpunk 2077 Facebook page it's tits city. Considering the amount of high quality interesting concept art they've produced every thumbnail is using the booby lady it's embarrassing

https://www.facebook.com/CyberpunkGame

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It looks a though they were originally going with corset, stockings and suspenders. Then changed to a kind of surgical wrap, so they must've been trying to steer it away from looking like a prostiute. Maybe shes supposed to be fresh off the surgical table and has gone crazy...

e43636dd4d24b3162f6929b027e9875f.jpg

db544b85e586117aeafbdc80e6672697.jpg

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Besides the arm blades, what part of this character is unique? It's just Natalie Portman with bigger boobs and crotch out. She's already been in Prince of Persia, and she's tending to be as popular as Ellen Paige in games now.

Also Grasshopper Manufacturer already made this character:

223348-kaedesmith_large.png

Guess what? Kaede was the most boring in Killer 7 as well.

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Adding the original PnP designer to the team makes me hope the game will lean more towards Witcher's modification or standard RPG systems than just futureboobs, but it's also hard to deny that sexy sexness isn't pretty baked into the cyberpunk concept. The nightmare (or rapturous) future of fucking a robot is basically a central tenant.

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I can only assume that by 'bland female design' they mean the tendency for all female video game characters to be slim with big breasts, so in order to push the boundaries in aesthetic design they made a lady...who is slim....with big breasts...

I'm pretty sure the conversation went like this:

Designer 1: I dunno, she looks so banal. So cliche.

Designer 2: Well, what if I gave her bigger boobs?

Designer 1: No, that's not it. We need to push the female aesthetic boundaries. Really redefine how women are portrayed in the medium.

Designer 2: Ok....what if I gave her super sick blade arms?

Designer 1: Yes! Also go ahead and make her boobs bigger. And spread her legs more. Perfect.

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It's high art because it's satirizing that woman in games tend to have their female aesthetic boundaries pushed. It's brilliant.

This is what all "art" discussion sounds like to me.

Didn't mean to "interpret" anything for anyone. Just "Hey look, violence and half naked hot chick, OK!" Which is why I suppose I'm disappointed that they DID go art on it. Just say it's violence and a half naked hot chick, I'm good with that, I don't need any explanation for that.

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As refferenced by that "making of the trailer" quote, and the video posted before, I think there's people on that team who really want the cyberpunk genre to be like holding up a mirror to society, accelerating what sucks about the human nature by a hundred years, a fertile environment to make commentary on man's inhumanity and so on and so on. BUT when your starting point is people cybernetically-enhancing themselves, it's really easy to slip into making a story about how cool robots are, and how badass the future is.

I think Deus Ex, Too Human, Ghost In The Shell, The Matrix and a hundred other near-future stories start off from that psuedo-psychology angle, and then turn out to be slow-motion spinning around sexy gun woman.

It's neither on the side of the fun of indulgence nor classy.

When I said "being indulgent" I meant the designers making things that they just think would look cool, like you said.

Maybe I'm using the wrong word and should've said "being gratuitous" instead, or something.

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The original Deus Ex did a fine job, although the human nature stuff wasn't as blatant as "what happens when we get robot arms" because by the time the game takes place, robot arms are starting to become obsolete. You're 100% right about the other stuff, though - for every interesting philosophical insight in Ghost in the Shell, there's a naked cyborg lady with her tits out to here.

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Judging from how CPR handled the Witchers, I'm sure there will be some interesting philosophical insight to be found in Cyberpunk. But right now all we're being shown is the guns and tits. Which is why it's annoying. And which is why I hate teasers.

Also, I think you can make comments on human nature and the results of never-ending human expansion and technological development at the same time as reveling in how bad ass it all looks. It's kind of the double edged blade of dystopian future sci fi. See Fifth Element and Blade Runner.

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Judging from how CPR handled the Witchers, I'm sure there will be some interesting philosophical insight to be found in Cyberpunk. But right now all we're being shown is the guns and tits. Which is why it's annoying. And which is why I hate teasers.

Also, I think you can make comments on human nature and the results of never-ending human expansion and technological development at the same time as reveling in how bad ass it all looks. It's kind of the double edged blade of dystopian future sci fi. See Fifth Element and Blade Runner.

Since you liked those, and to anyone else who did, by all means go read Snow Crash!

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for every interesting philosophical insight in Ghost in the Shell, there's a naked cyborg lady with her tits out to here.

Are we talking about the movie here? Because I always thought there was a point to the nudity in that film. Being that Kusanagi is a full-body cyborg who is unsure that she's even human anymore. How do I word this... A symptom of her existential crisis? Like how in one scene, Batou covers her up, but that seems more for his sense of decency rather than hers.

Or I am rationalizing too much.

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That's an argument that's made. But Bataou is also going through a similar crisis and you never see any gratuitously sexual shots of his body as you do with hers. And her sexualization undermines the point that in this post-human world, gender and body identity ceases to matter. It's a flawed film/book, but it does make some really interesting statements; many of which are deconstructed here: http://www.depauw.ed...77/silvio77.htm - Worth a read if you're a fan of the film.

And Frenetic Pony, Snow Crash is a great read. Someone else mentioned Altered Carbon which is a fantastic trilogy set in a similar universe. Neuromancer is of course, also required reading for fans of the genre.

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In the GitS show there's a point made about Kusanagi choosing her body to be the way it is simply to use the sex appeal to mess with people's heads as well.

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Full disclosure: speaking from a position of privilege here, so feel free to ignore: I thought the camera focusing on that one store with the 'sexy' lady poster slapped on the front, seemed to me like the Teaser was telling me that this murderous android was some sort of tool for depraved pleasure that -after gaining some sort of consciousness- went on a rampage. I thought there was some tragic theme behind the mere flesh & tits of it all. That doesn't excuse anything but it seemed like it had that level of depth at least.

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In the GitS show there's a point made about Kusanagi choosing her body to be the way it is simply to use the sex appeal to mess with people's heads as well.

I think something like that is just an easy way for the creators to justify why a female character looks a certain way. They pretend to give the character agency by saying it's her 'choice' to look this way (when really the character's agency is entirely dependent on the creator, so it's really his 'choice') but then they also get to depict a gratuitously sexy lady. It's a have your cake and eat it too situation that I like to call the Cortana-paradox.

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What are the right reasons for a female character to look a certain way, though? The other extreme is equally troubling. Characters are designed, you're right. I agree with the basic points: there needs to be more variety among the creators of video games to offer more variety on the other end. I wouldn't say that men cannot create compelling female characters but I would like more women to create female characters. They can bring interesting innovation and new viewpoints to an already stagnant industry plagued by some really nasty stereotypes. I don't want to position them as saviors: I am merely saying that this won't do any damage to video games, it will improve them. Video games are experiences and they are fed by the experiences of their creators. A broader type of experience might allow more complexity and diversity to flow into their games.

I think something like that is just an easy way for the creators to justify why a female character looks a certain way. They pretend to give the character agency by saying it's her 'choice' to look this way (when really the character's agency is entirely dependent on the creator, so it's really his 'choice') but then they also get to depict a gratuitously sexy lady. It's a have your cake and eat it too situation that I like to call the Cortana-paradox.

There is a great article by Claire Hosking on the re-design of Cortana that might relate to this topic.

On the teaser . . . I am conflicted. In the words of John Scalzi, I live life on easy mode. That female android coupled with the shot of that store makes her out to be some sort of pleasure/sex bot that is rampaging after gaining some sort of consciousness. That is what I got from it but then again, I understand the, legitimate, concern about her depiction. I think

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I don't think androids are even part of that world. They're people with bits changed.

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Oh I agree for sure that men can create amazing female characters. I was generalizing a bit with my comment there. As far as the right reasons for a female character's appearance: I think there's a difference with designing an attractive character versus designing an attractive character who is purposefully their to titillate and unfortunately, most female characters fall into that latter category. Framing plays a big issue as well. Take the Cyberpunk trailer. I don't necessarily care that there's a sexy lady in it, but the way she's framed -- the close, tight shots of different parts of her body -- makes it clear that she's there to provoke a very specific response from an assumed straight, male audience. That's when the issue of sexy lady character design arises.

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I think something like that is just an easy way for the creators to justify why a female character looks a certain way. They pretend to give the character agency by saying it's her 'choice' to look this way (when really the character's agency is entirely dependent on the creator, so it's really his 'choice') but then they also get to depict a gratuitously sexy lady. It's a have your cake and eat it too situation that I like to call the Cortana-paradox.

Very true. I think I found it interesting because anime/manga never bother trying to justify anything like that at all. Usually it's just TnA as much as you can.

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My question was this: is there a reason that highly-sexualized lady is there, other than to titillate and I think the trailer allows for a different interpretation: namely that the creators are using the sexualized nature of the cyborg to make some sort of statement about the world she is living in, something with which she obviously responds to with violence and desperation. I am not saying that this isn't problematic or the right interpretation, I am just not sure that this teaser deserves to be labeled with the same scrutiny as Hitman: Absolution, which really was the worst sexist crap imaginable (see Brandon Keogh's response). In other words, I think there is a difference in the intent of creators and the intent of the setting or world Cyberpunk 2077 will play out in. I am not expecting well-rounded characters in teasers. I am expecting glimmers of humanity and some sort of reason why she is hyper-sexualized. The trailer leaves some room for me to speculate on why she is framed in this way - I don't think it is that clear. I am aware that this plays with an assumed straight, male audience and I don't want to dismiss that.

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While I still think we're reading stuff that isn't necessarily present in the video, I can try and address your particular reading. That she is an escaped pleasure cyborg smacks of the same kind of rationalization as Kusanagi using her body to distract men. Ultimately these are still just nuances aligned with the general intent of fetishizing women's bodies. Why does she have to be a crazed sex bot? Because it's a perfect combination of sex and violence, the bread and butter of film and video games.

The nuns in Absolution have a similar rationalization. They're all rescued women from various war torn regions of the world. It's implied they've been sexual victims. It's a very similar calculus: that they're in the act of seeking revenge justifies the fact that they're portrayed in an oversexualized manner, because somehow that's their personal choice in reacting to their origins. I don't really buy it.

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And it is still CD Projekt RED after all. The Witcher 1 and 2 didn't really prove they could handle sexual themes with maturity. Better than a lot of others, but still pandering to males. That aside, I am quite curious what this will end up being though. Especially curious about the world, because RED builds some sweet worlds!

Thanks for that link by the way. I will give it a read soon.

I think something like that is just an easy way for the creators to justify why a female character looks a certain way. They pretend to give the character agency by saying it's her 'choice' to look this way (when really the character's agency is entirely dependent on the creator, so it's really his 'choice') but then they also get to depict a gratuitously sexy lady. It's a have your cake and eat it too situation that I like to call the Cortana-paradox.

Yea, excellent point.

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Are we talking about the movie here? Because I always thought there was a point to the nudity in that film. Being that Kusanagi is a full-body cyborg who is unsure that she's even human anymore. How do I word this... A symptom of her existential crisis? Like how in one scene, Batou covers her up, but that seems more for his sense of decency rather than hers.

Or I am rationalizing too much.

I think you're absolutely right... but let's just say that it's not surprising that that character was a woman. A sexy woman. :eyebrow:

Edit: Looks like Argo got there first.

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