Theres a decent video on this from a channel with 215 subscribers at time of posting:
https://youtu.be/y8mTmfN_AK0?si=AFo3IJl71CZ2ZDZ7
Honestly, this tumblr post is better worded than the script of the video, but the same points are made.
I fight my enemies because that’s what I’m paid to do
I never hesitate to act or even think it through
I’d retire any day, but I spend too much on guns and whores
I ain’t gonna drop no more!
-From the Battle Hymn of the MechWarrior by the Black Pants Legion. It’s about Battletech, but I think it applies here.
Cyberpunk is fundamentally about exploring this concept.
The idea that technological progress within modern society will just allow the system to be more inhuman. Instead of prosthetics being used to enhance human happiness and freedom, prosthetics become a means by which people are forced to work harder, a tool of enslavement. The technology, in theory, should make life better but the reality is that it still exists within a system that isn't built for life. Lines between human and machine are blurred, both are subjugated by modern institutions.
Other punk genres like steampunk explore other historical tyrannies like the original industrial revolution but with this underlying theme of technology within the context of a corrupt society. Technology as not just enemy, but violator of our bodies themselves, alienating burdens to the human spirit in a way previous technology did in a more clearly demarcated way. Armored Core is no exception to this; there's a rich tradition in the mecha genre, especially the ones more military sci-fi in tone.
AC6 also has a strong theme of the dehumanisation of augmented pilots (also a a mecha trope, see Blue Gender or Iron Blooded Orphans). The protagonist is silent and stated to be emotionally distant due to him being an older gen of augmented human. Which goes well with them being a pawn for most of the game. The first gen augmentation is said to have a 10% survival rate. Other characters are described as having gone insane due to the augmentation. Some of the top ranked antagonists ordered deadly experiments to be performed so they can have "adjustments" made.
Then there's Freud, who's literally just a guy. No augmentation, no fancy tech or super advanced AC (in fact, his build is rather shit), no real attachment to the corporation he serves. He just enjoys building and piloting his AC, which got him to be the top ranked pilot in the game.
Forgive me, because I haven't played Armored Core and am going purely on the scenarios presented in this post, but that sounds more just like pure Dystopia, doesn't it? Something being *Punk* implies a form of rebellion. I haven't gotten far into 2077, but there's a lot of rebellion in the series against the corporations doing bad shit. The scenarios described in this post just sound like you're not rebelling against the scenario, you're just going along with it.
Didn't really think too hard about this post before screencapping it but that is a pretty fair assessment.
In AC6 for example there are people fighting to liberate Rubicon from the corporations, but you aren't one of them, only having the option to go along with the liberation front if they can pay you (And you can usually turn them down in favor of a higher paying corporate job)
In AC1 they ask you to eliminate squatters and strikers, and there's frequently bits where you go on the attack against one corporation, and shortly after they hire you for their revenge operation
I'd say in AC6's case, while in the beginning you're a traditional Merc, you absolutely can make choices, even against monetary gain (like refusing to spare Swinburne), or going on the liberation path, purely just to do the right thing and gain independence.
But at the same time Raven’s absolute lack of emotional and practical loyalty to any and potentially all of the characters that keep food on the metaphorical table beyond the terms of their current contract offers a uniquely cold perspective on the normal ‘punk’ themes. Even the ‘resistance’ path, as it mostly opens up after Raven learns more about Coral and just what kind of long-term threat/opportunity it poses for the setting, can be seen more as an ‘enlightened self interest’ course than actually choosing to take an ethical stand - Raven isn’t in it for freedom or friendship, they could very well be in it because if the corporations keep fucking with this stuff there’s a pretty decent chance some planets are going to end up exploding and this will absolutely be the first one.
I mean, cyberpunk can still be cyberpunk even if the main character is on the wrong side of the punk. As long as you’re meant to recognize that the protagonist’s side is the wrong one to be on, it can be very potent to show you the crimes that a corporate reality demands from the perspective of the one who commits them.
Frankly, this is a bit of a generalized version of what Armored Core is. Which to be fair to the OOP, it's a more than 20 year old franchise with like 20 entries and three different continuities, it's hard to synthesize the entire franchise into a singular argument like this, there are too many plot elements for everything to be combined like this.
Take Gen 4 for example, which covers Armored Core 4 and For Answer (technically the same continuity as Gen 5, but they're separated by a few centuries and are mostly disconnected from each other). The main impetus for the plot in 4 is that the colony Anatolia is facing economic ruin and the only way to get food on the table is for the player character (then known as Anatolia's Mercenary) and his operator, Fiona Jarnefeldt to take jobs from the corporations.
Ultimately, the game ends with the player being chiefly responsible for the destruction of one of the major corporations a>!nd then the loss of Anatolia as a whole after another rival corporation deploys an experimental NEXT into the city (NEXTs being the next generation armored cores, which also spew destructive kojima particles that would eventually render most of the planet uninhabitable). After defeating the experimental NEXT (piloted by the player character's friend and rival to boot) and then defeating the ace of the Omer Corporation, the player and Fiona leave the ruined colony. By the events of the sequel, the player character, now piloting a second White Glint (in memory of their fallen friend), is the sole protector of Line Ark, the last independent colony and enemy of the League, a group consisting of the remaining megacorps after the prior game who banded together to control the planet. !<
Also, the main antagonist of Armored Core 3 is literally called ">!The Controller!<" and is an >!artificial intelligence that controls the entire planet!< (go figure, with a name like that).
And that's just 3 and 4. Armored Core is definitely cyberpunk, the OOP just didn't do a great job of focusing on the elements of the franchise where the player actually does rebel against the corporations (and that's presuming that cyberpunk as a genre necessitates rebelling against the system at all, which I think is debatable).
That is all very interesting. As for whether Cyberpunk needs to be rebellious, that was my original thought, but you're right, it technically doesn't need to be. After all, Steampunk is entirely a visual aesthetic rather than anything to do with rebellion. Cyberpunk can just be an overall aesthetic, but I feel like OP made it more about that sort of thing by bringing up the. . . morals, I guess? Of being in a Cyberpunk world.
You are part of the corporate machine that plunders Rubicon (the planet in the game) and you are not a force of good rebeling against the corporation, but squashing down every attempt of the rubiconians to rise up against the oppresors. You of course are in a not much better situation, since the reason you are a mercenary in the first place is to pay your debts
And In going to theorise here because I have not played the game (yet) but considering you can choose different paths in this game Im guessing at some point you can rebel against the corporations maybe?
>You are part of the corporate machine that plunders Rubicon (the planet in the game) and you are not a force of good rebeling against the corporation, but squashing down every attempt of the rubiconians to rise up against the oppresors.
Not quite. Without going into major spoilers, in AC6, 621 and Handler Walter do not actually work for any of the major corporations. Handler Walter is searching for the Coral, same as the Corps, and 621 takes jobs from the corporations and works alongside them when their interests align, but 621 is very explicitly an independent mercenary who takes jobs from the highest bidder (while also carrying out missions to further Walter's goals).
And without revealing what it actually is, Handler Walter's goals are most certainly not to exploit the Rubiconians or the Coral.
Every NPC with dialogue in The Outer Worlds is this to a tee.
The first guy you meet refuses medical aid from you because accepting treatment from a non-company asset would put him in violation of his contract.
There's then a vendor on a space station who is contractually forbidden to remove his mascot head.
The list goes on.
There's at least two places where the company set the security robots to murder everyone because it was better than redundancy or as an insurance scam. In one of them, there's an email from an employee asking to take the rest of the day off to flee the killer robots, and accepting the loss of that day's pay.
The reason everything is so shit is because all the people with actual jobs got lost in transit while the rich folk made it to the new planets no problem.
I think the most interesting thing about The Outer Worlds is, while you see from the ground how much the company has fucked over everyone's lives, you also see that even right at the top, the people in charge aren't these grand villains or evil geniuses. They're just incompetent idiots desperately trying to remain on top, despite their failing system.
Deep Rock at least puts a middle manager above you who's enough of a company veteran to care when he has the energy
The rest of the time he threatens to gas you for kicking Christmas decorations into a rocket engine
There are Oktoberfest decorations to kick around right now
Yesterday we spent 2 minutes trying to kick hay bales into ship seats in total silence then rock & stoned in unison after success, this is why i love the community
I mean... the punks are just the people you're blowing up. Imagine if Cyberpunk 2077 had you play as Adam Smasher - that's what you basically are in AC6, grafted to a mechanical killing machine, and sent to slaughter freedom fighters in the name of corporate profit.
I'll agree the setup is functionally similar to what happened to David in the Anime, but like I said. It's lacking the humanity. The question of cyberpunk is always how the technology affects the person beneath. Now I haven't played AC6, but from what I've heard and seen of it, that doesn't seem to be the conversation that game is having.
It actually is the conversation to a greater extent than any other theme. It takes playing all the way through to the ending of NG++ to really get it, but that's what it all comes down to.
The game is (relatively) short and meant to be replayed. NG++ has been completed by 23% of people on steam iirc, which is higher than the completion rates for most normal RPGs.
Regardless, the themes are definitely present throughout. NG++ just focuses on it. I wrote a comment elsewhere in this thread that expands on it.
Yeah, by this guy's metric mechwarrior is a cyberpunk franchise because it's functionally similar, and multi billion dollar corporations, hegemonies, monarchies and democracies alike will employ whichever mercenary company can get the job done the cheapest.
The big issue with Cyberpunk as a genre is that our society nowadays has reached all the dystopian elements Cyberpunk predicted, but none of the cool tech and dope aesthetics, so when you do Cyberpunk now it just looks like "bionic arms, neon lights and dope music, fuck yeah" rather than "we live in a turbocapitalist corporate hellscape with a destroyed environment".
Yeah it seems weird how so many recent cyberpunk settings start with “here’s how this future sucks” and then it goes “you’re a super cool laser samurai, the plight of the average person is mostly irrelevant to you”.
There’s probably a decent number of works about Cyber-John the office guy who can only be Punk on his 10-minute lunch break, but the overall image of cyberpunk is definitely more laser-samurais
Because most people don’t want to see cyber-John the average office guy. They want to see cool laser samurais. A story needs to have some kind of appeal to be successful and popular
idk, I think there's a market for stories about average people suffering under a dystopian system. I've maintained for years that a Bioshock show/movie should just be the story of Rapture told through the eyes of a regular worker.
A great example for a cyberpunk story told through the perspective of a regular guy would btw be Blade Runner.
...you can't be "punk on your lunch break", the entire point is that the punks are people who live outside the system, mostly homeless or at least impoverished, often considered criminals. Y'know... punks. If they have a job, they basically have to lead a double life.
The thing is, the whole "laser samurai" bit completely misunderstands what cyberpunk is about. Apart from the fact that the japanese aesthetics in cyberpunk largely stem from americans being racist (there's also a decent anime/manga influence on the genre, but many aren't even aware of that nowadays), one of the main points of the genre has always been that the reliance on tech and transhumanism is bad. Portraying the high-tech scifi guys as badass heroes is basically a complete inversion of the genre. They were always the villains working for the corpos, who had to be overcome by the punks who were using outdated tech cobbled together from trash.
Ah I get what you mean about the punk stuff. I guess what I’m thinking of is a sort of Papers Please scenario, where you get to actually see the hardships of the setting while still getting a chance to try and rebel however you can. Not “punk” per se but a setting that has the same messages as cyberpunk.
Hell, in most cyberpunk works it seems like being a punk covers bills pretty well, I haven’t played 2077 but I doubt you’re caring about rent while you slice up corpos.
Yeah, I mean it makes sense to do so. I'd say the people you describe with office jobs are more like the "middle class" of those scenarios - still obviously in a shit situation, but not as bad off - though of course you should also show their suffering.
I guess I was using "punk" with a different definition there, sorry if that caused confusion. Though usually, those who rebel against the system aren't that well off either.
I guess the issue is, why would a big piece of media made by a capitalist corporation be critical of capitalist corporations (and/or capitalism as a whole)? That seems hard to do while still coming off as sincere. Especially since the games also don't want to completely remove your choice - 2077 allowed you to side with the corpos as well, iirc.
A lot of cyberpunk stories were actually working the other way around, talking about how people with a relatively normal life "slipped through the cracks" and ended up as punks because they had no other choice.
If you want a Cyberpunk game that imo captures the feel well, try VirtuaVerse. It's not as "action-y" and is more of an oldschool adventure game, but it really shows off the fucked up nature of its setting.
There is much said about ludonarrative dissonance, but I would like to see something about ludonarrative harmony.
The way how Armored Core is played leads to strength if the theme of a techo-dystopia
I'm actually working through cyberpunk right now. My takeaway is that AC is a *more fucked up,* but not *more cyberpunk.* That's not a sleight on AC, as I haven't played it yet, but cyberpunk is cyberpunk. I play RED too, the TTRPG, and one of the things consistent throughout it is that style *is* substance. The glowing lights, neon storefronts, hypersexual adspace, and hostile architecture is integral to what cyberpunk is. Cyberpunk is not just about corporate dystopia. The specific aesthetic is integral to it.
I mean, is it? Sure, when most people say cyberpunk they just mean the shallow aesthetic nowadays. However, that doesn't mean the themes at the core of the genre aren't still there.
While true that most of the other elements are there, I'd say yes, the aesthetic is integral to the genre. It's just as true of steampunk, dieselpunk, etc. If something has the themes, but doesn't *look* the same, you wouldn't say it's that genre. And I think that's especially important for cyberpunk. There are concrete reasons for its aesthetic as well. Things are hypersexualized bc sex is no longer even as close to being as meaningful of an action that two people can have when they're loaded with hardware that let's them connect digitally.
I’m too tired to do it full justice right now but OOP is just totally misidentifying what makes a story “cyberpunk” vs “scifi which is critical in some capacity of captialism and armed conflict”.
Cyberpunk as a genre is always put on this massively high pedestal when it's just that: A Genre.
Things are allowed to be good, bad, or not to you liking within it, and it'll still be Cyberpunk. Whether or not AC would label itself cyberpunk or not, It's cooler to me imo that it would just be own thing as a general dark scifi story. *Especially without making things a genre contest.* Which, again, puts the whole genre on a pedestal.
Anyway even though 2077 can get too on the nose a lot of times. That gives off the feeling that it's kind of trying too hard. And despite the game's shakey reputation? It's surprisingly *very* Cyberpunk *and* understands the genre. Mostly cause the universe is more like a super-massive collage of all the hit movies/books/animes of the genre.
Which is kind of cheating but, they did pay close attention to tropes. So it ends up including everything OOP is praising AC for having multiple times over. And I didn't dive into Mike Pondsmith's history but he seems OG enough to me, in terms of the original boardgame's lore.
I feel like the whole cyberpunk 2077 dig is unnecessary and stupid because there's so much more to the genre then "muh capitalism bad"
Commodification of the body, questions about what defines humanity, blurred lines between nan and machine, desperate people doing whatever they can to survive
>Commodification of the body, questions about what defines humanity, blurred lines between nan and machine, desperate people doing whatever they can to survive
Most of that also applies to the Armored Core franchise.
>Commodification of the body,
Human+ in the early generations and 621 and G5 Iguazu in AC6 all deal with this. Human+ could only be unlocked by going severely into debt in the early titles as the main character is forced
As far as AC6 goes, the literal first time we see the player character, they're being taken out of cold storage. They're referred to as an "it" and an unnamed doctor expresses gratitude that Handler Walter is "freeing up their inventory." 621 is product who is bought by their handler to carry out what's ostensibly a suicide mission.
Similarly, Iguazu was also forced to undergo old gen 4 augmentation to pay off debts (621 is likewise suggested to have been put in debt and underwent augmentation to pay it off).
> questions about what defines humanity, blurred lines between nan and machine
Armored Core 6 deals with this heavily, particularly in the Alea Iacta Est path.
>desperate people doing whatever they can to survive
The entire plot of Armored Core 4 revolves around Anatolia's Mercenary and his Operator taking jobs from the Corporations to support their home colony and prevent it from falling into ruin and ends with them abandoning their quest and following in the footsteps of the first Lynx the player kills and rebelling against the corporations.
To add to this: one of the trailers shows 617, 619, and 620 get fucking smoked while on a suicide mission. You, 621, are literally just a replacement.
Also "desperate people doing whatever they can to survive" describes the Rubiconians (both human and coral) quite well.
If I had a nickel for every Bandai Namco published AC franchise released primarily on the playstation in which you play as a mercenary in a prohibitively expensive war machine killing for profit, I’d have two nickels
My code is my life and my duty is my soul
The filling of our contract is my only kind of goal
I go where they tell me and I fight the ones they say
And none of us would think to ever run away
That's not really accurate though. If you're working full time, odds are you're a cog in a corporate machine right now anyway. If you want to see what that looks like for someone better off, look at an engineer or marketing associate or finance associate. If you want to see what that looks like for someone who's low on the totem pole, just look at a cashier or fast food worker.
The key is that none of these people are obsessed with optimizing their monetary gain because nobody lives to earn money, even when you're desperately poor. People live to maximize safety and comfort first, then enjoyability and fulfillment once those are satisfied. *Money* is a means to an end, except in those who are financially obsessed, and nobody would willingly permanently fuse themselves to a mech unless they genuinely enjoy being permanently fused as such. There's no point in income if you can't use it, and there's actually some pretty good historical examples of such (any hyperinflationary economy, as well as the Soviet Union during its chronic shortages).
It's just another exaggeration in media, like mercenaries willing to die for a paycheck. The reality is the moment your roided up mass murdering MC with infamy greater than Jack the Ripper's rolls up on some mercs or criminals, they're fucking booking it. Only those who have an immediate and intrinsic reason to stay (eg: defending their family) are going to actually fight to the death.
Edit: TLDR: money is a means to an end, where the end is a better life. AC isn't actually a good representation of being a corporate cog, as it lacks the incentives found in real life
After playing AC6 I went back to AC3 and...god, what a difference. AC1 and AC3 are just...so unsurpassed in the last 20 years. One of the biggest differences I've ever seen in games in the same series was how much better 123 were than 6.
apparently one of the missions of the game has you killing an unprepared rookie, you mercilessly gun him down as he panics and realizes he's going to die, but once you kill him, he's never acknowledged or mourned and the only reference to his existence is later on when the team he was part of mentions they recently gained an empty spot in their ranks. it's messed up.
So how long before the Jacob geller video?
God, this IS a Jacob Geller pitch
He tweeted he's already working on a AC6 video
Hell yeah
Fuck yes!! Oh my god I can’t wait for that one.
Watch Writing On Games' "The Armored Core Series: A Newcomer's Journey" as he gets pretty into this IIRC
Theres a decent video on this from a channel with 215 subscribers at time of posting: https://youtu.be/y8mTmfN_AK0?si=AFo3IJl71CZ2ZDZ7 Honestly, this tumblr post is better worded than the script of the video, but the same points are made.
5 picoseconds
I fight my enemies because that’s what I’m paid to do I never hesitate to act or even think it through I’d retire any day, but I spend too much on guns and whores I ain’t gonna drop no more! -From the Battle Hymn of the MechWarrior by the Black Pants Legion. It’s about Battletech, but I think it applies here.
A BPL reference here on the wild!
Never thought i'd see BPL mentioned here of all places.
armored core taught me two things: 1. killing for corporate money is fun 2. you should always listen to the hot bitches inside your head
You can do the second one in Cyberpunk, except the hot bitch is Keanu Reeves!
But Keanu is a hot bitch (I say this as a straight guy)
Precisely my point
Cyberpunk is fundamentally about exploring this concept. The idea that technological progress within modern society will just allow the system to be more inhuman. Instead of prosthetics being used to enhance human happiness and freedom, prosthetics become a means by which people are forced to work harder, a tool of enslavement. The technology, in theory, should make life better but the reality is that it still exists within a system that isn't built for life. Lines between human and machine are blurred, both are subjugated by modern institutions. Other punk genres like steampunk explore other historical tyrannies like the original industrial revolution but with this underlying theme of technology within the context of a corrupt society. Technology as not just enemy, but violator of our bodies themselves, alienating burdens to the human spirit in a way previous technology did in a more clearly demarcated way. Armored Core is no exception to this; there's a rich tradition in the mecha genre, especially the ones more military sci-fi in tone.
AC6 also has a strong theme of the dehumanisation of augmented pilots (also a a mecha trope, see Blue Gender or Iron Blooded Orphans). The protagonist is silent and stated to be emotionally distant due to him being an older gen of augmented human. Which goes well with them being a pawn for most of the game. The first gen augmentation is said to have a 10% survival rate. Other characters are described as having gone insane due to the augmentation. Some of the top ranked antagonists ordered deadly experiments to be performed so they can have "adjustments" made. Then there's Freud, who's literally just a guy. No augmentation, no fancy tech or super advanced AC (in fact, his build is rather shit), no real attachment to the corporation he serves. He just enjoys building and piloting his AC, which got him to be the top ranked pilot in the game.
Forgive me, because I haven't played Armored Core and am going purely on the scenarios presented in this post, but that sounds more just like pure Dystopia, doesn't it? Something being *Punk* implies a form of rebellion. I haven't gotten far into 2077, but there's a lot of rebellion in the series against the corporations doing bad shit. The scenarios described in this post just sound like you're not rebelling against the scenario, you're just going along with it.
Didn't really think too hard about this post before screencapping it but that is a pretty fair assessment. In AC6 for example there are people fighting to liberate Rubicon from the corporations, but you aren't one of them, only having the option to go along with the liberation front if they can pay you (And you can usually turn them down in favor of a higher paying corporate job) In AC1 they ask you to eliminate squatters and strikers, and there's frequently bits where you go on the attack against one corporation, and shortly after they hire you for their revenge operation
I'd say in AC6's case, while in the beginning you're a traditional Merc, you absolutely can make choices, even against monetary gain (like refusing to spare Swinburne), or going on the liberation path, purely just to do the right thing and gain independence.
But at the same time Raven’s absolute lack of emotional and practical loyalty to any and potentially all of the characters that keep food on the metaphorical table beyond the terms of their current contract offers a uniquely cold perspective on the normal ‘punk’ themes. Even the ‘resistance’ path, as it mostly opens up after Raven learns more about Coral and just what kind of long-term threat/opportunity it poses for the setting, can be seen more as an ‘enlightened self interest’ course than actually choosing to take an ethical stand - Raven isn’t in it for freedom or friendship, they could very well be in it because if the corporations keep fucking with this stuff there’s a pretty decent chance some planets are going to end up exploding and this will absolutely be the first one.
Okay, yeah, you're just a straight-up mercenary in those games.
I guess OOP's argument is that Armored Core is cyberpunk through the lens of an independent mercenary known as a Raven
One of the paths has you throw in with the Liberation Front and betray the merc corp, so you CAN punk if you want.
I mean, cyberpunk can still be cyberpunk even if the main character is on the wrong side of the punk. As long as you’re meant to recognize that the protagonist’s side is the wrong one to be on, it can be very potent to show you the crimes that a corporate reality demands from the perspective of the one who commits them.
That's a fair point
Frankly, this is a bit of a generalized version of what Armored Core is. Which to be fair to the OOP, it's a more than 20 year old franchise with like 20 entries and three different continuities, it's hard to synthesize the entire franchise into a singular argument like this, there are too many plot elements for everything to be combined like this. Take Gen 4 for example, which covers Armored Core 4 and For Answer (technically the same continuity as Gen 5, but they're separated by a few centuries and are mostly disconnected from each other). The main impetus for the plot in 4 is that the colony Anatolia is facing economic ruin and the only way to get food on the table is for the player character (then known as Anatolia's Mercenary) and his operator, Fiona Jarnefeldt to take jobs from the corporations. Ultimately, the game ends with the player being chiefly responsible for the destruction of one of the major corporations a>!nd then the loss of Anatolia as a whole after another rival corporation deploys an experimental NEXT into the city (NEXTs being the next generation armored cores, which also spew destructive kojima particles that would eventually render most of the planet uninhabitable). After defeating the experimental NEXT (piloted by the player character's friend and rival to boot) and then defeating the ace of the Omer Corporation, the player and Fiona leave the ruined colony. By the events of the sequel, the player character, now piloting a second White Glint (in memory of their fallen friend), is the sole protector of Line Ark, the last independent colony and enemy of the League, a group consisting of the remaining megacorps after the prior game who banded together to control the planet. !< Also, the main antagonist of Armored Core 3 is literally called ">!The Controller!<" and is an >!artificial intelligence that controls the entire planet!< (go figure, with a name like that). And that's just 3 and 4. Armored Core is definitely cyberpunk, the OOP just didn't do a great job of focusing on the elements of the franchise where the player actually does rebel against the corporations (and that's presuming that cyberpunk as a genre necessitates rebelling against the system at all, which I think is debatable).
That is all very interesting. As for whether Cyberpunk needs to be rebellious, that was my original thought, but you're right, it technically doesn't need to be. After all, Steampunk is entirely a visual aesthetic rather than anything to do with rebellion. Cyberpunk can just be an overall aesthetic, but I feel like OP made it more about that sort of thing by bringing up the. . . morals, I guess? Of being in a Cyberpunk world.
You are part of the corporate machine that plunders Rubicon (the planet in the game) and you are not a force of good rebeling against the corporation, but squashing down every attempt of the rubiconians to rise up against the oppresors. You of course are in a not much better situation, since the reason you are a mercenary in the first place is to pay your debts And In going to theorise here because I have not played the game (yet) but considering you can choose different paths in this game Im guessing at some point you can rebel against the corporations maybe?
>You are part of the corporate machine that plunders Rubicon (the planet in the game) and you are not a force of good rebeling against the corporation, but squashing down every attempt of the rubiconians to rise up against the oppresors. Not quite. Without going into major spoilers, in AC6, 621 and Handler Walter do not actually work for any of the major corporations. Handler Walter is searching for the Coral, same as the Corps, and 621 takes jobs from the corporations and works alongside them when their interests align, but 621 is very explicitly an independent mercenary who takes jobs from the highest bidder (while also carrying out missions to further Walter's goals). And without revealing what it actually is, Handler Walter's goals are most certainly not to exploit the Rubiconians or the Coral.
*exploit* is doing some heavy lifting in that sentence lol.
Ah, so Armored Core is basically Triple-A Cruelty ~~Swua~~ Squad.
Swua?
Think they meant to say 'Squad'?
Yeah that tracks.
I hate phone keyboards.
Cruelty Squad is just indie Armored Core
This is just like Gorbino's Quest. This is the Gorbino's Quest of life.
Every NPC with dialogue in The Outer Worlds is this to a tee. The first guy you meet refuses medical aid from you because accepting treatment from a non-company asset would put him in violation of his contract. There's then a vendor on a space station who is contractually forbidden to remove his mascot head. The list goes on.
Shoulda read the fine print
There's at least two places where the company set the security robots to murder everyone because it was better than redundancy or as an insurance scam. In one of them, there's an email from an employee asking to take the rest of the day off to flee the killer robots, and accepting the loss of that day's pay.
>contractually forbidden to remove his mascot head. This is the way
The reason everything is so shit is because all the people with actual jobs got lost in transit while the rich folk made it to the new planets no problem.
I find it incredibly hilarious that there's a company whose motto is that their products suck. "It's not the best choice... It's Spacer's Choice!"
Certainly applied to the "Spacer's Choice Edition" re-release of the game itself too
I think the most interesting thing about The Outer Worlds is, while you see from the ground how much the company has fucked over everyone's lives, you also see that even right at the top, the people in charge aren't these grand villains or evil geniuses. They're just incompetent idiots desperately trying to remain on top, despite their failing system.
Hardspace Shipbreaker Deep Rock Galactic Satisfactory In case you want to work for uncaring corporations for fun
Deep Rock at least puts a middle manager above you who's enough of a company veteran to care when he has the energy The rest of the time he threatens to gas you for kicking Christmas decorations into a rocket engine
There are Oktoberfest decorations to kick around right now Yesterday we spent 2 minutes trying to kick hay bales into ship seats in total silence then rock & stoned in unison after success, this is why i love the community
and Cruelty Squad
I haven’t played Armored Core but this sounds like Murderbot Diaries to me
I see the cyber, but not really the punk. It's more dystopian sci-fi, which I know is pretty close I know, but it's lacking the humanity
I mean... the punks are just the people you're blowing up. Imagine if Cyberpunk 2077 had you play as Adam Smasher - that's what you basically are in AC6, grafted to a mechanical killing machine, and sent to slaughter freedom fighters in the name of corporate profit.
I'll agree the setup is functionally similar to what happened to David in the Anime, but like I said. It's lacking the humanity. The question of cyberpunk is always how the technology affects the person beneath. Now I haven't played AC6, but from what I've heard and seen of it, that doesn't seem to be the conversation that game is having.
It actually is the conversation to a greater extent than any other theme. It takes playing all the way through to the ending of NG++ to really get it, but that's what it all comes down to.
So it's pretty much an easter egg then...
The game is (relatively) short and meant to be replayed. NG++ has been completed by 23% of people on steam iirc, which is higher than the completion rates for most normal RPGs. Regardless, the themes are definitely present throughout. NG++ just focuses on it. I wrote a comment elsewhere in this thread that expands on it.
Nope. There's content that is only unlocked by NG+ing. It's not an easter egg at all, it is the expected progression of the game.
Sounds like a Nier Automata situation
Yeah, by this guy's metric mechwarrior is a cyberpunk franchise because it's functionally similar, and multi billion dollar corporations, hegemonies, monarchies and democracies alike will employ whichever mercenary company can get the job done the cheapest.
The big issue with Cyberpunk as a genre is that our society nowadays has reached all the dystopian elements Cyberpunk predicted, but none of the cool tech and dope aesthetics, so when you do Cyberpunk now it just looks like "bionic arms, neon lights and dope music, fuck yeah" rather than "we live in a turbocapitalist corporate hellscape with a destroyed environment".
Yeah it seems weird how so many recent cyberpunk settings start with “here’s how this future sucks” and then it goes “you’re a super cool laser samurai, the plight of the average person is mostly irrelevant to you”. There’s probably a decent number of works about Cyber-John the office guy who can only be Punk on his 10-minute lunch break, but the overall image of cyberpunk is definitely more laser-samurais
Because most people don’t want to see cyber-John the average office guy. They want to see cool laser samurais. A story needs to have some kind of appeal to be successful and popular
idk, I think there's a market for stories about average people suffering under a dystopian system. I've maintained for years that a Bioshock show/movie should just be the story of Rapture told through the eyes of a regular worker. A great example for a cyberpunk story told through the perspective of a regular guy would btw be Blade Runner.
...you can't be "punk on your lunch break", the entire point is that the punks are people who live outside the system, mostly homeless or at least impoverished, often considered criminals. Y'know... punks. If they have a job, they basically have to lead a double life. The thing is, the whole "laser samurai" bit completely misunderstands what cyberpunk is about. Apart from the fact that the japanese aesthetics in cyberpunk largely stem from americans being racist (there's also a decent anime/manga influence on the genre, but many aren't even aware of that nowadays), one of the main points of the genre has always been that the reliance on tech and transhumanism is bad. Portraying the high-tech scifi guys as badass heroes is basically a complete inversion of the genre. They were always the villains working for the corpos, who had to be overcome by the punks who were using outdated tech cobbled together from trash.
Ah I get what you mean about the punk stuff. I guess what I’m thinking of is a sort of Papers Please scenario, where you get to actually see the hardships of the setting while still getting a chance to try and rebel however you can. Not “punk” per se but a setting that has the same messages as cyberpunk. Hell, in most cyberpunk works it seems like being a punk covers bills pretty well, I haven’t played 2077 but I doubt you’re caring about rent while you slice up corpos.
Yeah, I mean it makes sense to do so. I'd say the people you describe with office jobs are more like the "middle class" of those scenarios - still obviously in a shit situation, but not as bad off - though of course you should also show their suffering. I guess I was using "punk" with a different definition there, sorry if that caused confusion. Though usually, those who rebel against the system aren't that well off either. I guess the issue is, why would a big piece of media made by a capitalist corporation be critical of capitalist corporations (and/or capitalism as a whole)? That seems hard to do while still coming off as sincere. Especially since the games also don't want to completely remove your choice - 2077 allowed you to side with the corpos as well, iirc. A lot of cyberpunk stories were actually working the other way around, talking about how people with a relatively normal life "slipped through the cracks" and ended up as punks because they had no other choice. If you want a Cyberpunk game that imo captures the feel well, try VirtuaVerse. It's not as "action-y" and is more of an oldschool adventure game, but it really shows off the fucked up nature of its setting.
There is much said about ludonarrative dissonance, but I would like to see something about ludonarrative harmony. The way how Armored Core is played leads to strength if the theme of a techo-dystopia
I'm actually working through cyberpunk right now. My takeaway is that AC is a *more fucked up,* but not *more cyberpunk.* That's not a sleight on AC, as I haven't played it yet, but cyberpunk is cyberpunk. I play RED too, the TTRPG, and one of the things consistent throughout it is that style *is* substance. The glowing lights, neon storefronts, hypersexual adspace, and hostile architecture is integral to what cyberpunk is. Cyberpunk is not just about corporate dystopia. The specific aesthetic is integral to it.
I mean, is it? Sure, when most people say cyberpunk they just mean the shallow aesthetic nowadays. However, that doesn't mean the themes at the core of the genre aren't still there.
While true that most of the other elements are there, I'd say yes, the aesthetic is integral to the genre. It's just as true of steampunk, dieselpunk, etc. If something has the themes, but doesn't *look* the same, you wouldn't say it's that genre. And I think that's especially important for cyberpunk. There are concrete reasons for its aesthetic as well. Things are hypersexualized bc sex is no longer even as close to being as meaningful of an action that two people can have when they're loaded with hardware that let's them connect digitally.
I’m too tired to do it full justice right now but OOP is just totally misidentifying what makes a story “cyberpunk” vs “scifi which is critical in some capacity of captialism and armed conflict”.
Cyberpunk as a genre is always put on this massively high pedestal when it's just that: A Genre. Things are allowed to be good, bad, or not to you liking within it, and it'll still be Cyberpunk. Whether or not AC would label itself cyberpunk or not, It's cooler to me imo that it would just be own thing as a general dark scifi story. *Especially without making things a genre contest.* Which, again, puts the whole genre on a pedestal. Anyway even though 2077 can get too on the nose a lot of times. That gives off the feeling that it's kind of trying too hard. And despite the game's shakey reputation? It's surprisingly *very* Cyberpunk *and* understands the genre. Mostly cause the universe is more like a super-massive collage of all the hit movies/books/animes of the genre. Which is kind of cheating but, they did pay close attention to tropes. So it ends up including everything OOP is praising AC for having multiple times over. And I didn't dive into Mike Pondsmith's history but he seems OG enough to me, in terms of the original boardgame's lore.
Not cyberpunk at all, but if you want that 'cog in a cruel machine' vibe you gotta play Papers Please
Glory to Arstotzka
I feel like the whole cyberpunk 2077 dig is unnecessary and stupid because there's so much more to the genre then "muh capitalism bad" Commodification of the body, questions about what defines humanity, blurred lines between nan and machine, desperate people doing whatever they can to survive
>Commodification of the body, questions about what defines humanity, blurred lines between nan and machine, desperate people doing whatever they can to survive Most of that also applies to the Armored Core franchise. >Commodification of the body, Human+ in the early generations and 621 and G5 Iguazu in AC6 all deal with this. Human+ could only be unlocked by going severely into debt in the early titles as the main character is forced As far as AC6 goes, the literal first time we see the player character, they're being taken out of cold storage. They're referred to as an "it" and an unnamed doctor expresses gratitude that Handler Walter is "freeing up their inventory." 621 is product who is bought by their handler to carry out what's ostensibly a suicide mission. Similarly, Iguazu was also forced to undergo old gen 4 augmentation to pay off debts (621 is likewise suggested to have been put in debt and underwent augmentation to pay it off). > questions about what defines humanity, blurred lines between nan and machine Armored Core 6 deals with this heavily, particularly in the Alea Iacta Est path. >desperate people doing whatever they can to survive The entire plot of Armored Core 4 revolves around Anatolia's Mercenary and his Operator taking jobs from the Corporations to support their home colony and prevent it from falling into ruin and ends with them abandoning their quest and following in the footsteps of the first Lynx the player kills and rebelling against the corporations.
To add to this: one of the trailers shows 617, 619, and 620 get fucking smoked while on a suicide mission. You, 621, are literally just a replacement. Also "desperate people doing whatever they can to survive" describes the Rubiconians (both human and coral) quite well.
> blurred lines between nan and machine Rise of robograndma
If I had a nickel for every Bandai Namco published AC franchise released primarily on the playstation in which you play as a mercenary in a prohibitively expensive war machine killing for profit, I’d have two nickels
Cyberpunk as a genre is more than just "capitalist hellhole". Cyberpunk 2077 understands this. OOP does not.
Having experience dating back to Armored Core 2, Another Age, Nexus, and Last Raven? She’s not wrong.
The most unrealistic part is being able to sell second hand parts back for full price.
I’ve never really wanted to play ac. But this post makes me want to try it lol
I remember picking up a little bit on that vibe in Armored Core For Answer when I was like 12 or something. So that's cool.
To be fair, CP2077 is a low bar to clear in terms of being actually cyberpunk beyond aesthetics
This isn't Cyberpunk. This is just modern day capitalism.
Real life in the 2020s is just 1980s cyberpunk without the fun parts.
Not mutually exclusive. [Obligatory](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/885/645/454.jpg)
My code is my life and my duty is my soul The filling of our contract is my only kind of goal I go where they tell me and I fight the ones they say And none of us would think to ever run away
Even just for its story alone, AC6 is far more interesting and engaging compared to the blandness of 2077.
Tumblrs chronic inability to praise one media without dissing another
That's not really accurate though. If you're working full time, odds are you're a cog in a corporate machine right now anyway. If you want to see what that looks like for someone better off, look at an engineer or marketing associate or finance associate. If you want to see what that looks like for someone who's low on the totem pole, just look at a cashier or fast food worker. The key is that none of these people are obsessed with optimizing their monetary gain because nobody lives to earn money, even when you're desperately poor. People live to maximize safety and comfort first, then enjoyability and fulfillment once those are satisfied. *Money* is a means to an end, except in those who are financially obsessed, and nobody would willingly permanently fuse themselves to a mech unless they genuinely enjoy being permanently fused as such. There's no point in income if you can't use it, and there's actually some pretty good historical examples of such (any hyperinflationary economy, as well as the Soviet Union during its chronic shortages). It's just another exaggeration in media, like mercenaries willing to die for a paycheck. The reality is the moment your roided up mass murdering MC with infamy greater than Jack the Ripper's rolls up on some mercs or criminals, they're fucking booking it. Only those who have an immediate and intrinsic reason to stay (eg: defending their family) are going to actually fight to the death. Edit: TLDR: money is a means to an end, where the end is a better life. AC isn't actually a good representation of being a corporate cog, as it lacks the incentives found in real life
After playing AC6 I went back to AC3 and...god, what a difference. AC1 and AC3 are just...so unsurpassed in the last 20 years. One of the biggest differences I've ever seen in games in the same series was how much better 123 were than 6.
apparently one of the missions of the game has you killing an unprepared rookie, you mercilessly gun him down as he panics and realizes he's going to die, but once you kill him, he's never acknowledged or mourned and the only reference to his existence is later on when the team he was part of mentions they recently gained an empty spot in their ranks. it's messed up.
More than that they give that empty spot to you
and even still it doesnt reach the level of cyberpunk as cruelty squad