Games @sh.itjust.works nanoUFO @sh.itjust.works 3mo ago

CDPR says its new Boston studio means Cyberpunk 2 will be more authentically American

www.videogameschronicle.com CDPR says its new Boston studio means Cyberpunk 2 will be more authentically American | VGC

Cyberpunk 2077 had the wrong manhole covers, one exec points out…

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So, no subway or fast travel?
- Hey! Boston has a subway! The oldest and worst one in America! So yes, no fast travel
  
  How dare you talk shit about the T
  
  Baltimore's subway is clearly worse.
  
  LA breathes a sigh of relief at this comment
They better not switch date to MM-DD-YYYY format.
- YYYY-MM-DD forever!
  
  Totally, but maybe we don’t need that year right up at the front, since most readers already know the year. Maybe we can bump just that part to the back to make it a little more readable.
- ISO 8601 & RFC 3339 Supremacy
- They better not switch date to MM-DD-YYYY format.
  
  4th of July 2024.
  
  Nothing is more patriotically American than Day Month Year.
It's set in 2077. Why the F does it need to feel American? There's enough Americana in media already.
- Because the Cyberpunk 2077 setting which is based on the original TTRPG is set in Night City which is in America.
  
  Yeah, but they have euro dollars, so why not European manhole covers...
- Because they are the developers and they want to make it that way?
Does it have to be set in America? I'd think the genre could work almost anywhere with technological cities.
- It doesn't have to, but it's based on the Cyberpunk tabletop rpg which is mostly centered around Night City. So most of the existing lore is focused on America. Personally I'd prefer more games/movies/... outside the US in general, I've seen enough fictional versions of NYC and LA.
  
  We had a great movie scene in Berlin and then the Nazis happened. Now almost every German film is the same low-tier trash
  
  Cyberpunk 2020 TTRPG had a shit ton of source books for outside of Night City and outside America, including space and even one for the very beginnings of deep space exploration in the cyberpunk world... the source material has a lot of legs outside of Night City.
  
  If not outside of America at least less common areas Chicago, Nasheville, Atlanta hell even rural regions like West Virginia. Hell if you are gonna do it in California or New York do it in less known areas, like Albany or San Bernardino yes I know Albany is the capital of New York but well New Yor, New york gets all the attention.
I don't need a game that's set in a fictional future and world to be 'authentically American'.
- Well, the author of the Cyberpunk universe is Mike Pondsmith, who's American and the game setting is in the US.
  
  So be authentic to the universe. Be authentic to the lore. Nobody knows what 'authentically American' will look like in fifty plus years. And it's still a fictitious city. There is no need for details to conform with any particular city of today, American or not.
Wow... What a dumb article... When I read "more authentically American" I thought "makes sense, show the consequences of hard-core capitalism even more clearly and boldly" but what he understands as American culture is manhole covers and the position of waste bins?!
- Basically trivia to make noise, nothing else. Advertisement is advertisement, even if the game is probably like 10 years away at this point.
Right, because manhole covers were the biggest issue...
Is that something people were asking for?
No more incorrectly used German manhole covers?
Could they not just image search American manhole covers?
- It's more that those things likely never crossed anyones mind during development. A lot of everyday things you just assume are the way they are where you live everywhere, until you see they aren't. And even being aware of that you are always going to miss things.
  
  I doubt this had any actual influence on which studio ended up working on the game, but it is a nice side effect.
So the next city iteration will be a few buildings between massive parking lots and barely any pedestrian crossings or even sidewalks while all the streets are congested as fuck and it takes you ages to get anywhere because everything is so far apart?

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