The Victorian

So I've decided to do something rather stupid with my Cyberpunk 2077 play-through: I am going to using the bare minimum of cyberware. Of course, a true no-chrome character is impossible, as the game requires you to install cyberware as part of the opening act, but for this run we're trying to stay as fully organic as possible.

Why? Role-playing, that's why. As I've said, our normie-V is terminally uncool, and really doesn't relish the thought of replacing her body parts with stuff that might get hacked or potentially bricked by some over-the-air firmware update.

I'm fully aware that this is probably an EXTREMELY sub-optimal way of playing the game. Hell, it might even make things unwinnable. But we're going to try it.

15 hours ago (edited) | [YT] | 3

The Victorian

As I'm playing through Cyberpunk 2077, I'm starting to notice that there is something a little off with how CD-Projekt writes dialogue. Specifically, the way they use profanity.

I talked about it in my video on The Witcher games, but people in their games tend to swear like wounded pirates. Now, people like this--people who use profanity as punctuation--certainly exist in real life, but in a CDPR games it seems like SO MANY NPCs talk in these short, barking sentences peppered with profanity REGARDLESS of their economic station. Conversations in their games sound to my ears like:

"Shit's fucked up."
"What is?"
"Fucking all of it! You fucking stupid or something, you dumb cunt?"

And you couldn't tell if that were a king speaking to his ministers or a conversation between two milkmaids. As a native English speaker, it just sounds like the writers are trying WAY too hard to make dialogue sound like a David Mamet or Quentin Tarantino film.

If I had to guess as to why is this, I might say it has something to do with the writers being Polish, but I don't know enough about the Polish language or how it handles profanity to make that call.

1 week ago | [YT] | 7

The Victorian

V opened the blinds, only to be confronted the most loathsome sight imaginable: ANIME

"What fresh hell is this?" she exclaimed, grimacing at the depravity spread out before her. "After a month in Night City I've come to accept a very low standard of living, but I draw the line at seeing neon glowing ANIME shoved into my face every morning! What is this rubbish they're advertising now? 'You Are (Not) Alone'? 'You Can (Not) Advance'? Well, You (Cannot) Go Fuck Yourself,' Hideaki!"

"Get in the fucking robot, Shinji!"

1 week ago | [YT] | 1

The Victorian

the human mind... perhaps the most powerful weapon. second only to the "GUN"

Yes, I regret to inform you that I have discovered Cyberpunk 2077's photo mode.

2 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 6

The Victorian

Jackie: So chica, what's with the shirt?
V: Why, it's from The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, the award-winning RPG released in 2015 and available on Steam and GoG.com
Jackie: You ever actually play it?
V: *breaks down sobbing*

1 month ago | [YT] | 3

The Victorian

Extremely unpopular opinion: I did not care for Disco Elysium.

I mean, I can respect it for being made with no consideration at all for mainstream appeal, and that the writers were willingly to be explicitly political in their writing when there's a whole cottage industry of outrage-mongering grifters on social media screaming "WOKE! AGENDA! POLITICS!" at anything they don't like.

But that doesn't make me enjoy actually playing the damn thing.

The game came out in 2019, and like a lot of games from that era it carries with it this idea that games must be capital-A Art if they are be taken seriously, and to become Art they must do everything to stop being video games and become more like films, novels, or TV shows, because everyone KNOWS that video games are just illiterate manchildren, am I right? This is why this decade was filled with AAA games trying desperately to be like movies, or walking simulators that had almost no gameplay whatsoever.

Well, Disco Elysium wants to be a novel, and much of the "gameplay" consists of (slowly) walking from location to location and churning through reams upon reams of text. I don't know why so many RPG makers in the 2010s decided that having a high word count was a sign of quality writing (Tides of Numenera and Pillars of Eternity were absolutely horrible in this regard), rather than a sign of self-indulgent and undisciplined writing.

If you were to tell me that Disco Elysium began as a failed novel that was then reworked into a video game, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Really, it's rather telling that when fans of this game describe it, they will invariably describe the most miserable experience imaginable: "You see, you're not playing as a hero, or the chosen one! Instead, you're a balding, depressed, middle-aged alcoholic who is the World's Most Divorced Guy! That's what make it amazing!" Combine that with a world that's as dirty, dreary, and depressing as the protagonist, and also filled with people ready to endlessly pontificate on their own politics, and you have an experience that's about as much fun as a trip to the dentist after not brushing your teeth for 27 years.

Well, at least Kim Kitsuragi was a cool guy, I suppose.

1 month ago | [YT] | 4

The Victorian

- Starting playing Crusader Kings 3 again, decide to make a character with stupidly high intrigue
- Play as a Vlach ruler in the Kingdom of Hungary
- Continually murder the king until we get a regency
- Successfully pull off a scheme to imprison the regent and replace him
- Embezzle thousands of gold from the child king, use it to build up my territories
- All vassals at -100 opinion, they start a scheme to overthrow my ruler
- Start murdering high-intrigue vassals in case one of them is behind it
- Regency ends, throw a feast for the king's vassals to show there's no hard feelings
- It's a murder feast

Skip the Carousel

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1 month ago | [YT] | 3

The Victorian

As I play through Cyberpunk 2077 with what I call "Normie V," I continually imagine situations in which she habitually tries and fails to impress anyone:

V: "All right, V, you got this. You're gonna walk through that door, and you're gonna show em' all that you're the coolest rockergirl in Night City."

(walks into the next room)

V: "I wanna be a cyberpunk."

(the camera cuts to a reverse shot, revealing everyone is lying dead on the ground, having suffered a lethal overdose of cringe).

1 month ago | [YT] | 3

The Victorian

YOU FOOLS

WHY DID YOU DIG THIS UP? YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT IT DEAD BURIED, DAMN YOU!

Yes, everyone praises the Mask of the Betrayer expansion pack (which, to its credit, is actually pretty damn good). But the original campaign...ye gods, is it awful. The entire first act is you doing an unbearably tedious series of quests JUST TO OPEN A GATE. And that's not even getting into the utterly insufferable party members who are some of the worst I've seen in an RPG. Qara and Bishop were so bloody awful that they ruined the game long before the "Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies" ending, and I think the lowest point was when the game killed off the one interesting party member and then forced me to take her murderer into my party.

And that's not getting into the insane amounts of jank, bugs, and terrible performance. Just an all-around awful experience.

1 month ago | [YT] | 5

The Victorian

Now that patch 2.3 has been released, it's time to start my play-through of Cyberpunk 2077! The game has a fairly robust character creation system (at least in terms of appearance). No, you can't make some hideous abomination like you could in a game like Oblivion, which is disappointing, but it will let you make V into a real chromed-up freak, with things like "FUCK YOU" tattooed on her lips.

But our V? She is brazenly, disgustingly, atrociously NORMAL. No tats. No piercings. No visible cyberware.

And our build? She is extremely INTELLIGENT and TECH SAVVY with a GREAT BODY but she is NOT COOL. In fact, she is INCREDIBLY LAME.

(I have no idea what I'm doing).

(And I have to laugh at the option for "Penis Size." Listen, CD Projekt, I know you are a European developer and Europeans are generally less uptight about nudity, but is this REALLY necessary? Are people being to be walking down the streets of Night City with their junk flapping in the breeze?)

(At this point I am linked to a YouTube video titled "Can You Beat Cyberpunk 2077 With Your Junk Flapping in the Breeze?")

1 month ago | [YT] | 4