In a recent interview, CD Projekt Red said that the Cyberpunk 2077 story will be “inherently political.” The studio confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 won’t shy away from the critique of power structures that the genre is best known for.
Until now, the lack of any information on the story of Cyberpunk 2077 has left many hoping that the game won’t shy away from the very political nature of the franchise. But in a recent interview with Official Xbox Magazine, CD Projekt Red quest designer Patrick Mills confirmed that the Cyberpunk 2077 story won’t “shy away” from what is such a crucial part of the genre, and will actively tackle themes of power imbalance and wealth inequality.
When asked if the game would feature political themes or social commentary, Mills said that “Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about people with power at the top and people at the bottom with none.” He continued, “That power can come from money, hierarchies, technology and violence. The original Cyberpunk 2020 setting, like the setting of The Witcher stories, was a complex critique of the author’s world, and we don’t shy away from that in our games.”
Something he concluded his response with was that “Cyberpunk is an inherently political genre.” And he’s right, such a fundamental building block in cyberpunk worlds is that of a stark class divide, with the super rich in charge of near every aspect of daily life, and the impoverished poor left to scrape up what they can and serve their corporate overlords.
Despite this relatively inoffensive statement of fact, it’s refreshing to see a studio own the politics of their games, especially with the likes of Ubisoft publicly ignoring the very deeply political nature of the Tom Clancy franchise. It should be interesting to see how CD Projekt Red envisions the politics of the cyberpunk genre in the Cyberpunk 2077 story, whenever it does release.
