this is a game where a cop literally will try to kill you after telling you that his badge "says I can do whatever I want" and people think the game is pro-cop because you can take side gigs working for cops, which they offer because _they are ineffective at policing communities_

this game constantly tells you that cops are shit, it's even baked into the systems: they will aggro on you just for walking past them.

You take the jobs to _survive_

the game is not endorsing doing bad things, it is literally screaming from the top of its lungs that living ethically is a luxury under capitalism; sometimes, when you're poor, you take what you can get. I know. I get this. I have lived this. To an extent, I still am.

do you need a character to like, give a fucking speech explaining that poverty is bad? how much more on the nose can you get.

why do you think jackie is constantly idolizing mercs? because they have wealth and power that he is starved for, because he has fucking nothing.

And the game, y'know, demonstrates what chasing that dream leads to.

I'm not done with the game so I could be wrong, but I'm beginning to suspect everyone who thinks this game has nothing to say is either a fucking idiot with no sense of media literacy at all, or someone drastically out of touch because they've never had to beg for food.

this entire game isn't just having like, random sidequests here and there with good writing awash in a sea of bad, it's actually entirely coherent at what it's doing from top to bottom SO FAR (could change!! but I'm 40 hours in and no sign of stopping)

the game is literally:
1) capitalism bad
2) we are all exploited in body and mind
3) cops are extensions of that capitalist system
4) it is not possible to behave ethically under capitalism
5) aspiring to fame and violence dehumanizes or kills you.

adam smasher shows up with almost no humanity left in him, then we get a flashback showing how he was human once upon a time--jackie's response is "wow, wow, look at how COOL adam is... he's a legend." Because jackie is obsessed with the surface level of class.

the whole game is screaming at you "be better than this, this system cannot work"

to say "this game has nothing to say" I have to assume you're stupid or you've never been starving so much you became suicidal. I've been there.

there is a huge difference between cyberpunk's class politics and insomniac's spider-man, which uncritically just starts spidey off as being "spider-man, friend to all cops who beats up random people who are coded as poor"

you have the blatant copaganda of spider-man and nobody talks ab out it but cyberpunk offers what is SO FAR (again, I haven't finished it! It could fuck up immensely) one of the most true-to-life examinations of poverty in games I've seen and you wanna say it doesn't SAY anything

I have seen people saying that there are issues with representation of race and trans content. I am a cis white dude. Disabled, impoverished, yes, so I'll talk about that as much as I want, but I will leave others to talk about the issues facing them. If they have issues, listen.

But god, don't say the game has NOTHING to say.

As someone who has had to literally beg for food, who has sat there for hours in a building trying to navigate a maze of paperwork every six months to prove I deserve to eat, let me tell you: nothing drives me up a wall more than people not getting poverty.

Do you have any idea what it is like to live in a system where people tell you you're less human because you can't find a job? Or that you must be a sinner because bush killed the economy? Can you comprehend trying to kill yourself because you haven't eaten in days?

And do you understand what it's like when some liberal fuck shows up and goes "we should institute drug checks and make sure people can only access healthy food for a government food budget that is NOT MEANT to cover your entire food budget. But you can't exceed $1600 either!"

one time I couldn't buy oranges because they weren't in the system.

cyberpunk 2077 is one of those rare games that understands this, speaks with clarity on the subject, and I can't understand how you can miss this without just being so lucky that you've never gone hungry in your life.

Choice is the privilege of the wealthy.

there is nothing like people who've never starved trying to take food out of your mouth under the guise of making things 'less corrupt' or teaching people 'personal responsibility.'

This is my berserk button, in case it wasn't obvious.

If you got people telling you they're offended by the way their race is portrayed in game, listen to them. If you've got trans people telling you they think the game is transphobic or not, listen to them. If you object to crunch and the way CDPR has lied to the press, good.

But don't pretend it isn't talking about something hugely important, or that it doesn't actually spend a lot of time talking about why cops suck ass or how capitalism fucks us all up.