Needs more neon if you ask me. Image from — https://www.dexerto.com/cyberpunk-2077/cyberpunk-2077-devs-no-plans-abandon-franchise-after-dlc-1929552/
CD Projekt Red’s much anticipated RPG Cyberpunk 2077 is having a renaissance thanks to the 2.0 update and release of the Phantom Liberty DLC. The game depicts a bleak, neon future that captures the cyberpunk genre’s “combination of low life and high tech” that makes it such an iconic aesthetic.
But is this our future?
I don’t have the credentials to say yes or no — who knows if the Corpo Wars will kick off in the coming decades? But I do know that current user interface trends do not suggest that we’ll be viewing 2077 through V’s cybernetic eyes.
What makes cyberpunk, cyberpunk?
Judy Alvarez is a braindance techician, which could be called a high tech VR UX tech in this timeline. Image from —
Previously, I wrote about how Star Trek’s UX did (and didn’t) predict the future. Like Star Trek, the aesthetics of Cyberpunk 2077 are very much inspired by the cutting-edge tech of the time the narrative was created in the late 1980s. Cyberpunk, the table-top role-playing game (TTRPG), was designed by Mike Pondsmith and first published in 1988. The game imagines an alternate timeline, wherein the Soviet Union collapsed but ultimately reunited, Japan and Europe became the world’s dominant superpowers, and the United States was overthrown by a military coup. Arising from the dust of various conflicts through the ensuing decades is a society ruled by megacorporations that specialize in bioengineering. With all the wars, cybernetic prosthetics and human-machine interfaces became the tech du jour.
A trip to the ripperdoc can mean a new upgrade to your hardware… if you can afford it. Image from —
The tech of this newly imagined 2020 and beyond involves
- enhanced prosthetic limbs
- artificial organs like the “SuperKidney”
- enhanced optic upgrades so you can zoom in with just your eyes
- nervous system enhancements that make sense for a video game
Again, I can’t say what medical marvels will be achieved in the next couple decades, but…
