Cue screeching from all corners of the internet.
I am reminded of a movie, a very old Polish movie called Avalon. It was a curious little flick, extremely ambitious for its time, about a virtual reality simulation that operated as a “game” with people attempting to win it and “escape Avalon”. In many ways it was a precursor to the Matrix and, and this is true, an actual inspiration for Ghost in the Shell.
The point to this short tangent is this: Poles understand Cyberpunk. Poles understand Cyberpunk because, simply put, to possibly larger extent than most nations on the planet, they understand Punk. Fighting with an all-oppressive regime is ingrained in their cultural memory. That word, Punk, is an important suffix, it denotes an ideology of fighting a system and not out of self-interest, not out of altruism, but out of sheer spite.
With that in mind one could possibly ask: how could a Cyberpunk game possibly not be political? The genre is, by definition, political. To answer that question right away: it very well couldn’t be.
But somehow that’s still news worthy, because to many gamers the idea that one would have to examine their biases and that the entertainment they consume is a cynical product, is difficult. It robs people of innocence.
Case in point: in a recent interview with Xbox, CDPR stated that “Cyberpunk is an inherently political genre and it’s an inherently political franchise” and that Cyberpunk 2077 is an overtly political game. Which of course did not go unnoticed by the people on ye ol’ reddits.