Cyberpunk 2077 Revives the Dystopian Fears of the 1980s

Step out onto the streets of Night City, Cyberpunk 2077's futuristic vision of a dystopian Californian metropolis, and very little looks immediately familiar. The city's buildings have been replaced with squat brutalist apartment blocks, hologram-coated concrete towers, and neon-lit side streets where people with metal computer implants stare at strangers with glowing eyes or clench high-tech guns with gleaming cybernetic hands. Still, Night City, despite how alien its strange technology and architecture may appear, represents a future very much in touch with the concerns of our present day. Cyberpunk follows V, a character created by the player who ends up entangled in the politics of Night City's most powerful megacorporation, Arasaka, and fighting for their life after a heist gone wrong. Like the genre it's named for, the game is rooted in the 1980s futurism--in a time when the rise of home computers and rapid technological innovation butted up against increasing economic disparity caused by privatization-happy political leadership in America and abroad. So many cyberpunk staples appear quaint in hindsight.