Today’s Cyberpunk 2077 video is on Sony’s new censorship policies, how it could affect Cyberpunk 2077, what I think will end up happening, if you should jump ship to another platform, addressing the knee jerk response to Censorship, How it can impact Cyberpunk 2077 and the genre, and what you can do to prevent censorship in general.

Now it seems when I brought the censorship issue up last week, people were losing their collective minds based on it and it even lead to others to jump on the topic. If you guys are unaware, Sony is pursuing a new policy with it’s releases when it comes to sexual content. This has caused some titles in the past to be delayed, impacted or even cancelled in some cases. These are policies that are mainly in Japan as of now but Sony seems to have plans to extend this to the west. These policies have seen even “mild games” like this Japanese title censoring bras and panties. It was originally released on the PLaystation Vita with no problems, but upon it’s HD remaster, was treated with lighting effects to censor any sexuality.

Why does this apply and potentially impact Cyberpunk 2077? Firstly, and the more obvious reason is because Cyberpunk 2077 will be releasing on PC, Xbox 1 and Sony’s platform in The PS4.

The other reason is due to the history of Cyberpunk as a genre. Now Cyberpunk is a specific genre which is all about future dystopias, where lack of morals and compassion intersects with expedited and advanced technology. This can be seen in works such as Bladerunner, ghost in the shell, akira, neuromancer and more.

Cyberpunk worlds are a place where everything in it is no longer sacred. No one bats an eye at violence, sex, corruption and solisiptic tendencies. If you peel back the layers of what Cyberpunk is in a nutshell, you get something reminiscent of how we live today. Cyberpunk takes all of that and radicalizes and extrapolates on what we could be, if we are careless with our humanity, morality and technology. The Cyberpunk genre is the distillation of everything filthy and reckless about modern society. It only takes a slightly deeper look to know that Cyberpunk 2077 will be on the far end of the spectrum when it comes to this. The ability to order prositututes via vending machine, theoretical hallucinatory sexual braindance experiences via a woman with 3 mouths, bare breasts and red light districts all play into that. And this could only be the tip of the iceberg when it comes to 2077. This is what they showed the public for the first time. Now I wan’t to make it clear we don’t actually know much about how wide-spread sexuality and violence will be in 2077. We can only make an educated guess based on what we’ve seen.

Now for the average consumer, the genre isn’t something that’s overly well known. Most people will look at it and chalk it up to a futuristic GTA. Take a look at this picture and don’t tell me this isn’t exactly how most people on a surface level are going to look at it. Most of the nuianced things in the genre of CYberpunk go over the head of the average consumer. They think its about cool weapons, fighting against the system and being a sexual deviant, and it is all those things, but the reason is to show you that under the veil of what our world presents you, this future ideal lies indisiously under the surface. This means not having nudity, sexual content, graphic violence, and what not goes against everything the narrative of what Cyberpunk is trying to show you. This potential censorship extends to more than just the nudity.

High tech meets low life is the slogan of the genre of Cyberpunk, and Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be taking that to the max degree. 2077 looks more violent, more crude, more dark and more disparaging than we’ve seen from prior titles, and is looking to push the boundaries of gaming in terms of shock value in the same way Grand Theft Auto did when it was first introduced to the market.

Now what this means, is that new policies that Sony seems to be pursuing, if they go through, will not only fragment the nature of what Cyberpunk is, it’ll also take away from what CD PROJEKT RED is creating.