Category Archives: Cyberpunk

A new Cyberpunk 2077 mod that has been released online a few days ago upgrades V's apartment to give it a warm modern design.

The V's Apartment (Modern) mod introduces new props and lighting that make the apartment look considerably better than in its vanilla form. You can check out the mod in action in the video below, courtesy of Dravic.

Mario Kart 8 Looks Like a Current Generation Game With Beyond All Limits Ray Tracing ReShade Preset in New Video

HI, CHOOMS!

This mod updates V's apartment with a post-game modern look. Thanks to AMM, new props and lighting have been added to V's apartment to provide more immersion and dynamics. Most of V's apartment has been updated, including the bathroom.

In order to load up the props, you must have the following installed:

The current version of the Cyberpunk 2077 V's Apartment (Modern) mod is only the beginning, as the creator is working on improving NPC path scripts in the apartment and new variations. The mod can be downloaded right now from Nexus Mods.

Cyberpunk 2077 is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia worldwide. The game will hit PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S on a yet to be confirmed date.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolisobsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your characters cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.

Become a cyberpunk, an urban mercenary equipped with cybernetic enhancements and build your legend on the streets of Night City.

Enter the massive open world of Night City, a place that sets new standards in terms of visuals, complexity and depth.

Take the riskiest job of your life and go after a prototype implant that is the key to immortality.

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Cyberpunk 2077 New Mod Updates Vs Apartment With New Props and Lighting - Wccftech

Reigns is a super-simple medieval management sim in which you, the monarch, make binary decisions based on a wide variety of scenarios that will either cement your place in history or, more likely, lead to your untimely and ugly demise. It's blend of simplicity, variety, and humor is quite good: "The enjoyment is in the journey," we said in our 82% review of the sequel Reigns: Her Majesty.

NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy looks a very similar sort of experience, but one that takes place in a cyberpunk world. You play as an experimental AI owned by a megacorp (of course) who's been put in charge of running the city in all matters large and small, ranging from municipal approvals to aiding criminal investigations and (again, of course) harvesting data for advertisers.

Developer Dream Harvest said NeuroNet "plays closely" to Reigns, but noted some big differences as well. It's more focused on telling a coherent story than Reigns, and ditches Reigns' resource bar in order to encourage more natural decision-making rather than resource hoarding.

"We want players to make a range of decisions, from the challenging to the mundane, but we dont want them to be influenced by a user interface but instead by their own, personal, moral compass," the studio explained.

Dark humor is one of Reigns' big strengths, but NeuroNet looks more like it's played straight: Not surprising, perhaps, given that cyberpunk isn't the most light-hearted genre ever imagined, but I do wonder if it will come off as a bit heavy-handed by comparison. We will soon have the opportunity to find out, to some extent at least, as a demo will be available to one and all from October 1-7 as part of the upcoming Next Fest on Steam. Until then, you can find out more about what NeuroNet: Mendax Proxy has in mind at mendaxproxy.com.

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Guide the citizens of the future as a powerful AI running a cyberpunk city - PC Gamer

Representing one of cinematic history's greatest "What If" stories, cyberpunk godfather William Gibson ("Burning Chrome," "Neuromancer") once penned a provocative draft for "Alien 3" that was never used by the studio. 20th Century Fox eventually went with a stitched together script using ideas from David Twohy and Vincent Ward & John Fasano for director David Fincher ("Se7en," "Zodiac") that resulted in a polarizing 1992 entry in the storied "Alien" sci-fi franchise.

However, Gibson's action-oriented unproduced version is being given fresh life with Titan Books' "Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson," a hardback novelization adapted by Hugo Award-winning author Pat Cadigan and Space.com is serving up an exclusive excerpt to entice your senses. This never-realized draft kept Corporal Hicks and Newt at the forefront, with Ripley serving as more of a background character in cryogenic stasis.

Related: Alien movies, ranked worst to bestMore: You can soon have your own terrifying Xenomorph figure

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson $22.46 at Amazon

"Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson" from Titan Books recounts the unrealized vision for the "Alien" science fiction franchise's third entry by a legend of cyberpunk.View Deal

The plot follows the Colonial Marine vessel Sulaco on its Earth-bound journey from LV-426 when it drifts into a sector controlled by the "Union of Progressive Peoples," a nation-state embroiled in a mounting cold war and arms race. U.P.P. operatives climb aboard the Sulaco and locate hypersleep tubes containing Ripley, Newt, and an injured Hicks. A Facehugger attacks the main commando and the team escapes, grabbing what remains of the android Bishop during exit.

The Sulaco eventually docks at Anchorpoint, a humongous space station and military installation, where it unfortunately falls under control of the militarys Weapons Division. Boarding the Sulaco, Colonial Marines and scientists are swarmed by Xenomorph drones.

During the engagement, Ripley's cryotube is smashed and taken inside Anchorpoint, where she remains in a coma. Newt and an injured Corporal Hicks are resurrected and Newt is shipped off to Gateway Station on the way back to Earth. The U.P.P. sends Bishop to Anchorpoint, where risky hybrid xenomorph cloning experiments are setting the stage for acid-spewing calamities.

Now douse the light and check out our exclusive excerpt courtesy of Titan Books' "Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson" below.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the first three capsules: a woman, a little girl, and a Marine. Status lights on each one indicated they were functioning perfectly and the occupants all looked normal, although the Marine had sustained injuries to his face and upper body, burns of some sort. Bandages hid most of the damage, but hed need treatment when he woke up.

The last capsule, however, was trouble. The condensation on the inside of the lid was the same milky-white as robot-blood, and Luc Hai didnt think it was a coincidence. If the top half of the robot was in there, something had gone very, very wrong.

Luc Hai stood back as Boris attempted to pry the capsule open by forcing his gloved fingers under the edge of the lid. He wasnt having much luck, and despite the bulky vacuum suit, his body language clearly indicated he didnt want any help.

Fine with her, she didnt want to help himshe wanted to stop him. But she knew better than to try. Boris didnt react well to a subordinate questioning his actions. On the other hand, hed react a lot less well if he had to leave his legs behind when they went home.

Letting out a frustrated growl, Boris punched the capsule. Luc Hais jaw dropped; Boris was often gruff but he was calm-gruff, not given to displays of temper and not tolerant of those who were. The impact instantly jolted him out of his anger fugue and back to himself.

He turned to her and gave a faint, embarrassed laugh. Thats called percussive mode. Learned it from an engineer.

Luc Hai barely heard him. She was staring at the capsule, now slightly off-kilter on its base. The red and green status lights on the end flickered for a couple of seconds before they went off. There was a soft clunk as a lock released, and then the whited-out lid slowly lifted away from the bed.

Dense white fog flowed over the edge of the capsule in graceful billows. Luc Hai tried to pull Boris away with her but he shook her off with an emphatic gesture to keep her distance. She took another step back, half-expecting the fog would turn to liquid when it hit the floor, but it only disintegrated. She started to say something to Boris about leaving, then saw that all the fog had cleared away to reveal some kind of egg-shaped thing sitting in the middle of the capsule.

Or, more precisely, growing, its roots indistinguishable from the ragged guts of the robots upper torso.

The egg didnt have a hard shellit looked rubbery and wet, like something a reptile would produce. Had the capitalists programmed their machines to reproduce like robot-lizards? Was it more economical to have robots grow their own? Unease increasing, Luc Hai moved around behind Boris to move up on his left.

Now she saw a few shreds of plastic under the robots head, the remains of a medical catastrophic-injury cocoon. Wasting medical treatment on a machine was yet another example of capitalist stupidity but she couldnt work up much indignation about it. There were probably two dozen cocoons untouched in their supplies and none of the humans needed them, not even the Marine.

The robots head rolled to one side and its eyes opened, staring directly into her own with an expression of suffering on its face.

Luc Hai felt an intense dropping sensation in the pit of her stomach. No machine could actually suffer, whether it was a centrifuge, a spacecraft, or a robot that looked like a human. Her gaze traveled from his face along what was left of his body to the egg growing out of his torso, which was also impossible. Nothing grew out of inanimate objects.

At the top of the egg, flaps suddenly unfolded with a moist, fleshy, smacking sound. Boris took a step back just as something sprang out of it, hitting his face with a splash of ugly, yellowish liquid. Luc Hai jerked back, avoiding a large blob that landed exactly where she had been standing only a moment before. To her horror, it began eating through the metal with a loud hiss, which was quickly drowned out by Boriss screams.

Luc Hai turned to see Boris was still on his feet even as the thing from the egg sank through his helmet and into his head. The creature looked like a three-way cross between a snake, a jellyfish, and a squid. His screams became muffled, then took on a strangled quality as he staggered backward, clawing at the creature with both hands as he turned and broke into a clumsy run.

Leaving Ashok to fend for himself, Luc Hai closed her faceplate and followed him into the passageway at what she hoped was a safe distance. Her helmet was filled with the sound of her own terrified breathing but she could still hear Boriss cries of pain as he headed for the cargo deck in an off-balance, stumbling run, sometimes hitting one wall and rebounding off the other..

She kept waiting for him to fall, wondering what she would do when he did, how she could possibly help him. Somehow he made it all the way to the cargo deck, and kept going for almost half a minute before he finally fell face down three meters from an airlock marked EMERGENCY ONLY.

Luc Hai used the barrel of her rifle to roll Boris onto his back, hoping it was over. The creatures body was pulsing now as he clung to life, his hands making feeble swipes at the thing. Or maybe those were just spasmshe couldnt possibly be alive with a monster eating his head.

Slinging her rifle, she drew her sidearm, and then hesitated. Boris was past caring, but after all theyd been through together it felt disrespectful to shoot him in the face, even if he didnt really have one anymore.

On the other hand, hed have ordered her to make sure the thing was dead no matter whose face it had landed on.

She moved out of range of blowback and took aim, then closed her eyes as she pulled the trigger.

The mess of bloody tissue, fragments of bone, and helmet were dissolving even more quickly than the metal deck underneath. Other, smaller holes were opening up all around wherever pieces of the creature had landed, and the hissing was so much louder here, practically thunderous. Luc Hai could barely hear her own grunts of effort as she dragged Boris by one leg toward the nearest airlock, desperate to get them there before he fell apart.

Muttering an apology to Boris for the unceremonious treatment, Luc Hai hit the OPEN button beside the hatch, shoved him into the airlock, and punched EMERGENCY EXPEL. A red light overhead started flashing as the inner door snapped shut and a siren went off. Luc Hai closed her eyes, feeling the vibration as the airlock opened and spat Boriss body into the void.

The siren cut off as the outer hatch closed and the airlock was re-pressurized. Luc Hai remained still, counting her breaths and willing her pounding heart to slow down. Although her commando training wouldnt let her fall apart until she was back in her quarters, she needed a few seconds to pull her shit together.

It had just been a mission to gather intelget in, get the data streaming, get out, and get gone, leaving no sign theyd displaced so much as a molecule of air. A simple mission, and about as safe as any espionage mission could be.

Was supposed to be safe. Should have been safe. Would have been safe if they had just set up a data transfer conduit from the cargo deck without investigating anything else on the ship. If they had, they would have been back on the interceptor, monitoring the big fat data stream from the Sulaco. Boris would have been telling them about their mistakes, in between bullshit fairy tales about his glorious Bolshevik ancestor, not flying headless through the void, and shed have been a little bored, not traumatized. While Ashok

Her heart began pounding faster again as she realized she was no longer alone. Shed been so stupefied, she hadnt sensed something creeping up behind her. Hell, she hadnt even noticed that the hiss of acid eating through metal was nowhere nearly as loud as it had been. Luc Hai swallowed hard as she straightened up and turned around.

The monster standing at the mouth of the passageway had multiple limbs sprouting at weird angles from an irregular bulk atop two legs. As she raised her weapon, the thing stepped forward and turned into Ashok, carrying half a robot in his arms. The right half.

Ashok was so smart, she thought. The robot would contain data that wasnt in the ships computers and they were legally allowed to confiscate it as suspicious tech aboard a trespassing spacecraft. It would give the UPP an even greater advantage than theyd thought.

When they returned to the interceptor, Ashok locked the robot in the quarantine box. They put themselves through decontam three times during the return trip and twice more on arrival, just to be on the safe side. Still, Luc Hai couldnt scrub the image of the robots face from her mind. She told herself not to anthropomorphize, but she couldnt forget how relieved shed felt when theyd closed the quarantine box and the robot hadnt looked like it was suffering anymore.

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Cyberpunk guru William Gibson's rejected 'Alien 3' script scores a new novelization (exclusive excerpt) - Space.com

The upcoming patch will address this, allowing players to continue on with the story. Fixes are also on the way for quest-blocking bugs in Data Miner (mission five) and Trace Protocol (mission seven). Neon Giant says players can expect the resolution for bugs that blocked the completion of three specific quests. In the opening few minutes of The Ascent, you get a quest called Mutual Dependencies that sends you to find and eliminate a group of FullChrome gang enforcers who are going to attack a high-level underworld meetup. The problem is, in some cases the FullChromes never spawn, making it impossible to complete the second quest in the game.

The devs say theyre also implementing some performance improvements for PC, and have (finally) worked out the issue thats been preventing ray-tracing from working for some Windows 10 users.

{schema:{page:{content:{headline:Cyberpunk shooter The Ascent will get a patch to fix progression-blocking bugs,type:news,category:the-ascent},user:{loginstatus:false},game:{publisher:Curve Digital,genre:RPG,title:The Ascent,genres:}}}} Neon Giant doesnt specify exactly when the next patch is arriving, but says it will be deployed shortly, along with a full list of patch notes. The team says its committed to continue work on The Ascent throughout the rest of the year and beyond.

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Cyberpunk shooter The Ascent to receive patch to fix progression-blocking bugs - Games Bollyinside - BollyInside

Sheffield alt-metallers Bring Me The Horizon have rolled into London the final night of their POST HUMAN UK arena tour. Allow me to reintroduce the band, says frontman Oli Sykes, as he teases his bandmates with a banter-filled roll-call. Matt Nicholls is labelled the sixth best drummer in Rotherham, guitarist Lee Malia International Man Of Mexborough and keyboardist Jordan Fish the fishy fingers himself. After a few more in-jokes, he concludes,:And last but by no means least, I am your host Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon and we are gonna rock your world tonight.

It feels fitting for Sykes to be playing such a high-spirited master of ceremonies when this latest live incarnation of BMTH feels like a travelling circus. With the band resplendent in matching branded cream-coloured suits and backed by a full blockbuster production cyborg dancers and all this is much more than a rock show: its a high-concept affair. Tonight, which Sykes tells us is the biggest headline show of their career, Bring Me are here to prove that theyre the Big League band theyve always threatened to become.

A cinematic orchestral soundtrack opens proceedings before breaking down into a glitch-core rave. Are you fucking ready, London? squawks Sykes before the band burst into the raved-up emo of teardrops from last years POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR the first of four EPs/mini albums in their POST HUMAN project. London, I havent seen a fucking mosh-pit in two years, so you know what Im gonna fucking ask you, spits the singer, in the first of many requests to open it up and push it back as the crowd unleash 18 months of pent-up energy.

The gnarly MANTRA follows, before the moshpits go from a five out of 10 to full marks according to Sykes during The House Of Wolves from 2013s Sempiternal. Along with Shadow Moses and Can You Feel My Heart, thats as far back as they go in terms of oldies. The set largely leans on the arena-rock of their last few records, particularly the day-glo cyberpunk and sci-fi pop of amo and SURVIVAL HORROR.

The songs and the production follow a post-apocalyptic narrative that seems all to pertinent in 2021. Ahead of Dear Diary, a cage of screens lowers to warn of a virus outbreak thats consumed London. The song kicks off and zombie corpses start falling to the floor like youve stepped into a gory arcade shoot-em-up. Dancers in hazmat suits arrive to shoot dry ice out into the arena for Parasite Eve before were reminded that for all the bells, whistles and Alton Towers pizzazz, nights like this are supposed to be a celebration about making it to the other side of the pandemic. Or, as Sykes sings, When we forget the infection / Will we remember the lesson?

Bring Me The Horizon on stage at The O2, London. Credit: Conor McDonnell

To add to the sense of occasion, recent NME cover stars Nova Twins join the band for a raucous rendition of their collab 11 and punk prince YUNGBLUD comes out for an unhinged run-through of OBEY. Bring Me couldnt have really brought any more. For all the theatrical drama and bombast almost bordering on Muse levels everything is anchored a sweaty rock club basement attitude and sense of community.

Tonight was the moment they proved they could headline the big rooms and major festivals with the best of them. Its shit like this that makes me think were in a simulation, says Sykes as the crowd roar, hailing the show as a dream come true for him as and his mates to go from nobody kids to smashing The O2. We are ascending.

Bring Me The Horizon on stage at The O2, London. Credit: Conor McDonnell

Bring Me The Horizon played:

Teardrops

MANTRA

The House of Wolves

Medicine

Happy Song

Ludens

Dear Diary

Parasite Eve

Shadow Moses

Wonderful Life

11 (with Nova Twins)

DiE4u

Kingslayer

Follow You

Drown

Obey (with YUNGBLUD)

Throne

Can You Feel My Heart

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Bring Me The Horizon live in London: a spectacular cyber-punk circus - NME

The first benchmarks of the Steam Deck handheld console in several AAA and eSports games have been published by a Chinese user. The performance was benchmarked on a development kit that more or less matches the specifications of the final variant however performance may improve in the final retail variant.

The Steam Deck is one of the most anticipated handheld consoles that is being developed by Valve & will run on the Steam OS. We already detailed the specifications of the console here but to recap, they are listed below.

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Valve Steam Deck Specifications at a Glance

The Steam Deck console features the AMD Van Gogh APU with 4 cores and 8 threads. The CPU will operate at a base clock speed of 2.4 GHz and will turbo up to 3.5 GHz. As for the GPU, you are getting the AMD RDNA 2 architecture with 8 Compute Units for a total of 512 stream processors which will clock up to 1600 MHz. The CPU will offer 448 GFlops while the GPU will offer 1.6 TFLOPs of FP32 horsepower for a total of over 2 TFLOPs performance, making it faster than the original Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles.

For display, the Steam Deck handheld console features a 7-inch LCD that supports a resolution of up to 1280 x 800 at 60 Hz in handheld and up to 8K/60Hz or 4K/120Hz in dock mode. The gaming benchmarks were measured in handheld mode. The OS version for the development kit is Steam OS 3.0 and supports the entire Steam library without any issues.

The benchmarks start off with Shadow of The Tomb Raider where the user managed an average of 36 FPS at High Quality but using a custom settings configuration, the game was able to run at more than 60 FPS at the native resolution. The user also states that despite running at 30 FPS at the high settings profile, he didn't experience any stutter or lag.

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Moving over the DOOM Eternal, with medium settings, the game was able to deliver around 60 FPS on average, and improving the visual quality dropped the FPS down to 46 but it was still playable & ran smoothly according to the user. Of course, we also have eSports titles such as DOTA 2 where it was able to 140 FPS on the heroes selection menu but with the highest image quality, the average FPS dropped to 47 and 80 FPS with low image quality.

One of the heaviest titles in terms of visual quality, Cyberpunk 2077, was also tested and that delivered around 20-30 FPS at the high preset. The performance is very good considering that Valve's Steam Deck is the first attempt at a handheld console and the company is already talking about a successor that will be able to do 4K in the next couple of years.

Steam Deck Gaming Performance Benchmarks:

The user also measured the temperatures and Steam Deck managed to hover around 43C on the backside and 29C around the grips during gaming. As for battery timing, the console dropped from 100% to 46% after three hours which is decent enough for the handheld console. It looks like most users will be able to get around 4-5 hours of gaming time easily with the console in handheld mode.

We also recently detailed how the Steam Deck handheld console is ready to support the Windows 11 operating system and can also be used as a controller for your PC via Remote Play. Valve's device will start shipping in December 2021 for those lucky users that got in the first wave of pre-orders. The rest will have to wait for 2022. The console will cost $399 for the base variant with 64 GB of eMMC storage capacity, $529 US for the 256 GB, and $649 US for the 512 GB NVMe variants.

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Steam Deck Handheld Console Benchmarked 60 FPS With Decent Image Quality In Several AAA Games, 30 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 at Native Resolution -...

Impressed by means of classics like Gabriel Knight, the sport can handiest be downloaded for a couple of hours from the Epic video games Retailer.

Extra loose video games. If this morning we invite you to run to Steam so as to add the nice Syberia I and II in your libraries, now we do the similar with the Fortnite oldsters retailer, Epic Video games Retailer, which gives handiest nowadays the opportunity of downloading 2064: Learn Best Recollections, a cyberpunk mystery with pixelated graphics.

Launched six years in the past, 2064: Learn Best Recollections is a construction of MidBoss, LLC. taking a look to discover the social demanding situations of the next day thru vintage journey video games. To try this, switch the participant a tale the place Turing, the arenas first clever device, sign up for forces with a journalist in misery and the flowery duo plunge into the shadows in the back of the dazzling lighting fixtures of San Francisco. The secrets and techniques they divulge may undermine the principles of society, and likely robust other people will forestall at not anything to prevent them, they describe.

Its managers promote a online game impressed by means of nice classics corresponding to Snatcher or the online game sequence starring Gabriel Knight, all mixed with a contemporary and branching narrative that delves into identification, individuality and what it manner to be human with greater than 10 hours of sport content material.

We insist that 2064: Learn Best Recollections will handiest be to be had free of charge obtain till a couple of hours after this middle of the night, so if you have an interest within the premise of the online game and what you spot within the trailer of the inside track, run to the Epic Video games Retailer.

Within the Epic Video games Retailer youll additionally obtain The Escapists in a promotion legitimate till this Thursday, when Europa Universalis IV is put at 0 value.

Extra about: 2064: Learn Best Recollections, Midboss, Unfastened Video games and Epic Video games Retailer.

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2064: Learn Best Recollections Unfastened to Obtain These days on PC: A Pixelated Cyberpunk Journey - TheNewsTrace

Almost one year after its release, Cyberpunk 2077 continues to be among the best-looking games ever released, but visuals of already launched games can always be brought to the next level with the right mods.

A new modding showcase video put together by Digital Dreams shows how amazing the latest version of the game developed by CD Projekt Red can look with the Beyond All Limits Ray Tracing preset, the game's native ray tracing features, and NVIDIA DLSS 2.2. You can check out the video below.

Cyberpunk 2077 New Mod Rebalances Weather Probability

Cyberpunk 2077 got updated to version 1.31 last week. The new version features more gameplay, quests, and open-world fixes as well as visual improvements and GPU memory optimization on PlayStation consoles.

Visual

Cyberpunk 2077 is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia worldwide. The game will launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S on a yet to be confirmed release date.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolisobsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your characters cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Version 1.31 Looks Incredible With Beyond All Limits Ray Tracing, DLSS 2.2 and Over 50 Mods in New Video - Wccftech

Cyberpunk is a relatively new genre. Most will refer to William Gibsons 1984 novel, Neuromancer, as being a seminal work within cyberpunk, but its roots go back further to sci-fi authors of the 60s and 70s like Phillip K Dick, JG Ballard, and Alice B Sheldon (who wrote as James Tiptree Jr). Movie and videogame adaptations followed suit, cementing some of the key visual cues that we all recognise as cyberpunk today.

Cyberpunk 2077 is probably the most famous example in videogames Gibson himself ended up commenting on the trailer, saying it strikes me as GTA skinned-over with a generic 80s retro-future.

There are, of course, countless other cyberpunk games going all the way back to Konamis Snatcher in 1988, and more still that are being made right now, like Citizen Sleeper. Its a narrative RPG set on a lawless interstellar space station at the edge of society, where you play as an escaped corporate-owned consciousness. We spoke to Gareth Damian Martin, the solo developer behind Citizen Sleeper, about what cyberpunk means in contemporary gaming.

Even in its origins, Martin says, cyberpunk was built on so many existing parts of new wave sci-fi, literary noir, and beat generation style it always feels wrong to chop it out of history and treat it like some unique strand of art and media.

At the same time, I think theres a contradiction here, because cyberpunk, when used as a descriptor within games, feels painfully reductive. This is because, as with many aesthetically striking styles, cyberpunk visuals have been cannibalised and reused so many times as to become an incredibly basic list of elements. A neon-lit, rainy megacity, techno-orientalism, implants, corporate control. We are all so familiar with these elements that we can recognise them instantly, and within moments the cyberpunk descriptor will be applied.

it always feels wrong to chop cyberpunk out of history and treat it like some unique strand of art

Gareth Damian Martin

Developer

In games in particular, Martin explains, because we are talking about a very aesthetic medium, cyberpunk manifests visually, and in particular draws extensively from Blade Runner just look at the recently announced Vigilance 2099.

I think it is very telling that Blade Runner is the major influence, because actually that film strips away most of the more philosophical and literary cyberpunk elements of Philip K. Dicks Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. He replaced them with some hokey gumshoe detective elements and a carefully honed aesthetic that smashed together film-noir moodiness and a new strand of orientalism and fascination with cities like Shanghai and Tokyo. This incredibly successful aesthetic, which owes a huge amount to the designer Syd Mead, eclipsed any themes the film might have had and cemented its place as an eternal sci-fi touchstone.

Its important to note that Martin isnt enamoured with the genre, nor do they necessarily want their game to be viewed as part of it. They do, however, appreciate the work of Gibson.

I see my work as being about hope, finding a place, a reason to go on

Gareth Damian Martin

Developer

When I was first working on Citizen Sleeper I was rereading William Gibsons Sprawl trilogy, Martin says. I started feeling that I wanted to make something that drew on so many of the things I liked about these books, without making something explicitly cyberpunk. Could I make something inspired by Gibson that didnt pay lip service to the genre he helped create? For me Gibsons books are filled with strong qualities: the razor-sharp and intimate prose, the focus on those on the edge of society, the terrifying power of capital, decaying megastructures that house burgeoning subcultures. I think all of these make Gibsons early work very relevant and exciting to read even now.

But Martin also believes there are plenty of unexplored ideasin the genre at large, which they hope to delve into in Citizen Sleeper. In Gibsons Sprawl books, hackers are more like mediums, who can contact the intangible forces that influence the physical world. I always found this to be a more exciting vision of cyberspace, and so in Citizen Sleeper I have also tried to engage with these ideas a little more, placing the player as a medium between the physical and intangible not as a hacker sat behind a computer, but a being that can, simply by closing their eyes, slip into a dream which sits behind the physical reality of their environment.

Because of this I think of Citizen Sleeper as being in communication with science fiction as a wider genre, Martin says, listing Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell as other key influences.Despite admiring Gibsons Sprawl trilogy, Martin has some reservations. From the vantage point of 2021, I think Gibsons remix of the hardboiled noir fiction in these books is successful, but it comes with a lot of conservative baggage that no longer feels relevant. For example, his interest in Japan as a rising power feels aligned with a burgeoning cocktail of fascination and xenophobia that was common in pop culture of the 1980s.

So what does Martin make of gamings most famous cyberpunk game?In reality, much of what is bad about Cyberpunk 2077 has little to do with the genre. CD Projekt Reds corporate practices, its eagerness to foster toxicity within its communities, the hype machine its all created this miasma around the genre which will take a long time to dispel.

Martin also feels that Cyberpunk 2077 is fairly unambitious.It carries forward most of its ideas from its source material, the TTRPG Cyberpunk 2020. Thatgame was a power-fantasy pastiche of cyberpunk imagery and ideas, which hasnt aged well, so 2077 is also a genre pastiche that feels incredibly dated and out of touch.

One of Martins main hopes for Citizen Sleeperis to challenge the pessimisticworldview that pervades thegenre. One of the accusations I always see levelled at cyberpunk or similarly dystopian sci-fi is that its supposed to be a warning, not a fantasy.Weremeant to read these works thinking, what a shitty place to live, I hope the world doesnt end up like this. To me this is nonsense. To talk about Gibson again, its clear he was writing about a world that he was fascinated and enticed by.

I have already seen my work being accused of being bleak, of seeing the future pessimistically. But actually I see my work as being about hope, about finding a place, a reason to go on, about the importance of forming communities and bonds.

Citizen Sleeper is set to release on PC in 2022. You can check out the Steam page here.

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How Citizen Sleeper re-examines a genre and why Cyberpunk 2077 is dated - PCGamesN

I lovetaking toCyberpunk 2077s Night City on a controller, but theres one little, though pretty darn irritating, thing that can make the experience of my preferred playstyle that bit trickier. The default schemes key bindings, which arenteasily changed on a controller, have the stealth crouch and skip dialogue options assigned to the same button, which means I often accidentally miss important dialogue when trying to tackle a mission sneakily. But, a mod is here to help solve this.Preem.

Talwicks aptly named Stop Skipping Sentences When Sneaking Cyberpunk 2077 mod is simple in practice, but oh-so handy. It just switches the controller button for skipping dialogue (B if youre using an Xbox controller; circle if youre on a PlayStation one) tothe right-hand joystick press button the one usually used for quick attacks. The modder explains that this seemed the best choice, given youwouldnt use quick attacks until dialogue sequences were over.

While it doesnt totally iron out the chance of accidentally skipping some key dialogue, its an arguably more logical binding but the modder explains how you can change the skip dialogue control over to whichever other key you prefer if needed.

So, its a very simple mod, but a really useful one if, like me, youre always missing out on whatever Panam, Judy, Takemura, River, or well, everyone justhas to tell you right then while youre trying to infiltrate some warehouse on the down-low. Talwick says the mod was made for the latest build of the game, 1.3, but that it should work for any version.

If youre keen to grab the mod, do be sure to follow the modders instructions to get it running correctly and, as ever, mod with caution. You can find it at Nexus Mods here. If youre after more on Vs adventures in Night City, check out our Cyberpunk 2077 stealth,Cyberpunk 2077 quickhacking, andCyberpunk 2077 PC settingsguides at those links.If youre into action away from your PC, too, you can also check out a new Bladerunner tabletop RPG thats just been revealed.

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This Cyberpunk 2077 mod fixes one of the RPG's most annoying features on controller - PCGamesN