‘Cyberpunk 2077’ Will Feature Full Nudity To Support Its Theme Of Transhumanism
At this year’s E3, CD Projekt Red unveiled their next video game title, Cyberpunk 2077, a role-playing open world dystopian game from the developers behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The demo of the game lasted 50 minutes, showcasing the game’s feature set and showing off CD Projekt Red’s capabilities as a studio.
The game’s synopsis reads: “Cyberpunk 2077 is a narrative-driven, open world RPG set in the most vibrant and dangerous metropolis of the future — Night City. You play as V, a hired gun on the rise, who just got their first serious contract. In a world of cyberenhanced street warriors, tech-savvy netrunners and corporate life-hackers, today is your first step to becoming an urban legend.”
Cyberpunk 2077 seems to be a game that’s also full of many thematic elements, one of them being nudity, which the game apparently won’t shy away from. CD Projekt Red has now explained what makes nudity so essential to the core philosophy of Cyberpunk 2077.
In an interview with Polygon, game director Adam Badowski said, “Nudity is important for us because of one reason,” Badowski said. “This is cyberpunk, so people augment their body. So the body is no longer sacrum [sacred]; it’s profanum [profane]. Because people modify everything, they are losing their connection to the body, to the meat. And that’s why we need to use the nudity in many situations.
“You see that there are bodies in the tub, and you need to take care of this woman. But at the same time she is augmented, she is not clean. Maybe she is augmented too much. Maybe the humanity level is pretty low in her, so it’s an interesting topic. It’s one of the key themes in cyberpunk. The very first scenes in the original Ghost in the Shell anime show exactly the same aspect. Because where is sacrum and where is profanum in a world when you can simply modify yourself to such limits that it makes you a different kind of person? It’s one of the most important themes in cyberpunk, as a genre.”
The point was raised in reference to the game’s character creation screen, which features a naked body. For demo purposes, however, the nude areas were censored, mostly to keep the audience from giggling or making fun, but the studio made it clear that in the full game, there won’t be any censorship.
Aside from character creation, nudity will also play a role in other areas of the game, as it’ll come up at times in missions. One example is when titular character V is tasked to rescue a kidnapped woman, who V thinks is being held for ransom. It turns out, however, that the kidnappers end up harvesting her cybernetic parts, and V eventually finds her naked in a bathtub full of ice. Pixelating her naked body would take away the gravity of that situation.
Badowski said that in the final game, his team intends to have full nudity, not for shock value but because it supports one of the most important themes in the cyberpunk genre: transhumanism, the belief that humanity can transcend its current mental and physical form with the help of technology. Throughout Cyberpunk 2077, players will have to grapple with what it means for them personally to become transhuman.
Cyberpunk 2077 is currently in development for PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One. An official launch date hasn’t been determined yet. Check out the official trailer here.
What do you think of CD Projekt Red’s decision? Let us know down in the comments.
Source: Polygon
