Spoilers forward for Cyberpunk 2077.
When you’ve ever needed to expertise throwing Elon Musk down a rubbish chute, there’s, to my information, no less than one choice: a aspect quest in Cyberpunk 2077.
For a online game about dystopian wealth disparity, AI-driven cars, and downloading your consciousness into different our bodies, Cyberpunk 2077 is oddly quick on Musk references. The one it does comprise comes from the “Violence” side quest. In it, you meet chrome-skinned pop celebrity Lizzy Wizzy, voiced by real-life singer-songwriter Grimes, who was nonetheless in a relationship with Musk on the time of the online game’s launch in 2020.
Right here, Lizzy Wizzy hires the protagonist, V, to surveil her boyfriend, whom she suspects of dishonest. It’s a fairly cold job — heck, downright lawful in comparison with the opposite hijinks you’re getting as much as — and V appears greatly surprised by how low the stakes are. Why not simply ask him?
“Think about this — we’re by no means alone, not likely. At all times surrounded by assistants, PR reps, make-up artists,” she says. “I cease smiling at him for one millisecond, it’ll be throughout each screamsheet on this city … Tens of millions of eyes, educated on you, consistently.”
The suspected cheater is Liam Northom, who Grimes / Lizzy describes as “Forty-ish. Delicate. Man who by no means needed for something.” Then, in a twist that doesn’t fairly match with the remainder of the dialogue, she explains that Liam is her supervisor.
Why would a pop star have bother securing a personal dialog along with her supervisor when she apparently has no bother sneaking off to a seedy motel so as to rent a mercenary? Why would tabloids even care about whether or not she’s smiling at her supervisor? And what does “man who by no means needed for something” imply, precisely? Are emerald mines implicated?
However inconsistent character constructing and weak dialogue are fairly par for the course in Cyberpunk 2077, so let’s transfer on.
The gameplay aspect within the quest is easy. You sneak right into a nightclub, hack their cameras, and document a dialog between Liam and a mysterious lady. It seems that he’s not dishonest — he’s surreptitiously backed up a digital model of her consciousness as insurance coverage simply in case her profession ends prematurely. “Are you able to tweak [her digitized personality] to take away undesirable traits?” he asks the not-Neuralink corporate rep that he’s assembly secretly within the membership. “Ever since her conversion, she hasn’t been herself.”
At this level, V logs off from the surveillance system. His fixed companion Johnny, voiced by Keanu Reeves, is horrified and encourages him to inform Lizzy the total fact. When you “do the suitable factor” and provides her the recording of Liam’s dialog, she hangs up in shock and dismay. A while later, she calls you once more, asking you to satisfy her on the identical motel. You will discover her there having a full meltdown with Liam’s corpse mendacity on the bottom subsequent to her. When you select to assist her once more, you decide up Elon / Liam, stroll down a corridor, and discard him in a rubbish chute.
And that’s form of it! You get some unhinged texts from Lizzy Wizzy in a while about how impressed she is to make a brand new album. Presumably, it’ll be Lemonade however full-sensory — and as a substitute of forgiving her dishonest associate, she murders him and pays some man to toss him within the trash.
“Forty-ish. Delicate. Man who by no means needed for something.”
It’s attainable that the “Violence” aspect quest was meant to be for much longer however needed to be truncated on account of Cyberpunk’s infamous production issues. It actually feels truncated. However the actual sin is that it’s not even all that humorous. The console-breakingly bad bugs that plagued its launch have since been addressed, and all in all, Cyberpunk 2077 is a genuinely entertaining online game that I’ve performed for a very embarrassing variety of hours. Nonetheless, it’s a lot more durable to repair the weak writing in subsequent patches — and this sport’s writing is so weak that a quest the place you throw Musk down a rubbish chute is generally unmemorable.
Musk was in a fairly totally different place within the cultural consciousness on the time of the sport’s launch. For many avid gamers then, he was the man who makes Cybertrucks, which appear to be they’re straight out of Cyberpunk 2077; now, he’s the man who thinks iPhone strategy games are superior to chess and has the worst Elden Ring build you’ve ever seen. Additionally, he and Grimes are damaged up.
Between the varied rumors of infidelity to Grimes and his general flagging reputation for the reason that acquisition of Twitter, possibly the “Violence” aspect quest was simply too forward of its time. If it had been written in the present day, Liam Northom may have change into a way more specific nod to the billionaire and the entire arc would have been a lot funnier. Perhaps Liam’s physique can be unbelievably heavy on account of carrying two shields. Perhaps you’d get rewarded with a Cybertruck that’s supposed to point out up in your stock later and never does.
However underwhelming or not, so far as I do know, it’s nonetheless the one online game the place you can throw Musk down a rubbish chute. Put it in the next anime, cowards.