Does Overwatch, the Blizzard game, count as cyberpunk, or does cyberpunk require a darker aesthetic?

I only know cyberpunk through CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 game, and I guess also through the Blade Runner movies. So, I don’t really know much about it from literature or tabletop games.

That said, Overwatch has a lot of the same themes, but with a brighter “Sunday morning cartoon/anime” aesthetic.

So yeah, thoughts?

  • complacent_jerboa@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Overwatch has a lot of the same sci-fi elements, but I don’t think cyberpunk would be an accurate way to describe it. In a way, it’s a patchwork of a bunch of different stuff; for example, you might say Sombra is cyberpunk. But I don’t think it generalizes well.

    One of the main things in cyberpunk (and in a lot of punk genres) is economic inequality and the flaws of capitalism. In Overwatch, large corporations are part of the setting (and so is poverty, I would guess), but that’s all they are — background set pieces.

  • S13Ni@lemmy.studio
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    1 year ago

    I would say no, none of the themes of cyberpunk are really there and aesthetic is also very far off

      • S13Ni@lemmy.studio
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        1 year ago

        I think it mostly looks futuristic, and not cyberpunk, what I consider cyberpunk look is more dirty, less utopistic and polished look. I tried to post image from Deus Ex Mankind Divided Golem City, but it didn’t work for some reason.

        • diamond_shield@reddthat.com
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          1 year ago

          Just post an external URL to it like i did, similar to old reddit

          It’s also more lightweight to the instances, I strictly only upload images I don’t want to rot on here

  • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    I would say… sort of? It’s much more comic book superhero shit with some very loose nods to cyberpunk (a la the robot stuff). What I think it lacks is anything more than a surface level social commentary or any real analysis of how technological advancement intersects with capital accumulation to create a dystopia. It’s more about capeshit with a thin premise of “DAE robot rights?” without really even exploring that subject on a meaningful or philosophical level.

    Contrast that with, for example, the recently revitalized Armored Core franchise. That is Cyberpunk.