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Write for a game like Cyberpunk 2077 it can not be easy. CD Projekt Red Quest Designer Patrick Mills did the same in our interview with him a few weeks ago at E3. "It takes a critical eye," he explained. "J & # 39; Love [America] the way you love someone you've known for a very long time, and you know their flaws, and sometimes those flaws are overwhelming. "And, you know, I liked the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 demo as much as Bryan did in his preview, but there was a flaw that left me disappointed – and it's worth it to." talk about.
Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in the year titular at the location of Night City, a futuristic mega-city sandwiched between Los Angeles and San Francisco. In terms of the diverse composition of its citizens, it looks like these two places now and how they will likely look in sixty years, with characters of different races and ethnicities visible in every part of the city. This is a major change for CD Projekt Red, as it is a radically different decor from the white and European feudal world of The Witcher 3. It's not just the difference between castles and skyscrapers, but also a huge change in demographic composition. adjustment.
That's a good thing, but there is a trap – while the demo made me want to fall in love with Cyberpunk 2077, I encountered a major hurdle: a disappointing dialogue, painfully stereotyped and writing around his most famous Latino character. If CD Projekt Red wants me to believe and invest in the world of Cyberpunk 2077, writing people of color in this game must strive to push back the kind of stereotypical and unrealistic dialogue that I have witnessed in this superb demo.
While the demo follows protagonist V, she is mostly accompanied by a friend named Jackie Welles, who is Latino. According to CD Projekt Red, Jackie is "a gun to rent … a highly skilled assassin.In the Wild West, he would surely be a bounty hunter or bounty hunter." 2077 has him as a cyber-punk, just outside the big league, and he really wants to get into the game. "In the demo, Jackie is a cool and endearing character.
Jackie, prominent in the demo, is a rare but welcome major Latino character.
On paper, his character sounds great, and even during the first two minutes of the demo, I was impressed by the fact that he did not have a stereotypical Hispanic accent. This has been a pleasant surprise because the media have a long history of "alteration" of Hispanics through very pronounced accents despite the fact that such heavy accents are not so common. As a result, I was excited that one of my favorite studios incorporated a Latin character into its main cast, and more importantly, that things started off well. This feeling did not last, however – while it lacked the stereotypical emphasis, Jackie's spoken dialogue was parallel to classic Latino stereotypes.
In an audio recording of the demo we took, Jackie averaged four sentences without randomly inserting a Spanish word into his English sentences. To add to this point, the words tend to be the popular words that non-Hispanics know – words like culo (ass), pendejo (Mexican slang for an idiot), puta (slut), and hombres (men). Jackie says phrases like "Put pants on your ass and go down here," "Shit eat tailors, vamonos (let's go)" and "I'll stay up. I can not move on your ass. This makes you an easy target. These are never complete Spanish sentences that exist of themselves; there are one or two Spanish words, simple and random, embedded in his sentences that make them feel abnormal and shocking. This trope is quite common in movies too, and it is quite likely that it is there that developers and writers have taken it in hand.
Although I can not speak for all the Latino people of the world, I can speak for myself and I can talk about living all my life in Miami, one of the most populated cities in America, with 67.7%. Miami is home to thousands of different Latinos: Cubans, Mexicans, Nicaraguans, Dominicans and more. The city where I grew up is almost 100% Latino. In short, I know a lot of Latinos. Throughout my life, I've never heard of English-speaking Latinos like Jackie. No Latin person who speaks English and Spanish – especially if English is their native language since it seems to be Jackie – inserts one or two Spanish words in the middle of almost every sentence. At a glance, this may seem like a touch of color for the characterization, but it remains discordant – and there are surely better ways to achieve the desired effect.
It's as if the writing was screaming that this character is Latino, when the point to any character is that one aspect of their identity should not encompass their entire character. By inserting Spanish words into what looks like almost every other sentence Jackie says, the game seems to try to constantly remind you of its Latin identity in a way that is both extremely stereotyped and incredibly redundant; we know that he is a latin person thanks to the first time that he says something in spanish. When a situation is heading south, it might be logical that it could briefly curse or speak without thinking in another language. When this happens almost every minute in a minute, Jackie feels less a person and more of a stereotypical caricature of what a Latin person is. Heywood, is described as "primarily a Latino … a massive suburban district, with an underlying gang problem", thus falling into the extremely worn-out media tradition of Latinos representation. as gang members, and I am concerned about how writing the future of gravel Cyberpunk will use the current stereotypes.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is my favorite game, and CD Projekt Red is a developer that I will follow pretty much any project – after The Witcher, I'm fully invested. I have a sincere love and respect for the work that this company does, and of course, I want Cyberpunk 2077 to be the best game possible. But, as Mills has said of Cyberpunk's portrayal of a broken America, sometimes the best criticism comes from assessing the things you love because you want them to be better. Visibility matters, and although I appreciate the studio's real efforts to represent a diverse society, this kind of stereotyped writing as a shortcut should be a serious concern in the process of making the City of the Night seems real and credible.
The truth is that visibility is not important when representation itself is poor because marginalized people – as redundant as it may seem, but we continue to claim – are real people, and we deserve more than just crumbs of representation. Representation is not necessarily a good representation, and when this representation seems to hurt the people it is supposed to represent more than their justice and identity, can we be happy to 39 such a representation?
I have seen dozens of articles exploring the beauty of Cyberpunk 2077, though the first-person shooter component of this RPG seems to work, its liberal use of blasphemy and nudity, and the structure sidequests. These are highly valuable topics to discuss, obviously, and it is certainly easier to talk about when a game looks so good: you can praise it and it always does good. to do. The misguided dialogue for Jackie is something that I have not seen any talk about – and that's a shame, especially when other people who have seen the demo mentioned having similar thoughts in person on the show.
My criticism of Jackie's stereotypical dialogue does not affect the fact that I was blown away by everything else in the demo, just as the demo was spectacular and did not eliminate the fact that it was not a big deal. Jackie's writing is already extremely imperfect. One of the goals of each RPG is to portray a credible world with credible characters, and though CD Projekt Red is a master in creating immersive worlds, the distance between studio and American culture already seems to be at least obvious part. to see behind closed doors. CD Projekt Red should do more research, hire people of color with whom it can consult on the accuracy and respect of their writings, and commit to making their cyberpunk universe as diverse as possible. As a Projekt Red CD fan, I know they're committed to doing their best to offer the best possible experience to the players – after all, Mills said in our interview that "it's all about it. is in fact a big goal for us to do We are sure that we represent precisely the world in which we want to take you: a lot of research, a lot of discussions with people, a lot of reading, a lot of creation, and not being afraid to change things when we give them wrong. "
I hope the studio is able to recognize what is wrong with Jackie's character and take the necessary steps to make him a more credible character. As we tend to be invisible in the media, a triple-A studio incorporating a major Latino character in the distribution of its game is the kind of visibility that carries a weight and a responsibility to do just by the identity of the character . Cyberpunk 2077 is a bit far from the exit, the developers promising that it will only come out "when it will be ready" – so I hope that a deeper reflection on the representation of the diversity of the characters in the game is taken forward.
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