Cloudpunk: City of Ghosts Review

Cloudpunk’d

Cyberpunk, the literary movement, was as out of date as it was prescient. Its critique of capitalism came only after capital was already being transformed into the omnipotent printing press of neoliberal hegemony, and its depiction of this process not only excluded the genocidal crushing of labour power in the colonies and the legal oppression of unions in the colonisers’ homelands (with the notable exception of Blade Runner, which did not shy away from mythologising real actions being taken by imperialist countries at the time it was being produced), but also inadvertently glorified the rising political power of corporations by depicting this process as being far more interesting, far more obscure than petty bribery and the symbiotic relationship of the military-industrial complex and the market’s adoption of its technical innovation.

Today, cyberpunk is no longer a movement, but a genre or an aesthetic to pastiche, and its depiction of the feudal lord-like power of our great tech monopolies gives the audience the impression they are run by innovative, evil geniuses; not unimaginative rentiers.

Nor does modern cyberpunk explore how the intrusiveness of the great tech monopolies was built not only on the innovation of the military-industrial complex, but also in direct consultation and collaboration with intelligence agencies; indeed, modern marketing and data collection techniques for corporations grew out of the propaganda and intelligence wings of the twentieth century’s military-industrial complexes, and both have remained in close collaboration ever since.

Additionally, in the pastiches and genre works of today, the anxiety over Japanese economic power has been stripped of its orientalist paranoia (Japan was one of two major post-War capitalist economies established by America which experienced an economic boom based on skilled engineering: yet not a pearl was clutched over zee Germans), and is now little more than an excuse to show off how cool kanji and samurai are. (And fair enough, I mean they are pretty cool!) But this sort of cross-cultural dialogue (or appropriation, depending on your perspective) is also where the genre of cyberpunk starts to become interesting, because unlike many dystopian fantasies that are really utopias for nihilists, cyberpunk attempted to depict an ambiguous future in which the slow process of secularisation of the West escaped anomie by replenishing itself in a fusion religion which married Buddhism, Taoism or Islam to Christianity and capitalism; perhaps most beautifully realised in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep; and while modern cyberpunk is not so forward-thinking, it nevertheless embraces the marriage of American and Japanese pop culture.

Of course, fascinating as the OG cyberpunk vision was, it was not far removed from the romanticism of some centuries earlier which set the groundwork for the Eastern-infused modernist works that were to follow, and ultimately lead to cyberpunk itself.

Nevertheless, cyberpunk was on to something here. Today, it is all but impossible to imagine popular culture without Japanese games, cinema and anime; but at the time cyberpunk was being written, Japanese culture was restricted to the domain of theologians, artists and cinephiles. Then again, decades before romanticism, china was sought-after not only for the rich, but also anyone who could afford dishes (though if you could afford dishes, I suppose you had to be sort of rich).

The sympathy with which cyberpunk authors depicted the working class and family was also fascinating, their work being published during the establishment of Thatcher and Raegen. Even the least politically motivated works of cyberpunk, like Ready Player One, are steeped in a longing for family, or the horror of its destruction. Indeed, in the original Cloudpunk, not only must Rania try and redeem herself for what she had to do to Camus, her dog, to survive; but also establish herself in her new home—not only by buying amenities and decorations, but also by adopting a stray girl she rescues.

In City of Ghosts, the absence of her adopted daughter is deeply felt—though not so much explicitly emphasised—giving the danger Rania is in a little more gravity. This longing for family or community in cyberpunk in the face of Thatcher and Raegan’s atomisation of society has only been amplified in its genre and pastiche descendants.

Speaking of genres and pastiches, the heroes of cyberpunk are very often nostalgic pastiches of noir detectives: bad at running their businesses and healthily cynical of success; living totally aimless and dysfunctional lives without the rock of a family or religion—yet longing for the credit they deserve but have never received for their hard work. Without a place to find validation in the approval of family or status as workers, or even consolation in the myth of religion, where can they find a balm to their suffering but in a bottle? (Today, in morphine.) Or, equally interesting, cyberpunk heroes are also menial labourers and disaffected youths steeped in nostalgia for the counter-cultural antiheroes who followed in the gin-soaked footsteps of noir gumshoes and were not so much a critique of family aimed at destroying it, but a critique of family in a naïve attempt to remake it.

How wonderful it was, then, that in Cloudpunk the player took on the role of a lowly-immigrant delivery driver/occasional uber with no ambitions beyond making a life for herself in the city—her story illustrating not only the struggles of dealing with unsympathetic PMCs and working for a corporation which views her labour as disposable, but also, in the cyberpunk tradition, elevating her special skills as a driver to society-changing import: only, without the irony of Snow Crash; thus, in a sense, inadvertently moving in the same strange direction of most earnest Cyberpunk by inventing a mythical meritocracy to fulfil the wishes of hard workers whose hard work isn’t rewarded by the material meritocracy in which they work—who needs a decent day’s wages when you could save the world, instead?

No wonder cyberpunk authors were so fixated on the potential anomie resulting from the decline of Christianity! At least Christians could believe they were contributing a little to saving the world every Sunday.

But irony (or lack thereof) aside, Cloudpunk’s setting was just as rich as the narrative. Although most of the gameplay consisted of driving through scripted traffic from place to place, the amusing dialogue and endearing characters (some of whom explored a few interesting science fiction themes, or riffed amusingly on clichés) made for an experience that played out more like Beneath a Steel Sky than Crazy Taxi.

City of Ghosts picks up right where Cloudpunk left off. After a brief introduction to Hayse (a petty criminal and drug addict who also has a talent for driving) and Morpho (a CorpSec android-in-training who is shadowing Hayse as he prepares to arrest him), the game puts the player back in the shoes of Rania, accompanied by Camus whose new body seems to exist solely to delay each elevator ride as Rania waits for her faithful companion to join her. While the comical back and forth between Hayse and Morpho or Rania and Camus is a little less polished than the writing in Cloudpunk proper (there are plenty of awkward lines, and a bit too much of an overreliance on swearing for comical effect), both dynamics are consistently amusing, and the development of Morpho’s character is, in particular, endearing.

Rania’s side of the narrative untangles threads of her backstory, and also acts as an epilogue not only in regards to the ramifications of CORA, but also for the characters she met in the original—though many of the cameos of minor characters from the first game feel a little unnecessary, not really developing them further. Indeed, touted as a “sequel-length expansion” it is this very length that is the biggest failing of City of Ghosts: the meaty parts of the main narrative comprise perhaps only half of the play time, and the rest feels very much like filler. Indeed, in the original, most of the side quests had legitimately funny punchlines, or narratives as rich as the main story; which made playing through what were little more than fetch quests worthwhile. Not so in City of Ghosts.

Nevertheless, City of Ghosts does retain the charm of the original; elaborates on its themes and introduces two amusing new protagonists who give the city of Novalis a more quotidian flavour as Hayse not only tries to escape arrest, but also has to deal with ex-girlfriends and shitty bosses who do not necessarily grow into his allies—as such characters did for Rania in the original. While we’re on the topic of Rania, her interaction with a fellow migrant and an upper-class suitor are also much more down to earth than her interaction with such characters in the original, adding more grounded layers to her character. She is also granted the privilege of briefly exploring the verdant foliage of The Spire, which perhaps best illustrates Cloudpunk’s theme of inequality; for nowhere else is the city of Novalis nearly as beautiful.