As the Cyberpunk 2077 franchise evolves with the eventual release of Project Orion, it will be interesting to see how it handles its core science fiction themes, motifs, and tropes. With CD Projekt Red leaving the first Cyberpunk behind to focus on the IP’s future, there are a number of interesting directions it could take with regard to its eponymous genre trappings.
Cyberpunk 2077 adheres to many cyberpunk conventions. Aesthetically, the game is replete with engrossing neon lights, towering monolithic superstructures, and multilayered urban sprawl typical of classic movies like Blade Runner and Akira. Thematically, Cyberpunk explores transhumanism, rampant capitalism, and the many ethical quandaries that are part-and-parcel with unfettered futurism and overpopulation. More than anything, Cyberpunk 2077 epitomizes the grungy coolness of its corner of sci-fi, with dialog that feels pulled straight out of a William Gibson novel and iconography inspired by 1980s visions of an analog future. Having said all that, there are still ways in which it can stand apart from its influences and contemporaries.
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Project Orion Can Stand Out By Digging Into the Lunarpunk Subgenre
Lunarpunk Is a Unique Flavor of the Cyberpunk Aesthetic
Night City is undoubtedly stunning. Its sprawling vistas, dense topography, and relentlessly modern architecture make it nearly impossible to forget, even for players who don’t click with the game as a whole. Indeed, Cyberpunk 2077‘s world is drenched in atmosphere and personality.
This distinct characterization can be fleshed out and diversified by leaning into lunarpunk, an aesthetic that folds mysticism and witchcraft into the broader cyberpunk framework. This peculiar vision of the future is nascent and hasn’t inspired many major adaptations, which is one of the reasons why CD Projekt Red ought to look to it for inspiration: it could help evolve Cyberpunk‘s visual design and lore in a unique, underexplored way. Project Orion wouldn’t have to leave Night City behind for this to work, either, as its predecessor has already set the stage for lunarpunk concepts and tropes.
Project Orion Is Primed for Lunarpunk’s Influence
Cyberpunk 2077 dabbles in mystical and metaphysical ideas, with the character of Misty and the tarot card side quest being the most prominent instances of this. Upon first glance, notions of spirituality and magic may seem incongruent with the cold futurism of the cyberpunk genre, but Cyberpunk‘s worldbuilding demonstrates that this is not the case.
Night City’s denizens morph into human-machine hybrids, with some, like Adam Smasher, stripping back virtually every vestige of their humanity to become chimeras of steel, flesh, and microchips; V shares a body with Johnny Silverhand, an entity which, when stripped of his scientific narrative justifications, is essentially a ghost; Cyberspace is, for all intents and purposes, a spiritual, astral realm that doesn’t adhere to natural law. All of this is to say that the sci-fi conventions baked into Cyberpunk 2077, and all sci-fi stories, to an extent, are extremely compatible with traditional mystical and spiritual questions.
Lunarpunk can thus be more than just a mere addendum to Cyberpunk 2077‘s chunky atmosphere: it can serve as a framework for more multifaceted, thematically rich storytelling. Project Orion can leverage the subgenre’s tropes to further explore the interplay of spiritualism, magic, and technology, providing an alternate perspective on typical science-fiction themes like transhumanism and the nature of human consciousness.
Leaning into lunarpunk could help Project Orion stand out, but it could also make it more thoughtful and complex, as viewing the world of Cyberpunk 2077 through such an esoteric lens could lead to unique storytelling opportunities. Whatever the premise of Project Orion, it will need to elevate the already solid, mature narrative and worldbuilding of its predecessor. Perhaps the philosophical approach of lunarpunk is an avenue to achieving this goal.