Cyberpunk 2077 Creators Swear They Won’t Trample on Your Religion
The maker of the highly-anticipated and controversial Cyberpunk 2077 swears the game won't trample on your religion. | Source: CD Projekt Red
Cyberpunk 2077 has been making waves all over the video gaming world – thanks in no small part to the fact that it will star Keanu Reeves – even though the game won’t see the light of the day until 2020.
But the hotly anticipated title ran into a mini-controversy after developer CD Projekt Red’s quotes were literally lost in translation.
Cyberpunk 2077 Doesn’t Want to Start a Holy War
IGN reports that an interview between CD Projekt Red executive Mateusz Tomaskiewicz and Polish news site Gry Online WP, in Polish, was translated by video game messaging board NeoGAF into English. The translation ignited controversy, as the studio’s executive appeared to suggest that Cyberpunk 2077 “will not avoid any subject, even if they may offend the sensitivity of some.”
According to the translated interview :
“Our vision of Cyberpunk is not to describe an alternative world but a continuity of our world.”
“Some things will look like our current reality. For example, Christianity is present in the game and will even have a faction.”
However, it turns out that the CyberPunk 2077 executive’s quotes were mistranslated by the messaging board.
IGN contacted the developer to clarify if the English translation was correct, and it turns out that wasn’t the case. The Cyberpunk 2077 developer sent CD Projekt Red their own English translation of the Polish interview. To the controversial question of someone entering “a church to cause havoc,” CD Projekt Red’s official reply was:
“We do not want to avoid religion as a topic, authenticity of the world is what counts for us. Technically, the situation you mentioned is possible, but this is all about the choices made by the player. We won’t encourage the player to do so. In our quests, which involve religious themes, we make sure there’s no disrespect.”
Just the Latest Controversy for CD Projekt Red
The much-hyped Cyberpunk 2077 has suffered a deluge of controversy in the year ahead of its release. The radical nature of the game, as evident from the trailer, has made it a beehive for criticism.
Back in June, an in-game ad was criticized for being transphobic. The ad depicts what seems like a transgender model on a poster bearing the words “with 16 flavors you’d love to mix” written in small letters after the tagline “Mix it up.”
That ad was for a fictional drink, but it triggered a very real backlash.
https://twitter.com/acvalens/status/1138770473154699265
Kasia Redesiuk, the artist responsible for the design, denied the accusation in an interview at E3. She told Polygon :
“In [the year] 2077, especially with how much body modifications are available, I think people just mix and match however they want, however they feel,” Redesiuk said. “And even society is more open to different kinds of relationships.”
“This is all to show that [much like in our modern world], hypersexualization in advertisements is just terrible,” Redesiuk continued. “It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world — a world where you are a cyberpunk, a person fighting against corporations. That [advertisement] is what you’re fighting against.”
Cyberpunk 2077 is based on a dystopian future, so there is a good chance that people are getting enraged about those aspects of the game that they don’t understand yet. Given the hype around the game, it is possible that there will be more controversies along the way until it officially hits the market.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to be released on April 16, 2019, for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
