But that doesn’t mean it didn’t still, however unintentionally, lead to an experience that was affirming for me in its own strange way.īefore playing Cyberpunk 2077, one thing I absolutely never did was attempt to make a character who looked like me. Instead of an attempt at diverse and inclusive portrayals of the self, this feels more like a very crude joke that the devs put in to appeal to a highly mythologized form of gamer. The frank depiction of various genitals that includes flop-physics as you click through the wheel of options seems a bit sophomoric, like a middle schooler is giggling behind their hand. And there’s no denying that the creator is, like the rest of the game, pretty darn busted: not on a technical level necessarily, but on an ideological one. I booted it up and took it for a spin, starting, obviously, with the character creator.

My choice to play 2077 is already kind of a fraught one much work has been done on not only the technical failings of the game, but also its many theoretical and ideological shortcomings, typified by an obvious and rampant transphobia present across a lot of the game’s marketing. I just always struggled with making a character that I was satisfied with and ended up with an avatar that I felt mediocre about or indifferent toward. That isn’t to say I didn’t care about it and went with a preset default, because every time a character screen was presented to me, I really attempted to do my due diligence. I’ve never particularly enjoyed character creation in video games.

Character creator 3 genitalia