Why gender, identity, and fashion matter in the ambitous 'Cyberpunk 2077'

The hype for Cyberpunk 2077 is so goddamn real.

After first teasing the neo-noir game five years ago at E3, CD Projekt Red came back with a new trailer that upped the ante and stole the show. In short, Cyberpunk 2077 came to kick ass, take names, and look super fucking dope in the process.

We caught the hour-long, hands-off demo at E3, and it was the kind of wild ride you need to see to believe. There's almost too much to say about the bustling, vibrant, and jam-packed world of Cyberpunk 2077.

But one of the most fascinating aspects that truly makes the game stand out among the sea of other open-world blockbuster role-playing games is how character customization, appearance, and gender actually have direct impacts on the story.

While the option to play as one of two genders is always appreciated, countless other games like Fallout 4 treat it like a purely aesthetic change. But as we know, gender is far more than an exterior appearance in the real world. It's not only a defining characteristic of self-identification, but also a huge factor in how the world perceives and treats you.

And that's part of the CD Projekt Red team's core design philosophy for Cyberpunk 2077.

Now, we're not yet sure how much of an impact choosing whether protagonist V presents as a man or woman will actually have. But in an interview with level designer Max Pears, it became clear that the team considers the emphasis on identity as demonstrative of game's overall themes.

"We’re really focusing on it as not only having an effect on gameplay, but also who you are as a cyber punk as well," he said.

And he doesn't just mean gender, either. In the demo, we got a glimpse of just how complex Cyberpunk 2077's character customization is. And it makes every other standard approach of picking out hair color and skin tone look comically surface level.

Your past and life path are embedded options in the opening customization screen. That includes making life-altering events like the death of a sibling part of your core character backstory. And that's because Cyberpunk 2077 is a story grounded in transhumanism (the melding of machine and man), which inherently deals with questions of what it means to be a person.

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"For us, [the character customization] is a way to express more story and narrative, by having it impact the world. Not just in terms of what you can do, but who you are," Pears said

This even extends to fashion, with the character's clothing affecting your Street Cred, and playing into one of the core RPG stats: Cool. Pears revealed that Street Cred can also have ripple effects, like getting different reactions from vendors, from pricing to weapons. There are more standard RPG stats, too, of course like Strength, Intelligence, Reflexes, and Tech. But one intriguing category even factors something called Constitution.

During the demo, V goes to what they call a RipperDoc to get more cyber enhancements. This is the upgrading system, and it's once again an example of how Cyberpunk 2077 takes a standard and functional trope in games -- and actually gives it weight.

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These customizations will not only affect your character's abilities, but itself also presents choices about identity. There's an option to go to illegal RipperDocs, selling unsanctioned military optics. But, from the looks of enemies you meet later on in the demo, this will cost you some form of your humanity or morality.

Pears said that all these customizations, whether it be through fashion or gender or tech, go back to character expression, even for NPCs.

He points to character of Dexter Deshawn from the demo, a gangster kind of character who gives you a job. "His entire arm is gold, because that’s who he is. He’s a drug lord, so he wants you to know he's got status. And we want you to be able to have that same kind of expression as well."

CD Projekt Red isn't ready to reveal too much more about the extent of its exploration of gender identity as a core world-building element. But the idea invites a whole litany of fascinating questins.

Can you change genders during the game, since you can change so much else through RipperDocs? How exactly does being a woman or man change the way NPCs treat you? One potential in the demo stood out as a possibility: The RipperDoc you visit has a crush on V. But we only got to see V played as a woman. Would he be "sweet" on V if we played as a man, too?

Even after having seen so much, there seem to be countless possibilities in the thriving world of Cyberpunk 2077. But we'll have to wait and see exactly how well CD Projekt Red will deliver on its endless promise.