Oh that's an interesting point on hopelessness. I've been thinking about this, and specifically in the context of the new cyberpunk expansion.
The thing i'm realizing is, cyberpunk 2077 is much more a noir story than anything else. The way they put so much narrative and emotional effort into night city itself as a living thing, the "try to do good but something always gets fucked", every powerful group is untrustworthy and working with them risks losing who you are, the consistent attempt to find glimmers of joy and genuine humanity in a fundamentally hopeless place. All of these ideas are very core elements of noir fiction and cyberpunk as a genre pulls from it quite often. Hell the most common mainstream "cyberpunk" thing, bladerunner, is a noir film and has a very nihilistic ending when it comes to fighting the capitalist structures at the core of it's world.
Basically, hopelessness isn't an integral part of cyberpunk, but noir definitely is a very common part of the genre which is why we get lots of stories where the goodest ending we can hope for is maybe protecting those you care about and getting out of the situation, not solving it.
In cyberpunk 2077 at the very least it's anti capitalist message is consistently shown. But like a lot of artistic works anti-capitalist doesn't mean shit about pro-communist and i would say it's definitely not pro-communist. Maybe pro anarchist with the nomads but even that's stretching quite a bit. I don't hate it for sure i think it does some very very interesting stuff artistically, specifically the work they put into making Night City feel like a place in it's design and writing really works, architecturally it has sprawl and density represented in such a way you feel like you're in an actual city not just a big carboard box like with most open world shit.
I’m so fuckin amped for this game, I hope it comes out decent.
I’m really really hoping we get more interesting car games like this, I think everyone got so focused on realism and racing that they forget how much you can do with “driving” as a main action.
The most recent hot wheels games had the sense of fun I was looking for but if you don’t care about just hitting high scores on racing times there’s nothing else to enjoy in it. Actual attention and craft in story modes and RPG mechanics in car games is all I ask please for the love of God bring back my cute and fun Gadget Racers of yore