The Queue: Höfuðdreki

Look, I go through a lot of steps to come up with a character name. Sometimes I go to Google, turn on the translator, and throw words at it until I get a combination I like. I’ve been playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous for years now, and most of my characters are stuck at level 1 because I make a character and immediately come up with a different name.

Oh, and happy birthday, America. I’m sorry you never get to sleep on your day because of all the explosions, and I feel very bad for your dogs.

Ah, the Double Cola Company. Remind me to tell y’all about the time I buried something in Chattanooga.

I have what my doctor has referred to as Terrifying ADHD. So I kind of hate chaos in my day to day life, and yet I generate so much of it that my home office looks entirely different on a daily basis. I have been kidnapped by friends at least three times in my life, ended up living a continent away from where I grew up, have been resuscitated from a flatline three times (not related to the kidnappings) and once got attacked by birds at Disneyland. (California one.) Heck, just go read the posts I wrote about my trip to Anaheim for BlizzCon 2019, I ran into my escaped mental patient twin!

So yeah, like it? No. Expect it? Absolutely.

I hope they steal a bit more from the pen and paper game, honestly. Make the backgrounds more important, actually do something with the idea of Solos, Netrunners, and since I don’t think you’ll be playing as V I’d like it if they made the character less defined. If we’re playing a nobody (and V was a nobody when you start the game) then we could at least not already have a name chosen for us. I know they do that to make it easier to record dialog, but honestly, I don’t get called by my name very often.

Yes, I know y’all just spent a whole Queue arguing that the characters in Persona games should have names, but for me, Cyberpunk as a genre and especially Cyberpunk 2020/Red have plenty of room for things like pseudonyms, use names, and even nom du guerre. I mean, his name’s not even Johnny Silverhand, you know? I mean, we could at least get to pick a first name and then use our last name all the time, like in Dragon Age 2 or the Mass Effect series.

But my absolute dream would be for them to steal the Cybergeneration game and cannibalize it for new, cool and completely freaked out nanite abilities. The Carbon Plague could have spent the last fifty or so years being improved in a lab and you could start the game crashing into a tube of the stuff and then it rewrites you on a cellular level. There’s even a teaser in CP2077 about the Carbon Plague, so I would definitely love to see that kind of thing. Imagine being able to hack without a deck, coat yourself in a liquid metal armor skin and turn your arms and legs into weapons like the T-1000, or throw lightning at people via a taser-like set of monowire projectiles. Heck, you can even hack people’s brains without them having cyberware installed.

This would also be a bit of a tip of the hat to Telwar (this almost became a Telwar only Queue) wanting it to be Shadowrun. I think Cybergeneration is the closest that Night City can get to Shadowrun’s Fifth World. I will also now say that the Shadowrun Trilogy is a really solid CRPG, if you’re looking for a video game introduction.

Either you are making a very seraphic and cryptic statement there or you left a word out, and I honestly can’t tell which at this point.

I haven’t got a specific opinion about it, I have a case by case response.

I liked that Fallout 4 had a voiced protagonist because I enjoyed the actors, especially Courtenay Taylor as Nora. Similarly, I think that Mass Effect wouldn’t be as good as it is without Mark Meer and Jennifer Hale as Shepard. Would Cyberpunk 2077 be as good without Cherami Leigh and Gavin Drea voicing V?

But I also agree that the Doom series wouldn’t be as good if the Doomslayer spoke. I like that they don’t even have dialogue, much less a voice. I’m cool with most Fallout games being voiceless, I generally think it would be weird if Link had a voice by now, and I thought that the way they went around it in Baldur’s Gate 3 worked pretty well. Some games make great use of the voiceless protagonist, like when people in Half-Life 2 complain that Gordon doesn’t talk much.

I like that our Diablo characters have a voice and our WoW characters do not. I think either can work and be the proper choice depending on how the game intends you to feel about the character you’re playing.

Okay, y’all, take care and have a happy Fireworks day. I still remember when my now-Wife came to stay with me in Seattle and she thought the city was being bombed and I had to explain that Americans really like explosions. Hug your pets please.