Cyberpunk 2077 opens to an immediately recognizable style. Everything on its start screen is cast in oversaturated reds and blues—it’s neon, it’s cyberpunk in its aesthetic. Even the user interface for the character creator is rendered in thin red lines and chunky fonts, mirroring the visual trademarks of an era where the seminal works of the genre featured stories about the entanglement of the human body and technology. However, 2077 isn’t really about that, and even as it attempts to open up avenues of self-expression for the player it doubles down on antiquated depictions of masculinity, femininity, and gender expression in the process.

While its character creation does feature some well-reported options that set it apart from other games, the way 2077 passively acknowledges what body options the player selects actively walks back on this. This includes the fact that gender is assigned through voice selection, and that the game lacks any available non-binary options. Regardless of what "life path" origin story you pick, your first outfit is selected for you, and these outfits all fall in line with traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity. Playing as a gender non-conforming trans masculine V meant that while the game partially acknowledged my protagonist as a man, I was still stuck with clothing options that had otherwise been specifically designed for a woman’s body. While the "Corpo" male bodied V wore a sharp, high collared suit my female bodied V was given a silky red blouse and kitten heels.

I checked out every character origin in Cyberpunk 2077 to see if maybe, just maybe, this had been an intentional decision with the Corpo life path specifically—maybe my trans masculine V was being forced into this style of work attire to adhere to a dress code enforced by a corporation that scorned individualism. But the options were just as limited for the "Nomad" and "Street Kid" life paths. Instead of wearing a pantsuit I was either in a pair of form-fitting hot pants or a neon yellow t-shirt that was clinging so tightly to my upper body that it was impossible to ignore the jiggle physics of my already small chest. Even if I couldn’t see my V due to the first-person camera, I knew that the world around me had effectively decided on how I would present.

This goes a step further with the romance options available to players, with some characters unavailable to trans masculine or trans feminine player characters with genitals that do not “match” their voice. While characters will acknowledge how your V presents, some avenues are locked off based on whether or not your V is cisgendered in relation to some of the same-sex romance options that are available. Since my V was a gender non-conforming trans man, I was locked out of pursuing a relationship with one of the gay romance options, Kerry Eurodyne whose prerequisites include both the masculine voice and body option. The only gay romance I was able to actively pursue as a gender non-conforming trans man was with River Ward, a cop, as his only prerequisite was having a female body—which has its own set of problems.

The concept of gender in cyberpunk media is often seen as amorphous, with the genre itself playing with or touching upon ideas of transhumanism; a concept that is often discussed among trans people in terms of transitioning, gender expression, and identity. There are bits and pieces of Cyberpunk 2077 that attempt to comment on this, the aforementioned character creator being the largest example within the game itself. But it only does this by not ascribing the player character a gender identified by their body. While body modifications are integral parts of the game experience, they are gamified and play out in a purely mechanical sense: V visits vendors and pays to slot new implants into menu boxes, upgrading their body internally to become more efficient at hacking or dispatching enemies. The game lacks any option to customize your physical appearance beyond the character creator, however, which inhibits the very idea of gender expression and the exploration of transhumanism.

In earlier iterations of the Cyberpunk tabletop game, body modifications would cause players to inch closer to a condition called "cyberpsychosis." Cyberpsychosis is described in the Cyberpunk Red core rules handbook as “a dissociative disorder which occurs when someone with preexisting psychopathic tendencies enhances themselves via cybernetics to the point they no longer see themselves or others as complete, sapient organisms, but simply as a collection of replaceable parts.”

"Common symptoms of cyberpsychosis," it continues, "include lack of self-preservation, complete disregard for others, poor impulse control, and explosive outbursts.” And while the most recent handbook, Cyberpunk Red, removes the effect of cyberpsychosis from transitioning or cosmetic body modification, nothing else indicates a  progression or progressiveness within the game’s world. As opposed to a more affirming message, it only offers the simple statement: “What you do is your own business.”

In Helen Merrick’s “Gender in Science Fiction,” she writes: “Despite the potentially liberating promises of an escape from the body (and thus modernist notions of gendered subjectivity) ... the dominance of the mind/body dualism in cyberpunk serves to reinforce the associated gender binaries … ” (binaries to which Cyberpunk 2077 and its source material closely ascribe). She goes on to mention that there are works that offer a different and more nuanced perspective, like Mary Rosenbum’s Chimera and Laura Mixon’s Glass House. Merrick notes that these works move beyond the heterosexism of fundamental cyberpunk works, with characters from the LGBT+ umbrella found in their texts. Unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077 and its previous iterations feel as though they fall into the category of the former, and not the later.

One can assume that Cyberpunk 2077 deals in the traditional idealism of 1980s Western cyberpunk, which Merrick describes as “return to a ‘purer’ form of hard science-fiction, apparently without cognizance of the impact of radical social movements such as feminism.” A chapter within Samantha Holland's Cyberspace/Cyberbodies/Cyberpunk: Cultures of Technological Embodiment (Descartes Goes to Hollywood: Mind, Body and Gender in Contemporary Cyberborg Cinema) adds on to this criticism—specifically of cyborg/cyberpunk media. Holland states that “while boundary breakdowns between humans and technology are fully explored ‘gender boundaries are treated less flexibly,’ with cyborgs tending to, in fact, ‘appear masculine or feminine to an exaggerated degree.'’' Holland specifically uses the films RoboCop and Cherry 2000 as examples, noting the over sexualization of the female bodied cyborgs as opposed to the “coolness” or “sterility” of characters such as the titular RoboCop or the Terminator from the Terminator film franchise. In Joseph Christopher Schaub’s Kusanagi’s Body: Gender and Technology, he argues that Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell is a “battleground for conflicting representations of power in an era of capitalism,” furthermore arguing that the film represents a “desire to preserve the feminine and human” in a patriarchal capitalist society. 2077 also feels interested in preserving otherwise outdated ideas of the way the genre interacts with gender, and by extension the idea and concept of the gender binary. 

Cyberpunk 2077 serves to reinforce these ideas not just within the character creator, but in the world at large. A large number of non-player characters, specifically female characters, fall into these predefined ideas of the gender binary defined by their femininity or masculinity. Almost all female characters V meets along their journey are conventionally attractive in ways that reinforce the idea of passing based on 2077’s (and in some ways our own current) societal standards. There is no room for gender nonconformity outside of V, and only if the player chooses to play a gender noncomforming V. Men are more often the epitome of the stereotypes they draw from—Takemura, with his modern chonmage-inspired hairstyle and Akira Kurosawa-esque personality, immediately comes to mind as an example of a traditionally attractive Japanese man in the purest sense. Even male non-player characters V cannot directly interact with in meaningful ways often subscribe to the cool toughness of 1980s cyberpunk, and by extension cyborg, media.

Cyberpunk 2077 feels very much of the era of regressive science fiction Merrick, Holland, and other critics interrogated above —wrapped in '80s nostalgia, neon lights, and kitsch. It is a reminder of a general lack of awareness within mainstream representations of the genre, willing to dig its heels in to reinforce dated ideas and concepts derived from the tabletop RPG it draws direct inspiration from. If anything, Cyberpunk 2077 is a stifling reminder of a lack of progression within the mainstream cyberpunk genre at large.

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Kazuma Hashimoto is a half-Japanese trans man and translator who sometimes moonlights as a media critic. You can find him on his Twitter at JusticeKazzy_ and on Twitch at JusticeKazzy where he uses his platform to talk about LGBT+ rights in Japan and Japanese politics.