So I just finished playing by far the most interesting, and humorous, mission I’ve played so far in Cyberpunk 2077.
During a mission called “Don’t Lose your Mind,” in-game A.I. taxi company Delamain solicits you to track down several autonomous vehicles in the Delamain fleet that have gone rogue. You must locate the vehicles, subdue them, and ultimately restart their software so that the head Delamain A.I. can regain control of them. So far, it feels like your basic RPG fetch quest, right? But this quest is different.
Each vehicle has broken free from Delamin of its own accord, meaning the sentient A.I. that controls each vehicle has consciously decided to run away. This results in your job being part driver and part counselor as you not only must chase down these vehicles, but you must also talk down these vehicles.
But this mission is interesting for more than just gameplay reasons. For the first time in this game I was hit by the powerlessness of humans in an A.I. powered world. Vehicles could simply decide to drive their passengers off a cliff. And considering autonomous vehicles are, in today’s 2020 world, a real thing, I found myself questioning the ethics of artificial intelligence in a way that even other invasive technologies like always-on listening devices–Alexa or Siri, for example–haven’t done.
But what makes this mission in Cyberpunk 2077 so scary is that it uses humor to lessen the discomfort. It’s scary to see how humor can be used to pacify us?
The cake is a lie.
Portal is a great game.
