High-Tech, Low-Life
You’re going to hear this term a lot in the build-up to and the launch window of Cyberpunk 2077. High-tech, low-life pretty much sums the entire cyberpunk genre up in four easy words. It describes everything from the towering super-cities and their underbellies to the advantages of transhuman augmentation to the degradation of social life as a result. So maybe you could say citing this as a single trope is somewhat odd, but honestly, Cyberpunk 2077 does such a great job of showcasing just how technology-obsessed society has become.
V can obviously be augmented, and adding these upgrades isn’t limited to Cyberpunks —regular citizens walk around brandishing their tech on display. But it’s the appearance of the folks that have taken things just a little bit too far —at least to our unsullied bodies— that is so wonderfully disturbing. You have to appreciate the level of art and design that’s gone into imagining their designs, and I particularly love the individuals that can actually remove their jaw, so great is the composition of their faces comprised of metal.
Unlike Deus Ex, Blade Runner, or even the grim adventure horror, Observer, the reality of Cyberpunk 2077’s world is that augmentation is something everyone does, and it’s accepted. I’d equate it to something like an addiction to tattoos and piercings. That doesn’t sound very low life, I know, but perhaps it’s more about the resulting impact on society as a whole rather than the individual repercussions of the technology. Cyberware and implants don’t make you ill or ostracized, but they’ve likely given birth to crime and oppression.
