About a week or so ago I managed to play cyberpunk’s Sinnerman quest and needless to say it was ABSOLUTELY insane and so I went online to look at anybody who was writing up on the quest and saw Paul Tassi’s writeup. Read it and enjoyed it but thought I’d add my own thoughts via twitter and then eventually decided to expound upon them here in larger format.
Here’s Paul’s writeup.
To be frank Paul I would LOVE to sit down with you like to talk more about it. There’s an insane level of stuff going on in that side quest to unpack and to be honest you sounded like you’d didn’t quite understand all the symbolism/depth.
Paul TassiPaul Tassi’s stories. News and opinion about video games, television, movies and the internet.https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/?sh=c65ade9f0aca
Before you go any further though spoilers obviously and I would suggest that you check out this youtube playthrough for context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-nG8fOzPlo
A lot of the Sinnerman quest is all about Revenge. It’s pounded into you that this guy Joshua Deserves everything he’s getting from the moment you begin to the moment that it ends.
Whatever you might call it “revenge”/giving someone what is their due plays heavily. The guy you talk to in the car who gives you the quest is all “I want to see the light go out of this guys eyes” because of his wife being murdered. Not surprisingly he loses his life senselessly.
Josh is clearly penitent by his conversations and funnily enough either way you do it you can still “fulfill” the main quest of killing him. The major big difference being the manner you kill him. In Christianity there is the concept that “everything has a price” / sin Sin being translated as “falling short”.
Josh by I presume going to those loved ones that he killed even if unsuccessful is basically doing the Catholic process of penitence. Which is pretty crazy in the game like Cyberpunk because the whole game you are basically murderous. The game is basically asking you and meta-narratively putting you and josh as 1 to 1 in that if you’ve been playing the game by the point you get to josh you probably have been doing quite a bit of murdering yourself and possibly might be feeling the sways of regret.
This is tipped off by the Quest names. Sinnerman – Nina Simone.
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
They Wont Go When I Go – Stevie Wonder
They’re all seemingly songs about regret and doing wrong and the afterlife.
In a sense there’s this confluence in that direction which if you understand Christianity and further Catholicism this quest gets REALLY juicy in my opinion because it’s asking all these question from this perspective. You are a murderer. Josh is a Murderer too, but as the game shows, every person you kill might have a mom or a dad or a somebody else involved. Great evil can be involved in your heartless cyberpunk’s life decisions which often are just stealing, murdering and any other evil under the digital sun.
The moment comes in how the game constructs everything around it and asks? “Is this really how you’d like to go?” Josh is asking this question of you. Josh deserves to DIE. But Josh is choosing to use his last “everything” to tell the world to not become murderous like him. There are some amazing illusions in the game to biblical references such as the Corpo rat offering you coin to basically “give up on Josh”.
This is essentially a test of yourself whether you’ll take the money like Judas and betray Josh or stick with him to the end. The references to the Last Supper are really cool visually and metaphorically for that part as well.
You are a thief and as Johnny Silverhand mentions it’s actually very fitting that at Josh’s “last supper” he has it with a murderer and a thief. Plays near perfect into the story of Jesus on the cross with a thief and a murderer (or a thief and another thief).
Lastly Josh’s comments throughout the quest are very very consistent and the repurposing of the iconography and metaphor of Christ is rather fitting. Josh clearly has read his homework. He takes the statement “crucified with Christ” both literally and figuratively. And this is where this Quest punches far above it’s weight as a mere side quest. People already do this practice today as a symbol of conjoining themselves with the process (usually catholic) to truly be “one with Christ” in his effort.
Every year a Filipino man marks Good Friday with an actual crucifixion. He just did it for the 33rd timehttps://www.cnn.com/2019/04/19/asia/philippines-crucifixion-practice-33rd-year-trnd/index.html
Often we see all throughout the Bible terrible figures repurposed for magnificent actions that we might never have imagined and in this way Josh is no different.
He’s acting out the process of repentence/repurpose.
Within the Bible we often see rather terrible things happen which are then shown to be repurposed and reused into far greater things such as a kid born in a stable becoming a symbol of Christmas.
Pre-Christianity that would have been seen as folly for a God to be born into a stable. Using of a symbol of extreme capital punishment (getting crucified) and in 500 years that symbol becoming a symbol of sacrifice and love is an insane historical journey. Pre-Christianity crucifixion was humiliating and one of the worst ways to be killed as you rotted for days.
There’s even the aspect that is “name” is technically the same or adjacent to Jesus. For example Josh which is shortened of Joshua. Which is anglicized version of Yeshua which is another name for Jesus (depending on translation). But back to the main point. The concept of being crucified with Christ and the concept of Christian grace. Christianity puts forth that “it is our human sin” that required Christ’s sacrifice for us in order to save us via atonement.
What does it mean to be crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20)? What are the implications of being crucified with Christ?https://www.gotquestions.org/crucified-with-Christ.html
I’ve heard it expressed before by people that “it’s our sin that drove the nails into his hands. Our evil that killed Christ for without sin there would be need for a savior” and the game lets you literally do this which is why it’s such a freaking powerful metaphor. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to “crucify someone” well this game gives you that experience and let me tell you it is painful to behold.
You ARE the one metaphorically and literally driving the nails into his hands. You ARE the thief that was with Josh/Jesus on the cross. You (the murderer and symbol of evil in the world) are the reason Christ had to die. And this is where the game and you the player converge imo in a way similar to the “would you kindly” scene from the original Bioshock plays with the narrative of always making decisions from NPCs. The game is basically calling you the player out for partaking in evil/sin. When Josh is there at the end saying “father forgive them they know not what they do” he’s not just saying that to V. He’s saying that to you.
And don’t get me wrong I’m not saying that the game is saying “videogames cause evil”. Rather the game is postulating that we seek it out. We play games like Cyberpunk 2077 and kill, destroy, steal, and all manner of “evil” without any second thought on the consequences of our actions and who we hurt. Is it any better to kill or steal if it isn’t real? What’s the cost of our actions? We often know not what we do. And like Christ josh puts forgiveness on the table (Just like Christ) for someone as horrible, bad, murderous, like a V and thief trying to make it to the hedonistic top of the world. And in its result Josh/Jesus is asking us to take up our Cross. Repent. It’s a very “explicitly” Christian message.
I figured halfway via the quest it would all of go sideways & Josh would be shown to be this crazed fanatic but it didn’t.
In particular these quotes from Johnny Silverhand perfectly describes this.
The true rebel rejects the world/sin around him and rejects the ways of the world. In the world of Cyberpunk the world is crying out and dying for authenticity. It’s seemingly thriving materially and more technology appears than has ever been seen and ease of living can be had if you have the creds and enough chooms. Most of the game characters talk of becoming “legends of Night city” or making it to the “afterlife”. But you can’t escape the feeling while playing that the city is dead spiritually, metaphysically, and morally in almost every facet. To rebel against that? Well that probably looks a lot more like Josh than it does like Johnny Silverhand to be completely honest.
The quest stands out as a comparison to “go here do this” and “steal that” and “kill this person” type missions that seem to drag on as the game heads for completion.
To postulate the question of “what is the cost of becoming a legend if you sacrifice your soul and spirit?” makes it juicy indeed.
The BW 