Cyberpunk 2077 may be in the running for the most detailed character creator ever, as it’s been revealed that players can even customize their character’s genitals. Players who don’t need quite that level of control over their character can opt to use a default character instead, with a male and female version of main character V to choose from.
CD Projekt Red already made it clear that it wasn’t going to shy away from mature content in Cyberpunk 2077. The game’s very first public demo already featured nudity, intense violence, and drug use. More recently, the developer revealed a new faction called the Moxes who are sworn to protect sex workers, meaning that sex workers - and potential violence against them - are likely to play a decently sized role in the game’s world. Given how important the idea of body modification is to cyberpunk in general, it’s also natural that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature plenty of gore.
The ESRB rating page for Cyberpunk 2077 goes into detail about exactly what kind of mature content players can expect from the game, and it seems like it’ll be present early and often. Among the expected descriptions of violence, sexual content, and drug use, there’s one more surprising detail about Cyberpunk’s character customization. According to the ESRB, character customization options include “depictions of breasts, buttocks, and genitalia, as well as various sizes and combinations of genitals.” Certainly not the standard character creation options, but it is in line with CD Projekt Red’s previous comments that it wanted to allow transgender and non-binary player characters. Along with these more surprising options, CD Projekt Red has also confirmed that character creation will include standard options like tattoos, body size, skin tone, and more.
Reading Cyberpunk 2077’s ESRB page, it would be easy to get the impression that CD Projekt Red is just trying to cram as much nudity into the game as possible, but there may be more to it than that. Cyberpunk as a genre is obsessed with bodies and how they can be altered, so player-selected genitals could actually be an important part of the game’s world more than just another example of digital nudity for players to gawk at. On the other hand, there is a history of transphobia from CD Projekt Red, so it remains to be seen whether these options are anything more than skin deep.
If nothing else, CD Projekt Red certainly isn’t playing it safe with Cyberpunk 2077. Just like its inclusion of sex workers, Cyberpunk 2077’s customizable genitals could point to a nuanced exploration of gender rarely seen in games, an offensive reinforcement of harmful tropes, or not amount to much at all.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be available on September 17, 2020, on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Google Stadia, and PC.
Source: ESRB