#aquanox

[nervendraht]

Reading Cyberpunk stories, or playing Cyberpunk games from the 1990s and early 2000s is always so uncannily accurate.

Currently I play "Aquanox" from 2001 and one part of the plot involves hardcore capitalistic technocrats who are overtaking the democratic faction in this world to lower wages, reduce healthcare and other social nets, put more spending into the military, gene-engineering for "racial uplifting" and a circulation of drugs which make people more awake and less dependent on sleep so they can work more. Additionally they try to reform the government system into something illiberal and less democratic.

[siliziumtraeume]

I somehow just like Angelinas moody melancholy; particularly it got very good reasons in her backstory (and spoiler: when you find out the reason you're not mad at her but at a man), and how it changes when she makes her free of a burden she didn't even choose to have in the first place

[didsomeonesayventus]

annnndddd images on their own

[vgprintads]

‘AquaNox 2: Revelation’

[PC] [RUSSIA] [MAGAZINE] [2003]

Game.EXE, October 2003

Uploaded by chris85, via The Internet Archive

[siliziumtraeume]

I enjoy the writing of the characters in Aquanox 2 a lot, the dialogues (particularly in the German original; the translation looses charme and the voice acting is bad sadly) are just excellent. Particularly because the worldbuilding and character writing are so excellently intertwined with each other.

Or this dialogue

[didsomeonesayventus]

"If only fate were a kinder mistress like you..."

Also known as the “Modern Square Doesn’t Know How To Write Women The Ship” starter pack

[siliziumtraeume]

I like how the game lampshades the "mysterious, silent man" trope

[siliziumtraeume]

The setting of Aquanox is a post-apocalypse in which humanity fled from a completely devasteded surface to the deep oceans, and what they do with that idea in the setting is fantastic on MANY levels; but I'm particularly fond of the fact that they use it for rather poetical imagery in the dialogues too.