On Could 21, 2022, development broke floor on an bold challenge in Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled Metropolis, turning the notorious slum into an unlimited low-income housing growth with the aim of serving to poor individuals to assist themselves. Naturally this wasn’t a benevolent charity endeavour, however a strategic grasp plan by an omnipotent megacorp whose CEO sat on the Hong Kong’s ruling Government Council. Whereas there can be walkable retailers and facilities to help its residents, it was primarily designed to maintain town’s poorest out of sight, out of thoughts. It was known as the Prosperity Mission, and its slogan was “a spot of dignity, the place prosperity begins.”
My return hit me like an armored truck stuffed with orks
It by no means occurred. The Prosperity Mission was corrupt, and shortly devolved into squalor and violence. The individuals it was meant to serve have been dehumanized as indigent lowlifes who couldn’t change their nature. It’s a common fact that issues can at all times worsen, however for these within the Walled Metropolis, life grew to become a neverending collection of unsettling new miseries.
This sounds par for the course underneath real-world hypercapitalism, however it’s a chapter of in-game historical past from Shadowrun: Hong Kong (opens in new tab), one of many best cyberpunk video games ever made (the true Kowloon Walled Metropolis was demolished in 1993). Harebrained Schemes’ turn-based RPG Shadowrun Trilogy got here out on consoles on June 21, so I reinstalled my favourite of the three, desperate to get again into the collection’ hybrid cyberpunk/fantasy Sixth World the place shamanic spells and drone warfare go hand in hand. My return hit me like an armored truck stuffed with orks.
Enjoying the sport as we speak is a strikingly completely different psychological and emotional expertise, notably in mild of what Hong Kong has endured in the previous couple of years. It was first launched in 2015, a 12 months after the student-led Hong Kong Umbrella Motion protested China’s makes an attempt to affect election processes for the highest political workplace of Chief Government of Hong Kong. In 2019, a proposed Chinese language extradition legislation reignited the pro-democracy motion, and led to a world-changing wave of protests that have been in the end brutally crushed by authorities.
As of 2020, Hong Kong lives underneath a draconian nationwide safety legislation that flies within the face of the “one nation, two techniques” method that does not formally expire till 2047.
Strolling by way of the sport’s vividly realized depiction of town (it’s 2056 within the free enterprise zone), Hong Kong’s present corpocratic tendencies have been dialed as much as 11 on the dystopia meter. The ruling Government Council is a cabal of company billionaires who run town, personal the police, and management the information, which isn’t terribly far off from its present incarnation. When my freshly-rolled dwarf decker arrives at Victoria Harbour, I meet my estranged foster brother, Duncan, who hasn’t forgiven me for leaving dwelling years in the past. We’re a few dysfunctional Seattle orphans right here to seek out our adoptive father—a born-and-bred Hongkonger—after receiving a cryptic message for assist.
Our search leads us into the Walled Metropolis, typically immortalized in western cyberpunk for its immense dystopian vibes. Tens of hundreds of individuals are packed collectively in inconceivable, squalid circumstances, making do as greatest as they may.
A successful a part of this specific Shadowrun sport is the {powerful} synergy between its legendary setting and the irascible Hongkongness of its ensemble characters. Hong Kong has at all times belonged to its individuals, and Shadowrun is aware of this. All around the metropolis, revisiting these slice-of-life tales is commonly irritating, bittersweet, and deeply shifting—painful reminiscences, awkward conversations, reminders that my character’s Cantonese is shamefully rusty.
There’s a easy alternate in the beginning of the sport the place Duncan reminds my character to talk Cantonese—at all times Cantonese—and as a Southeast Asian who had an archteypically cantankerous Hongkonger grandmother, this acquainted chorus hits onerous in all the precise locations.
The straightforward linguistic reminder drives dwelling the truth that regardless of my heritage, I’m in a wierd land. And whereas neon lights and nighttime rain have change into tedious visible shorthands within the cyberpunk style, Hong Kong is among the cities that constructed that fantasy. Shifting away from the docks and into the shadowrunner haven of Heoi, it’s onerous to not really feel just like the style is really dwelling.
Cyberpunk is normally about present realities somewhat than distant futures, however reentering the Shadowrun world prompts a bitter swell of nostalgia. It’s been over a 12 months because the world watched extraordinary Hongkongers resist the rising yoke of mainland authoritarianism (adopted by the continued pandemic), and it’s nonetheless painful and even a little bit dreamlike. My mind is actively fusing my sentimental reminiscences of the sport with the painful actuality of Hong Kong’s current, and the flesh-and-blood Hongkongers I do know who believed they may prevail.
Shadowrun: Hong Kong is so absorbing as a result of it displays the fact of town’s demographics: there are apparent western expats (a euphemism for white immigrants), however the sport is acutely aware of the intersection between Hong Kong’s multicultural identification and its working class. I discuss to Rosario “Cherry Pink” Ignacio, a Filipina ex-nanny who fled her harmful employer, who reminisces about her days off with the opposite home employees sitting on bits of cardboard in parks and underneath bridges, gossiping and consuming lumpia. The truth that the builders did the naked minimal to incorporate these essential items of cultural worldbuilding tells me two issues:
- Actual Hongkongers had enter on the story—each Hong Kong and Singapore have a considerable home employee inhabitants that features live-in maids (a societal customary that’s typically exploitative and abusive).
- That it’s completely doable for white American builders to work with cultural consultants to get to this stage, one thing too many different cyberpunk video games have did not do.
There are few different cyberpunk video games of Shadowrun: Hong Kong’s caliber that wholeheartedly have interaction with the inherent orientalism and intra-Asian cultures and communities that make up Hong Kong’s wealthy cultural identification. It’s due to this narrative dedication to getting Hong Kong proper that Shadowrun nonetheless hits onerous as we speak, and proof that western builders—Harebrained is a Seattle studio run by white males—are able to producing culturally numerous video games with out defaulting to racism and appropriation.
The depth and care put into the writing signifies that the group truly valued and acted on the enter from their consultants: a group of seven together with sport designer Norma Tu, who helped to determine language and cultural inaccuracies. (A narrative did emerge in 2018, nevertheless, that Harebrained designer Tyler Carpenter was responsible of persistent sexual misconduct and harassment, which affected fellow S:HK author Elan Stimmel.)
The thought of shadowrunners coolly defying Hong Kong’s cops and elite politicians isn’t the identical escapist fantasy anymore
Cherry Pink is a part of town’s sturdy Pinoy group that bonds over meals on-line, with customers posturing over pancit (noodle) and dinuguan (pork and pig blood stew). In several neighborhoods, I meet extra immigrants—an Irish monster hunter who hangs out in a Whampoan arcade, a Japanese dango vendor obsessive about cleaning soap operas, an ex-anarchist Berliner who can compartmentalize reminiscences. I bump right into a Chinese language-Irish hacker at a decker conference who witheringly informs me that there are, in truth, Asian individuals in Eire.
Eccentric American expats preserve a low profile within the shadows. I be taught concerning the pan-African enclave in Chungking Mansions and the way my fellow decker, is0bel, lived in a poor man’s model of the Mansions within the Walled Metropolis. Almost each NPC is a fully-fledged individual—a tiny a part of a metropolis brimming with persona. Dependable Matthew, a used drone salesman, is so evocatively pathetic that I virtually need to hand the man a couple of dollars by way of the display screen.
At one level within the Walled Metropolis I come throughout an injured scholar from Hong Kong College, desperately attempting to complete her analysis on feng shui within the slums. Feng shui isn’t nearly organizing furnishings to draw good qi (气 – in easy phrases, dynamic life drive/power). The research of manipulating concord and auspiciousness in human environments has been a part of historical past for hundreds of years internationally’s cultures. Even the tiniest adjustments could make a distinction between on a regular basis dangerous luck and disaster. And within the sport, feng shui isn’t only a philosophical system—it’s actual magic.
I by no means be taught the scholar’s identify. Her work appears small, however it’s important. She wants my assist to make changes to the qi circulate within the slums. It is a metaphysical band-aid within the face of the rising rot on the metropolis’s core, however sufficient to assist its individuals survive a little bit longer.
Assembly this decided younger lady amid the fictional chaos and struggling now has a depressing new layer of which means. Over the previous few years, Hong Kong’s youth bore the brunt of the authorities’ crackdown on pro-democracy protests. HKU was famously dwelling to the Pillar of Disgrace, a monument to the victims of the Tiananmen bloodbath in 1989, in addition to the Democracy Wall, a spot for protest posters and messages. Each have been eliminated after final 12 months’s protests, as if nothing had ever been there.
The thought of shadowrunners—hackers, fixers, and jack-of-all-trades mercenaries—coolly defying Hong Kong’s cops and elite politicians isn’t the identical escapist fantasy anymore. It’s onerous to neglect the uncooked, very actual pictures of the Hong Kong Police Pressure beating the shit out of youngsters and previous individuals, claims of torture, and protester suicides that many suspect have been murders. Cyberpunk escapism as pure indulgence doesn’t have fairly the identical efficiency.
As a substitute, let Shadowrun: Hong Kong stand for instance of considerate engagement with the momentous affect of East Asian tradition and psychology on what we name cyberpunk as we speak. Even moreover all of the unbelievable cultural particulars and efforts to exhibit the breadth of Hong Kong’s multiculturalism, the writers additionally had a fan-fucking-tastic grasp of web communities that mirrored town’s subcultures. My favourite discussion board drama within the sport is the emergence of a rogue poetry bot that drives the bulletin board admin up the wall.
In some ways Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a precursor to the recent, imaginative strains of hyperlocal cyberpunk within the type of Norco and Citizen Sleeper and Umurangi Technology. All are fantastic explorations of contained communities and their distinctive materials realities. If cyberpunk should endure, it wants to maneuver away from the anonymous megacity dystopias the place every little thing blends into an indistinguishable, generic gray fog. A style that after cautioned in opposition to technocorporacy and probably the most venal results of hypercapitalism has lengthy misplaced its chunk in a world that runs on dystopian messaging.
If cyberpunk should dwell on, Shadowrun: Hong Kong is a reminder of the way to dig deep into the guts and specificity of place, in order that the style and its neverending technology-driven miseries turns into a righteous engine for {powerful}, culturally essential tales.
