SOMA

You can't really blame it on newbies who just don't know the source material either, and I used the AI example specifically to illustrate why because 2077 leans HARD on that angle. Just look at the people who are around when the AIs come up. You've got Maelstrom doing blood rituals to the techno gods, the voodoo boys being...well exactly what they sound like, and then there's NetWatch who almost seem sane, but if you look closer, I'd argue they come off more like some project stargate tier nuts than they do anything down to Earth. Then don't even get me started on the side quest that implies the buddhists might be right or the theory that there actually ARE conspiracy aliens fucking with shit. Point being, it's called CyberPUNK for a reason. It's ALWAYS been a bit batshit and rule of cool.

One of the weirdest things to come out of Pondsmith's Cyberpunk getting a popularity resurgence is this weird subset of fans who seem intent on looking at it as though it is a much more "hard scifi" example of the genre than it actually is or was ever meant to be. Like my dudes, you're talking about a franchise where the so called "AI" are far more like lovecraftian outer gods with a thin veneer of technobabble than they are any kind of believable compsci concept, and yet your complaints are about shit like a mech suit and/or magnet powers?