One of my gripes with Cyberpunk 2077 is that transhumanism is an accepted thing and nobody cares about having implants. I’d rather see people for and against implants and sacrificing your humanity. A lot of other media in the cyberpunk genre has this. It would amke the game much more interesting. I know about the tabletop origin of the game which kinda thematizes this stuff better with the humanity stat after getting an implant. This is why it even baffles me more that V after a full body conversion isn’t going into cyberpsychosis. Even Shadowrun has a mechanic where cybernetics have an impact on your gameplay. Why are the people of Night City and the world in general so okay with this stuff? I’d love to see more cnflict regarding the “what makes you human” thing.
I think a much better stat than “humanity” to lose to prostheses, thematically and practically, would be “control”.
Representing control over your own body, resistance to hackers and corporate overrides - with cheap insecure prostheses, or corporate-provided ones, being particularly bad for your Control.
Prostheses and surgery do not, empirically, steal your soul or inflict “cyberpsychosis”. But it is extremely common even today for medical technology to report back to corporate HQ. And the general theme of control over your physical body is, or should be, a pretty big deal in a setting where your employer gets to choose your arms as part of the dress code.
Also, it just makes sense that visibly more cyborg-y characters should be more vulnerable to hacking and so on.
