The protagonist is white and male with just enough character to reach the minimum for likability while the target demographic can project upon him.
People of color never formally appear in the narrative but are used as character development. Women that appear in the narrative are attractive or motherly, sacrificial and/or useful, and always plot convenient. Beneath a Steel Sky ambles into many of the common pitfalls that these genres face as a result. This can be said of most media, particularly the science and speculative fiction genre.
It’s no secret that both the videogame and comic industries have not been welcome to most audiences who are not white and male. It successfully adapts the formula it was a given, and thus we should critique the formula. It contains witty dialogue, complex puzzles, and an imaginative world. Beneath a Steel Sky was released to positive reviews. This phenomenon, however, cannot be blamed on the game. In this, the plot felt especially formulaic and indistinct from not only other cyberpunk stories but also the broader speculative fiction, action and adventure genres. He is also the only one who shows any vehemence toward the existence of the city because of his upbringing in the tribe. He is the only one with his particular American accent-most of the characters are have accents typical of various non-American English-speaking countries around the world. Robert Foster remains distinct from the characters throughout the game, in his mundanity if nothing else. His tribe, made of mostly people of color, are quickly removed from the narrative through an act of significant violence. Our all-American hero narrates the comic, which progresses without necessitating the player’s interaction. On paper, the idea of a comic book opening a videogame about resisting an authoritarian capitalist regime sounds exciting. What does Beneath a Steel Sky do differently?įrom what I could tell, not much. However, these are textbook criteria for the cyberpunk genre: the technological authoritarian government, the presence of a resistance, the indoctrination of society at large. Many characters are thoroughly indoctrinated into the anti-human establishment of the city, but Foster quickly discovers the resistance and joins forces with them. Backgrounds are rendered to convey the overwhelming amount of technology that Union City is comprised of, and the player can never quite shake the insidiousness of the ubiquitous presence of LINC, the supercomputer that runs the entire city. Beneath a Steel Sky is without question representative of the cyberpunk genre. The term “cyberpunk,” coined by Bruce Bethke, generally refers to a speculative fiction genre where an oppressive government rules with the help of awesome technological power. He searches for a way to escape the city, discovering along the way the reason that he was brought back. Foster was originally from Union City but was raised by a tribe outside of the civilization that corporations offered. As we progress through the game, we learn that the game’s post-disaster world is populated by cities that double as corporations and human life is commodified. The smooth linework and dramatic expression of a comic book are then replaced by the pixelated visuals of the gameplay, where Foster finds himself fleeing the pursuit of security soldiers. Foster, having lost his mother in a helicopter crash, is adopted and raised by a local tribe in “the Gap” until security soldiers from the city abduct him and annihilate his tribe. The backstory of protagonist Robert Foster is exposited via comic. Beneath a Steel Sky is a 1994 point-and-click cyberpunk dystopia game.
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