_BUDGET_ARMS_SLAUGHTOMATIC_
One of the things we thought about with the weapons is that in Cyberpunk, we have a very overt weapon culture. It’s very different to the way weapons work in our world. This is like American gun culture just gone crazy, you know?” says Ben Andrews. As the game’s protagonist you’re not the only one packing heat. It’s a fact of life in Night City. “Everybody has a gun because violence has been taken to the extremes,” he continues. “The idea that you may be mugged on your way home from work is extremely common, or your apartment might be broken into at the weekend. So, everybody’s carrying a gun.”
The world supports that too, as firearms have become part of consumer culture, as common as pre-packaged sandwiches or disposable razors, chocolate bar and sweet dispensers. “We have this gun called the Budget Arms Slaughtomatic. And it’s one of the coolest guns we have. It’s basically just a really crap gun. It’s bright pink – well, it comes in every colour imaginable,” says the
artist, laughing as he shows us sketches of this tiny, brightly coloured gun next to a branded vending machine. “It’s disposable.
And it cannot be reloaded.
Once you buy the gun, you empty the clip, you can’t reload it, you just throw it away, and you buy a new one, because it costs – I don’t know what the in-game cost is currently – but you know, the idea that you can pick up a gun for like five euro. And you pick it up when you’re shopping in the 24/7, you use it to defend your home at the weekend, and then you just throw it away and you buy a new one.” There’s a knowing element of satire to the extreme gun culture on show in the game. “There’s an advert for some guns being advertised to a family; you’ve got this happy family, and they’re all posing with a gun, even the little kids and the pregnant mom,” chuckles Andrews as he recalls the moment. We love the way you can see the ads for the terrible Slaughtomatic and then pick it up in game, the worldbuilding feeding directly into the gameplay. “This was the initial concept for [Slaughtomatic], the idea that you just pick this thing up in a vending machine, and it’s available to everybody,” says Andrews. “It’s not accurate. It’s not safe in a lot of ways. But it embodies a theme that we have in the game and it supports that.”
“THIS IS LIKE AMERICAN GUN CULTURE JUST GONE CRAZY.”