Cyberpunk 2077's Ukrainian localisation takes the piss out of Russia's war

rockpapershotgun.com:

Reworked skill trees and new minigames aside, Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update includes a Ukrainian localisation of the game's million-plus-word script. It turns out the Ukrainian version is awash with references to Russia's on-going invasion of Ukraine, all of it seemingly in support of the latter. The news comes via Zone of Games, who have published a few side-by-side comparisons from the game's files, underlining differences between the English and Ukrainian translations in various bits of dialogue and menu text.

I asked the organisers of Indie Cup - a Kyiv, Ukraine-based digital festival of games like Pahris Entertainment's upcoming Space Wreck - to help me double-check the Ukrainian version's alterations. The Indie Cup team's Arsenii Tarasov was happy to oblige, and also volunteered a few further examples of more... adventurous localisation from his own research, supported with screenshots.

According to Tarasov, one of Cyberpunk 2077's Ukrainian dialogue line alters "We're fucking through" to a Ukrainian phrase that roughly means "Go fuck yourself in the same direction as the ship did". This appears to be a reference to the Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov's famous radio response to the Russian missile cruiser Moskva, when asked to surrender in February 2022. The line has become a resistance slogan within Ukraine and among pro-Ukrainian groups overseas - it's even been commemorated in the form of a postage stamp.

There also appears to be brand new graffiti in the game that references Russia's occupation of Crimea in 2014. "The graffiti represents the outlines of Crimea, the peninsula that was illegally annexed from Ukraine by russia in 2014," Tarasov told me. "Juxtaposed are the Ukrainian coat of arms and taraq tamga