CD Projekt Red has revealed a new faction in Cyberpunk 2077, and the group’s interesting backstory and purpose center around its efforts to protect Night City’s sex workers. Fans of The Witcher developer are surely feeling the yawning void opened by Cyberpunk 2077‘s delay from April to September 2020 more than ever, so it’s important the studio throws them a bone on occasion while the wait continues.
It’s the smaller details that caused the hardcore gaming crowd to fall madly in love with the ongoing Witcher game franchise, and CD Projekt Red seems keen to meet those expectations in Cyberpunk 2077 while also honoring the game’s tabletop source material. Accordingly, the developer has reassured fans that fleshing out Night City with dozens of unique side quests and a web of factions with complex motivations and goals. From the Voodoo Boys’ techno-occultists to the steroid-addled, hyper-augmented meatheads of the Animals, Cybepunk 2077’s sci-fi RPG gangs will probably do most of the heavy thematic lifting, and the most recently unveiled faction sounds like a welcome addition.
In a surprise Twitter announcement, the official Cyberpunk 2077 account shared a logo reveal for the Moxes faction, as well as a brief introduction to what the gang is all about. Having only been “formed in 2076” following the demise of Night City’s Elizabeth “Lizzie” Borden, a “strip club owner & ex-prostitute who treated her workers fairly and defended them from violent clients,” the self-proclaimed Moxes “protect working girls and guys” in order to carry on her legacy. The details of how Borden (who’s curiously named after Lizzie Borden, the main suspect of the infamously brutal 19th century axe murder case) died are interestingly unexplained. For now, it’s not over-presumptuous to guess she may have been a victim of the same violence to which the Moxes want to put an end.
Representing sex workers in gaming as not only more than street-walking caricatures, but as members of society worth protecting, is admirably ambitious for even the envelope-pushers at CD Projekt Red. It’ll be interesting to see exactly how Cyberpunk 2077 will portray the sex workers of Night City and their protectors, but even this announcement betrays that not everyone is going to be happy with the final product. The above tweet refers to Borden as a former “prostitute,” while modern sex workers prefer to avoid the loaded connotations of that label. Furthermore, CD Projekt Red has a well-earned reputation as being notably consumer-friendly, but has proven itself far less keen to safeguard its own employees from internal labor abuses, slightly tinging the Moxes’ protective relationship with sex workers with hypocrisy.
Regardless of the ultimate portrayal of sex workers and their watchful guardians in the Moxes in Cyberpunk 2077, it’s clear that CD Projekt Red is going to great lengths to transpose the gritty, multilayered tone and concepts of the tabletop original into the gaming medium. September 17 may feel like it may be an eternity away in quarantine time, but the game’s development is still full steam ahead for now.
