A gun-toting Elon Musk once begged developer CD Projekt Red to give him a cameo in the 2020 action-RPG Cyberpunk 2077.
The revelation came from Steve Jobs writer Walter Isaacson, whose latest biography, Elon Musk, hit store shelves last week. In the book, Isaacson describes an instance when Canadian singer Grimes was recording lines for an in-game Cyberpunk 2077 popstar named Lizzy Wizzy.
Musk, who was dating Grimes at the time and with whom he shares three children, showed up at the recording studio and “insisted” he be given a cameo. Isaacson says Musk was interested in Cyberpunk 2077 due to the similarities between the in-game cybernetics and his Neuralink implantable brain interfaces. The Tesla CEO, lacking any self-awareness, has also previously called the cyberpunk-themed 2000 RPG classic Deus Ex one of his favourite games.
To make matters worse, Isaacson says Musk even came to the studio brandishing a “two-hundred-year-old gun.” In one of his many poor attempts to look cool, Musk had previously shared an image of his bedside table with both a Deus Ex gun replica and a flintlock.
Naturally, Musk’s boneheaded move frightened CD Projekt’s staff. “The studio guys were like sweating,” Grimes told Isaacson. Musk, however, tried to assure them all that he was “armed but not dangerous.” Added Grimes: “He’s not good at reading the room.”
Ultimately, Musk didn’t get a proper cameo, per se, but people have spotted a non-player character (NPC) early in the game who looks remarkably like the Tesla CEO. Given the news that Musk actually begged to be added to Cyberpunk 2077, perhaps CD Projekt Red threw that in there in hopes of getting the juvenile billionaire to leave the team alone.
This isn’t the first time Musk has awkwardly engaged with the world of gaming. Last year, he boastfully shared a character build for the massively popular Elden Ring action-RPG that was quickly roasted for being objectively terrible. Isaacson’s book also reveals that Musk was so stressed after making an offer last year to buy Twitter (now known as X) that he was up until 5:30am in a Vancouver hotel playing Elden Ring.
Now that he owns Twitter X, he’s spent the past several months doing everything he can to ruin the platform, including giving it a stupid new name, destroying the verification process, allowing hate speech to rise significantly and even flirting with the idea of charging everyone for the service.
But hey, at least he (kinda) made it into Cyberpunk 2077?
In non-Musk-related news, Cyberpunk 2077 is getting its first and only paid expansion, Phantom Liberty, on September 26th. It’s a current-gen-only spy thriller featuring returning Canadian star Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand, as well as series newcomer Idris Elba.
Image credit: Elon Musk
Via: Kotaku
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