A couple of things about Norton:
Norton just kind of vanishes - I kind of presumed they dropped him off somewhere safe, but I realised afterwards that actually I have almost no idea.
Also, the one line of dialogue that sat really badly with me in the game as a whole is Norton's line about his son coming out as transpecies and transgender. I guess personally speaking,
I've got a lot of friends who're trans activists, and the "people will say they're trans-species next" thing is often pulled out as a way to elbow-jab and undermine their identity, since it implies that gender can be simply and genetically determined in the way that species can. Of course Neof is sci-fi and having a trans-species movement in future is within the realms of speculation, but having (so far as I remember) the game's only reference to trans folk being accompanied by something that I've usually seen used as a trope to kick trans folk didn't feel ideal.
I haven't heard that one before myself! Norton's reference certainly wasn't meant that way. The entire concept of what a "person" is has of course been completely altered in Neofeud, in which individuals who are part animal, by design or by choice, are commonplace. I think in Neofeud it isn't a matter of making fun of trans individuals by saying, "They'll claim they're trans-species next", but rather that there *literally will be* trans-species individuals, and what will that mean for us as a society, and for the (post)-human condition. Given the facts that human-pig hybrid organisms
have already been created, both the Chinese and American militaries are investing hundreds of billions of dollars into genetic research, and regulatory agency capture by the ultra-rich is essentially total in many countries, I see this as a very likely possibility. While the specific reference to, "Having a trans-species operation" might only happen in that one line of dialog, there are many references to transgenic individuals, genesplices, chimeras, etc..
I think part of the point of that particular bit is that such a trans-species operation "Ain't that cheap," which implies that while the ability to alter one's physical nature, even substrate or species is possible, it is very expensive and reserved for the privileged who can afford it. I'd argue this is even the case for gender reassignment surgeries, which can cost in the tens of thousands of dollars if one has no access to medical care, which is the situation of many not-privileged and marginalized individuals in our world today. Similarly, the Neofeudals who can swap entire bodies like changing clothes, as a form of fashion, is a conspicuous signifier of their wealth and status, in the way $100,000 bespoke suits, gigayachts, and having several luxury mansions and condos in places like London, Monaco, and Hawaii are signifiers today.
And a terminological-mixed-with-worldbuilding question: there are a lot of references to "liberals" through the game, which is a term I have a lot of interest in. I got the vague sense that in Neofeud, "liberals" is primarily code for "middle class or fairly wealthy, essentially status-quo/centre on the fundamentals of the system, but with philanthropic tendencies and opposed to direct violence against the poor", rather than the definition of "someone on the centre or left with a strong democratising and anti-statist streak" definition which is more how I'd think of liberalism (as someone from the UK). Would that be accurate?
Yes, liberal can mean a lot of different things, but in the US it has often come to refer more to the "socially liberal", meaning pro-choice, for racial equality, gay rights, decriminalization of marijuana, and generally letting people live however they want. The wealthy or "JFK-liberal" / "Limousine-liberal" can refer to that sort of middle-class / wealthy who don't rock the boat so much, but give to charity. A lot of Hollywood celebrities, Democratic Party insiders would fit into this category. So yes, liberal can be a confusing term, without even having to understand "neoliberal". But I'd argue that everything can mean a lot of different things in our post-truth world, depending on what the consensus reality manufacturers decide things should mean!
In Neofeud, when they refer to, "Those Bleeding Heart Liberals", or "Do some photo-ops holding poor transgenic/robot children in a mixed-species community garden makerspace to get the liberals on your side," etc. they are definitely talking about those like one of the particular female main characters, who are coming from a middle/upper-middleclass or ultrarich background but who care about or at least don't like to see the underclass, poor, marginalized races, species, substrates, etc. stomped on. Incidentally, the motto of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation is, "All people deserve a chance to leave a happy, productive life," which that one princess mentions at one point. (The particular female main character may be a bit of an outlier in that she is a more "radical" liberal.)
Perhaps one of the darkest suppositions in Neofeud, that I'd wager may be even more dystopian than any William Gibson novel, Bladerunner film, or Black Mirror episode, is the idea that the mechanisms of revolution and reform -- such as the combined social mobilization of the underclasses in the socialist, communist, and Trotskyist parties in the 1930's -- have been utterly mastered and controlled by the very sophisticated global oligarchy. Controlled by not just things like teargas and agent provocateurs, but mass-media manipulation, disinformation, routine co-option of movements into pro-capitalist fold (rock and roll -> stadium rock, punk reduced to mall-punk fashion, "resistance" becomes cat ears and a hashtag, truth-to-power hip hop becomes gangsta rap $ worship / Kanye West) control of a post-net-neutral internet and a complete obsolescence of nearly all humans by AI/automation ("I have literally thousands of ex-doctors, ex-lawyers, ex-professors, ex-EVERYTHINGS waiting to take your place"). Neofeud suggests a near-future where popular resistance is *not even possible* and the only fleeting hope is that the children of Royalty become so disgusted with their horrible parents that they kill their own mothers and fathers.
It's pretty bleak, but also one of the underlying themes of Neofeud is of course the way in which cyberpunk dystopia is already here, it is just human society is very good at papering over the dystopic parts. As I mentioned, being from a ghetto and having been a social worker working with homeless children, marginalized and immigrants, much of Neofeud is not sci-fi speculation but my personal experience. It's reality. In Hawaii, where we have the highest concentration of billionaires on the planet, and entire tent cities of *working* homeless people who have their personal possessions routinely destroyed and told to "move on", where 80% of condos in many areas are uninhabited being used as wealth vaults for Mark Zuckerberg or some Chinese magnate, we are already at the whim of the neofeudal elite, as is the case in many cities like San Francisco, New York, etc.. Major US cities are currently
offering up their entire tax bases to Amazon Corporation that are supposed to be used for fire departments, roads, police, in exchange for setting up shop there. In some cases, control of the government, democracy itself, is on the table.
By overlaying pre-French Revolution-era visuals -- the levitating Palace at Versailles, obscene amounts of gold and manicured lawn, etc. -- over a near-future sci-fi reality in which the titles of analagous modern ultra-rich and powerful are intentionally blurred (i.e. "King / CEO" Warren Clington-Busch, "Viscount of Marketing", Kanye XII, etc.) I wanted to highlight this fact that we've returned to or are heading toward essentially the pre-enlightenment, Bourbon King / Game of Thrones / feudal era degree of inequality, and autocracy as a norm. What is a billionaire that can buy entire governments (such as is the case in the US), but a King or an Emperor? Why bother with the distinction and call a spade a spade?
That said, I don't think our situation is entirely hopeless, but I do think we are in much, much more dire straits than many people imagine, and being horrified and (constructively) outraged is the appropriate reaction.