Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

In the process of binging the series. Maine makes a comment during a firefight with the cops in episode six that "it's like these pigs keep appearing out of thin air" which I am convinced is a reference to/joke about the infamous police spawning issues in the launch version of the game

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Sep 23rd 2022 at 4:26:06 AM

It is.

So is the insane driving physics.

Holy shit, Cyberpunk 2077 has passed The Witcher 3's all time peak of concurrent players on Steam.

Talk about a crazy comeback, the power of anime is real.

How much has the game actually changed since its release? Is it still a buggy mess? I remember there being patches not too long after launch that tried to address stuff, but I got the impression of success being limited.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Sep 24th 2022 at 5:39:36 AM

It's now to a "normal" level of buggy, which is an incredible achievement.

I still have the occasional bit of clipping, frame drop, and one crash but that's in 20 hours of gameplay.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 24th 2022 at 10:44:26 AM

So it basically went from "modded Bethesda game" to "unmodded Bethesda game" in terms to performance. What a turnaround.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Sep 24th 2022 at 12:47:19 PM

I'd say it went from being "Unmodded Bethesda Game" to "Normal Triple A Game at Launch." Because Unmodded Bethesda games are honestly not that much better than Cyberpunk was at launch (at least on Ps 5).

Also, CDPR also turned out to have been swindled. They'd hired a company to do bug testing and fixes that basically lied about the size of their staff (saying 60 when it was about 15), their experience (None), and also fixing the most minor and numerous bugs first because they wanted to inflate the level of work they were doing versus the largest gamebreaking issues.

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/cyberpunk-2077s-external-qa-team-allegedly-misled-cd-projekt-over-its-experience/

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 24th 2022 at 10:56:41 AM

I predict a Internet Historian video on this in the future. Maybe in 6 months/1 year. I mean, he already did one on Fallout 76 and No Man's Sky, so...

Either way, i think Cyberpunk 2077 will be remembered as the 2020 equivalent of New Vegas in the future. A game with many cool ideas surrounding it and a team that was genuinely interested in delivering a cool work but were sadly saddled with a limited time frame, external bureaucracy and over-ambitious plan that screwed them in the short-run. Glad to see how the both their efforts and that of Trigger helped them turn around. Imagine if they kept implementing those patches and nobody paid attention and/or considered it "too little, too late" because nothing would incentivate them to check it out for themselves.

SkiilUp managed to get an 2-hour interview with showrunner Rafal Jaki on how CDPR managed to produce the anime series. For instance, Production I.G could have potentially animated this series.

I really hope they make a second season. I'd love to see it centered around a CP 2077 existing character like Dex or Evelyn Parker and judy.

Rogue possibly too.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Sep 25th 2022 at 10:05:25 AM

Considering this anime single-handedly put Cyberpunk 2077 back into the spotlight, I wonder if other studios will see this as a viable strategy and do the same?

I think the obvious protagonist for a sequel series would be David's school bully who thinks he's Bruce Lee. See what happens to him after his dad dies in disgrace and he (presumably) loses his lavish corpo lifestyle.

Well, an Onimusha anime was recently announced by Netflix so, could be possible.

Edgerunners is basically the No Man's Sky style Heroic Second Wind they've been looking for this entire time.

Whooo finally finished the show

Goddamn what an ending, I had tears streaming down my cheeks from how sad it was.

All in all though as gruesome as it was, David gave his life all for the sake of a beautiful woman and accomplished everything he set out to do for her.

Not the worst way to die.

About as good as it gets in Night City. Either get the hell out (Lucy) or go out in a blaze of glory and get a drink in Afterlife named after you (David).

Or you become immortalized in memehood (Rebecca) or get to be Mario IRL (Adam)

Interesting thought

Its funny seeing people ponder how V was able to avoid cyberpsychosis while David did not when the probable answer (Silverhand aside) is that V didn't chrome up as far as David did.

By the end of the show's run David was basically a brain in a jar, with very little of his original body left. He was essentially a heroic counterpart to the fully borged Adam Smasher To my knowledge V's cybernetic upgrades never go that far in the game. While he is heavily chromed up there is still a lot of his original flesh body left.

Hell I saw someone point out that David was using a combination of gorilla arms and the arm rocket launcher. V can't use that combination in the game, its one or the other for them.

(x4) Unfortunately comes with the territory of living in Night City. As Johnny says, "Happy endings? For us? Wrong city, wrong people."

What an incredible surprise this turned out to be though. Trigger's animation and action is as advertised, but I was not expecting such a heartfelt story being attached to it. Honestly, I'm hard pressed to think of another romance from an anime this year (and arguably this decade) that is as beautiful and well-written as that for David and Lucy. I could easily see other writers using this as an influence for writing relationships going forward, and I'm finding myself welling up now whenever I hear "I Really Want to Stay at Your House" in the game or "Little Stranger" on YouTube.

Rebecca is a true bro as well, and one who didn't deserve to get goomba stomped by Smasher. And yes, I am currently playing the game on PS5 to eventually avenge her and David with a netrunner build.

It's also likely due to V still having a significant amount of people who support them platonically and (potentially) romantically by the time they reach Arasaka Tower. It's clear David's father-figure bond with Maine and romance with Lucy kept him sane after his mother's death throughout the series. The fact that David starts developing cyberpsychosis after Maine's death and then exacerbates once Lucy gets kidnapped indicates to me that the relationships one builds are just as important in determining one's vulnerability to cyberpsychosis as (if not more than) the amount of chrome one installs.

Edited by sanfranman91 on Sep 28th 2022 at 2:27:42 AM

Word of God has actually explained why V doesn't suffer from cyberpsychosis. According to Mike Pondsmith, it's because they have Johnny Silverhand in their head. Johnny acts as a buffer of sorts against all of the mental trauma that could lead to one developing cyberpsychosis.

Yes, having an angry rockerboy in V's head actually helps them avoid cyberpsychosis.

Here's the reddit post where he explains it. (Some spoiler warning for Edgerunners)

Edited by M84 on Sep 28th 2022 at 8:53:21 PM

Makes sense. Johnny Silverhand has like maxed out charisma Cool and is a legendary-tier rockerboy. The morale bonus he gives out is insane, and directed right at V!

Though as Pondsmith explained it, it's Johnny's anger that keeps cyberpsychosis at bay. He's taking on some of the psychological burden of cyberware for V due to sharing a body, and he's too damn angry to give a shit about having cyberware added.

Speaking of characters who don't have to worry about cyberpsychosis...

This is why Adam Smasher defeated David easily (besides the fact that Adam Smasher has to live to be the Final Boss of the game set a year later). Adam Smasher is not a cyberpsycho. Despite being a Full-Conversion Cyborg, he's still the same person he was before all of the cyberware.

Yeah, he's an Ax-Crazy Blood Knight monster who lives for the slaughter. But he was like that before the cyberware. If anything, this is why he doesn't have to worry about cyberpsychosis. He never gave a shit about his humanity in the first place, and he's completely at peace with the Wretched Hive that is Night City. He's totally happy being a murder machine.

Edited by M84 on Sep 28th 2022 at 10:52:58 PM

Yeah, pretty much. He doesn't have to worry about being crushed by the machine, he IS the machine. As shown in the opening, where he's a silhouette formed of scenes of the city. Smasher is the blunt end of the hammer of Night City even more than MaxTac is.

If you ask me personally, i always found it kinda ironic how in the game, the two people who have the potential to finally end Adam Smasher's life are not crommed-up quasi-cyborgs like David, but V and Johnny Silverhand, the former which can potentially end up the game with as little enhancements as possible while quite literally having their body breaking down from inside-out as he scales up the Arasaka building, and the latter who lacks anything exceptional beyond his iconic enhancement which is essentially a common prosthetic, if a very advanced one compared to what's in the market today.

Of course, in the world of Cyberpunk even someone who wasn't "chromed up" can still have things like a neural interface and cyber-eyes, implying these are so ubiquitous that they aren't so much considered enhancements by the general population as they are basic standards in society that even the poorest have access to - kinda like how even someone who is homeless today is expected to have something to cover their body. Also, unlike David and arguably what made the difference between their performances against Adam (besides their experience anyways), V and Johnny aren't brain-fried by the time the final battle rolls around. Sanity Has Advantages, and ironically for the psychopath with no human empathy, Adam is the one who has that advantage on his side in that fight.

Edited by Lalapolpolpol on Sep 28th 2022 at 12:35:51 PM

That actually ties into the original tabletop.

The one Edgerunner Adam Smasher hates the most is Morgan Blackhand. Morgan Blackhand's main cyberware is "just" an artificial arm, yet he's probably the most badass Solo Edgerunner to ever live. Adam Smasher wanted to kill Morgan Blackhand because the latter is the greatest argument against Adam's own belief that in the Flesh Versus Steel debate, steel is better.

So it's actually quite fitting for Adam Smasher to meet his end at the hands of someone with less cyberware than him. It's proof that he's wrong about cyberware being the be-all and end-all of power.

Edited by M84 on Sep 28th 2022 at 11:38:08 PM