Broken Base: Cyberpunk RED significantly simplified the systems introduced in Cyberpunk 2020, to great praise and great derision. Fans of the new system call it a welcome change that makes the game more accessible to new players, whereas 2020 could be infamous for its obtuse design. 2020 fans, however, often believe that RED went too far in the other direction, being so simple that the system feels generic and too focused on flavor text over mechanics.
The game gained a massive new following from the release of CD Projekt Red releasing Cyberpunk 2077. Ditto for the tie-in anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: In Cyberpunk RED, few people ever go beyond their Light Armorjack. Anything heavier starts adding penalties from Encumbrance Values and are difficult to wear in public without attracting attention, so Light Armorjack becomes the highest armor can go before stacking on downsides. As a result, there's very few scenarios where a player will feel the need to upgrade.
Fanon Discontinuity: The fandom's overall reaction to the game's third edition, also known as V3, which shifted the game more towards Post-Cyberpunk with a focus turned away from gritty future noir to post-apocalyptic transhumanism. Additionally, due to financial difficulties, R. Talsorian was unable to afford to commission new art, and ended up resorting to Photoshopped images of costumed action figures customized by Mike Pondsmith's wife, which did not go over well with the fanbase (for this reason, V3 is often derisively referred to by fans of previous editions as "Barbiepunk"). With the release video game adaptation, Cyberpunk 2077, as well as the fourth edition, Cyberpunk Red, picking up where 2020 left off as a bridge into the events 2077, V3 is now Canon Discontinuity.
The description of Nomads' views on pre-Collapse America◊ in the Neo-Tribes sourcebook comes off as eerily prescient in the new '10s, both of the concerns expressed and of the sharp rise in people who hold said concerns. Whether or not these concerns are valid is a different matter altogether, but the fact that coming up on the real 2020 these comments seem like standard social media comments rather than fiction means this blurb holds even more relevance than it did in the setting. (This blurb was result of Unreliable Narrator with a Corpo-bias, and the next section contradicts it along with various accounts on its collapse).
...in the decades before the Collapse, America suffered from the sickness of racism and “cultural identity.”...If anyone had something that someone else wanted, they were painted as racist, sexist, elitist, or worse...Diversity led inexorably to anarchy.
In the game's background lore, the United States effectively ceased to be following a coup in which a group of prominent members of the American Government, military and intelligence community, later dubbed the "Gang of Four", dragged the United States into a costly war in Central America, in something of a parallel to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which eventually caused such massive social and economic upheaval that several states seceded from the Union. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union remains solvent and a major world power. Years after this was written, the Soviet Union would effectively end in 1991 following an attempted coup d'état by several high-ranking members of the Soviet Communist Party, which left the United States as the sole global superpower. The eight men responsible for the coup would later be dubbed the "Gang of Eight" in the American press. Similiarly, many compared said event to the War on Terror, especially in Iraq where the misinformation on its WMD possession led to the American public supporting the invasion before backlash from the lack of evidence and large casualties along with a destabilization of the country over the course of occupation led to withdrawal as a result. In addition, the Vice President at the time was considered one of the major instigators.
The historical Gang of Four that caused the degradation of the American Union in the early 1990's was led by the Vice President. As the original story was penned in the 1980's, it was easy to imagine an Evil Chancellor setting out to plunder the nation's riches. With the benefit of hindsight, it's kind of hard to imagine the nation being undone by a guy whose most memorable act in office was misspelling the word "potato." It becomes also notable that Dan Quayle's other political legacy since his time in office has been advising fellow Vice President Mike Pence not to contest the 2016 Election results, making his choice even more notable.
Furthermore, the background showing USSR and Japan as prominent superpowers with China becoming a crumbling nation became less relevant decades after the book's publication—namely the collapse of the USSR, Japan's economic decline from the bubble burst, and the international prominence of China—that later publications treated them as alternate history.
Northern Ireland is described as being in a permanent state of war, and Belfast is said to be the second-most dangerous city on the planet after Night City. Little did RTG know that a lasting peace agreement would come in 1998, and while it's not perfect, Belfast today is mostly a quiet and prosperous city.
Once Original, Now Common: Mostly due to Adaptation Displacement, there were some people who have claimed the video game adaptation Cyberpunk 2077's aesthetics felt too generic. The tabletop game it's based on was the codifier for many of the genre's tropes, so it’s somewhat unsurprising that many of its tropes feel very familiar. This has resulted in a game where many of the Shout-Out references are referencing something that was inspired by, or was itself a reference to the original Cyberpunk tabletop game setting.
Sequel Displacement: Even amongst the tabletop games, 2020 still remains popular, while rarely anyone has touched the original 2013 release. Not helping that the 2013 edition was out of print while 2020 is still in production after over three decades.
gave this before Cyberpunk 2077.
