CYBERPUNK: EDGERUNNERS II confirmed to be in production

CD Projekt Red, anime studio Trigger and Netflix have all confirmed they are working on a project called Cyberpunk Edgerunners II. This will be a sequel to their hit 2022 anime set in the same world as the video game Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) and the Cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game franchise created by Mike Pondsmith in 1988.

The sequel series will again be 10 episodes in length. It will be directed by Kai Ikarashi, who worked on the first series, with writer/producer Bartosz Sztybor also returning. The creative team have confirmed this will be a new story in Night City, and there will be no retconning of the original series' ending, with the characters who died in that story staying dead in this new series. There was no confirmation if any of the surviving characters will be returning (some of them have already reappeared courtesy of a special mission added to Cyberpunk 2077 in later updates).

The new series is still early in production, with no confirmed release date as yet.

CD Projekt Red are also working on a sequel to the video game, with the working title Cyberpunk II. R. Talsorian Games are continuing to release new material for the tabletop roleplaying game, with The Edgerunner's Guide to Night City slated for release later this year.

Franchise Familiariser: Cyberpunk 2077 / Red / Edgerunners (2024 update)

Back in December 2020, CD Projekt Red released Cyberpunk 2077. The game allowed players to create a character of their own design and then live a life of crime in the late 21st Century metropolis of Night City, California. After an infamously rocky launch, the game was rescued through updates and a well-received expansion, and has since expanded to include a spin-off TV show, graphic novels, art books and board games.

But did you know that the game and its attendant merchandise is merely the latest part of a franchise which is more than thirty-five years old? If you don’t know your rockerboys from your Arasaka corporate suits from your netrunners, a franchise familiariser may be helpful.

Note: this is an update of an article previously published in 2020.

The Basics

Cyberpunk is a science fiction franchise created by writer and games designer Mike Pondsmith, originally published by his company, R. Talsorian Games, in 1988. Pondsmith named the game after the science fiction subgenre of the same name, which in turn was named after a 1983 short story written by Bruce Bethke. This story was actually published somewhat late in the development of the genre, as several previous works had been important in establishing it, particularly Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and John Brunner’s 1975 book The Shockwave Rider, as well as the 1982 movie Blade Runner, loosely based on Dick’s novel.

Pondsmith and his fellow designers have cited Walter Jon Williams’ 1986 novel Hardwired as being extremely influential on the design of the game, along with Dick and Blade Runner (William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, often arguably cited as cyberpunk’s codifying moment, was not read until later in the game’s development).

To make it clearer that the reader is not speaking about the short story or genre, it’s common for fans to refer to Cyberpunk by one of its edition subtitles: Cyberpunk 2013, Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk v3.0 or Cyberpunk Red.

Each of the four editions of the game is set in a different decade and reflects the passage of time in the Cyberpunk universe. The original Cyberpunk (1988), now almost always referred to as Cyberpunk 2013, is set in that year and depicts a near-future dystopia where corporations have become as powerful as governments and fight one another for supremacy and where takeovers are more literally hostile than you might expect. The game is predominantly set in Night City, a custom-designed and built metropolis on the coast of Morro Bay, California, roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and sees players taking on roles such as mercenaries, corporate players, police officers and netrunners, as hackers are known in this world.

Cyberpunk 2020 is the second and most popular and well-known iteration of the game, to the point that “Cyberpunk 2020” is often used to refer to the entire franchise. It was originally published in 1990 and remained continuously in print for fifteen years, accumulating a vast array of supporting supplements and adventures. The game’s rule system, Interlock, was highly praised for being customisable and allowing players to much finely adjust their character’s development through skills rather than being tied into much broader levels (the approach favoured by the medium’s heavyweight game, Dungeons and Dragons, for which Pondsmith had worked on some sourcebooks). The setting was also praised for its attitude and punk ethos.

After experimenting with a spin-off project revolving around young characters who get superhero-like powers from technology, CyberGeneration, the game returned properly in 2005 with Cyberpunk v3.0. The game switched to the Fuzion system, advanced the timeline to the mid-2030s and also adopted a transhuman approach, with much more sophisticated SF ideas such as humans downloading their consciousness into robotic bodies and thus becoming immortal. The setting also dropped some of the aesthetics of the original setting, Pondsmith reasoning that fashion and styles would move on. However, despite some praise for trying to move past cyberpunk clichés and explore more advanced ideas, the game had some negative feedback for exactly the same reason, as well as the change in rules.

Cyberpunk Red (2020) tacitly omits v3.0 from the canon and instead serves as a direct sequel to Cyberpunk 2020, with the timeline now advanced to the 2040s but the old cyberpunk styles and ideas are still very much around. The newest edition of the game also acts as a prequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (the tabletop game and the video game developed in tandem), with Pondsmith confirming that a Cyberpunk 2077 sourcebook updating the Cyberpunk Red timeline and rules to 2077 will follow.

As well as the tabletop roleplaying game and the video game, the franchise consists of tie-in novels and graphic novels, several board games, the first edition of the popular Netrunner collectible card game and the Cyberpunk: Arasaka Plot mobile game.

In September 2022, CD Projekt Red collaborated with Mike Pondsmith, Netflix and the Japanese animation studio Trigger to release Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a 10-episode animated TV series set about a year before the game. The show received critical acclaim, and was credited with spurring fresh interest in both the video game and tabletop roleplaying game. The former was updated with a tie-in mission exploring the fate of some of the characters from the show, whilst the latter received a new introductory boxed set based on the TV series. In December 2023, the franchise received a further boost in popularity due to the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, a sizeable expansion to the video game.

Future projects are in development. A second Cyberpunk animated show is in the planning stages, whilst a live-action television series has also been proposed. A full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Project Orion, is also in development. The Cyberpunk Red tabletop roleplaying game is also expanding, with a new setting based in the 2077 time period of the video game expected to launch in 2025, alongside the Night City sourcebook.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CYBERPUNK 2077 live-action project in the planning stages

CD Projekt Red will collaborate with production company Anonymous Content to create a live-action project set in the world of their video game, Cyberpunk 2077. It is unclear if this is a direct adaptation of the game or an adjacent project in the same world, similar to 2022 anime spin-off series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which was a hit for Netflix.

Anonymous Content worked on True Detective, Mr. Robot, The Revenant and Spotlight, and are known for serious, intense genre works, which would be a good fit for the Cyberpunk world.

Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the Cyberpunk role-playing game franchise created by Mike Pondsmith in the late 1980s (which had its heyday with the Cyberpunk 2020 product line, released through the 1990s). The video game, released in late 2020, sees the player taking on the role of V, a scrappy mercenary in Night City, California, who inadvertently ends up with a chip which could bring down entire global powers. To stop the chip's destruction, they install it into their cyberware, resulting in them being joined in their adventures by the apparent cyber-ghost of legendary rebel and rock star Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves). The chip allows them to use more cyberware and powerful weapons than anybody else, but also will inevitably kill them, forcing them to make a hard choice on how to save Johnny, or themselves.

Despite a buggy and controversial launch, the game has undergone a redemption arc thanks to a steady bug-fixing schedule. The game has sold 25 million copies and recently launched its well-received Phantom Liberty expansion (starring Idris Elba as New United States secret agent Solomon Reed), which has sold 3 million copies in its first two weeks on sale.

Video game adaptations used to be seen as a poisoned chalice, but recent successes like The Last of Us and Arcane have seen the idea become more popular.

With this idea only just getting off the ground and Hollywood still wrapping up the issues surrounding its recent strike, it'll likely be a good few years before we see this project hit the screen. Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red have already started development on Cyberpunk 2077's sequel.

CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY gets release date and expanded trailer

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released on 26 September this year.

Cyberpunk 2077's first (and possibly only) story expansion sees protagonist V given an impossible mission: to go into Dogtown, a sealed-off area of Pacifica, Night City's most lawless district, and rescue the President of the New United States. The expansion seems inspired by John Carpenter's Escape from New York, which is a great model to base things from, and sees the game's high-profile casting expanded from a returning Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand, with Idris Elba joining the fray as NUS Agent Solomon Reed. Unsurprisingly, complications abound.

The expansion will be available for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Sales of THE WITCHER 3 pass 50 million

CD Projekt has confirmed that its 2015 CRPG, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has sold over 50 million copies, making it one of the best-selling video games of all time.

The news emerged in their latest earnings call. CDPR also confirmed that the Witcher trilogy as a whole has sold over 75 million copies. Combined with the over 20 million confirmed sales of their last game, Cyberpunk 2077, not to mention the video card game Gwent, this puts CDPR's lifetime sales at well over 95 million units sold.

The biggest-selling video game of all time is Minecraft, which is estimated to have sold around 238 million copies, followed by Grand Theft Auto V/Grand Theft Auto Online (180 million), Tetris (100 million) and Wii Sports (83 million).

Based on the Wikipedia ranking, The Witcher 3 has jumped over games such as Diablo 3 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim to become the ninth-biggest-selling game of all time, although of course the accuracy of such lists may be questioned.

CDPR is currently working on Phantom Liberty, a major expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, which it will be previewing at the Summer Game Fest event on 8 June, with an anticipated release later this year. Their next full project is a fourth Witcher game, which is believed to focus on new characters and will not be a direct sequel to The Witcher 3.

Idris Elba joins CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY

CD Projekt Red have unveiled some more information on Phantom Liberty, their expansion to Cyberpunk 2077. The main headline is that Idris Elba is joining the game, providing the voice and performance for new character Solomon Reed.

The new trailer also hints at a bit more of the storyline: the President of the New United States is visiting Night City (which is independent of NUSA control) but shenanigans ensue and they get in over their heads. V is recruited to go into Dogtown, possibly the old Combat Zone, a chaotic area of Pacific where anything goes (this area was sealed off in the main game), where they liaise with Reed on a mission that is said to be influenced by spy thrillers (with more than a whiff of Escape from New York to it).

New content in the expansion appears reasonably generous, with a new storyline extending across multiple main missions and side-missions, along with new characters and weapons and a new district of Night City to explore. The expansion will also apparently open up existing areas of the city for you to visit, including the large stadium visible from across the city which was also unreachable in the main game.

As well as Elba joining the cast, Keanu Reeves is back, having recorded new dialogue as Johnny Silverhand, V's reluctant cybernetic head-guest. It looks like the expansion will make use of a save set before the end of the main game, rather than following on from the end of it.

CDPR have indicated that the expansion will be generous in size, larger than The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone but not quite as big as the massive Blood and Wine expansion for that game. At the moment they are only planning one expansion for the game, having scaled back their plans for multiple big expansions due to the original game's troubled release and the need to extensively patch it. However, the game has enjoyed a significant critical renaissance in recent months and a boom in sales that have passed it over 20 million copies sold.

Phantom Liberty does not have a firm release date yet, other than some time in 2023.

CD Projekt Red announce multiple new WITCHER games, new IP and CYBERPUNK 2077 sequel

CD Projekt Red have confirmed they have a lot more Witcher games coming down the pipe in future, committing to no less than five new games, as well as the first game in a new IP and a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077.

The already-announced project is code-named "Polaris," although in reality it's being informally called The Witcher 4. The game picks up after the events of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansions; is a large-scale, open-world CRPG; will probably not focus on Geralt as the main character (based on previous statements); will use the Unreal 5 Engine; and is the beginning of a new Witcher trilogy. The game currently has 150 people working on it internally at CDPR.

Obviously as part of that announcement, CDPR have also confirmed that effectively The Witcher 5 and 6 (though they probably won't be called that) are also in the planning. The plan is to release the two sequels at 3-year intervals after the initial release, which will be ambitious.

Alongside that is "Sirius," an "innovative take on The Witcher universe telling an unforgettable story for existing Witcher fans and new audiences." This game is being worked on the Molasses Flood, an American studio based in Boston which CDPR acquired a year ago. The developer is known for their survival and base-building games, The Flame in the Flood and Drake Hollow, suggesting this will not be an RPG but a different genre within the same world.

"Canis Majoris" is the final title and is, intriguingly, "a story-driven, single-player, open-world RPG set within The Witcher universe." It is being worked on by a 3rd-party studio led by ex-Witcher veterans from CDPR.

CDPR - perhaps unwisely given how this turned out last time - have also confirmed they are working on "Orion," a full sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. That makes sense since, despite its rocky launch, the original game has now sold over 20 million copies. Although not confirmed by CDPR, it's likely this game will also move to Unreal Engine 5. It has no title, though fans are inevitably already calling it Cyberpunk 2078.

This is in addition to Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the major story expansion to Cyberpunk 2077 and the current primary focus for the company, with over 350 people involved. This title is set to launch in 2023.

CDPR have also teased "Hadar," a third, new IP project, which is in the very earliest prototyping stage.

CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY announced

The first major expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, has been announced for release in 2023. The new expansion sees V, the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077, joining forces with the government of the New United States for a new mission, to the distress of their head-companion Johnny Silverhand.

CD Projekt Red has revealed little else about the expansion, save it takes place in an "all-new district" of Night City and is a "spy thriller." The presence of Johnny and V in the trailer suggests this expansion is set before the end of Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in 2012 and released in late 2020, with critical acclaim for its story, characterisation, visuals, soundtrack and atmosphere, but serious criticism of its bugs, especially on last-generation consoles. The release turned into a major fiasco, with console sales of the game suspended. A lengthy programme of bugfixes and patches eventually stabilised the game and the 1.5 patch in February this year finally resolved the bulk of the game's problems. These issues have delayed work on the game's expansions. A new 1.6 patch released today addresses further issues, adds new features and ties in with the release of the Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners animated series on Netflix next week.

CDPR originally planned two expansions for the game, the first being set in a new area of the Pacifica district and adding new quests and storylines. The second would have taken V to the orbiting space station known as the Crystal Palace and resolved the remaining dangling storyline issues from the original release. It's unclear if Phantom Liberty is the first expansion, or replaces both.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released in 2023 on PC, Xbox Series S/X, PlayStation 5 and Stadia.

A Potted History of Cyberpunk, Part 1

Cyberpunk 2077

Thanks to the high-profile release of the video game Cyberpunk 2077 and its attendant controversies, more people are talking about cyberpunk as a genre and concept than at any time since the 1980s, and probably even more than then.

Defining the genre was tricky even thirty years ago, with the letter pages of SFnal magazines and fanzines occasionally descending into heated battles as people debated what was part of the genre and what was not, who was part of the movement proper and who were its progenitors. There was also a long-running argument – still hashed out today – about works that truly embodied the spirit of cyberpunk versus those merely borrowing its aesthetics for commercial purposes, or perhaps those who held that cyberpunk was a more tightly-defined literary genre as opposed to a setting.

 

Netflix's Altered Carbon

What’s in a Name?

At its simplest, cyberpunk is a portmanteau of two works: cyber – referring to computers – and punk – referring to anti-authoritarianism and rebelling against the established order. In his Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (1995), SF critic John Clute offers a bald summary of the term: “stories set in a computer-dominated environment with a streetwise, anti-Establishment culture.” In Burning Chrome (1986), Bruce Sterling and William Gibson (two of the genre’s most notable figures) defined it as “low-life and high tech.” In the titular short story from that collection, originally published in 1983, Gibson coined the phrase “the street finds its own uses for things,” which has become a widely-quoted aphorism for the street-level use of advanced technology.

However, when the term “cyberpunk” is mentioned, it also brings up certain images. Usually a vast, futuristic city, sometimes a future version of an existing location like Tokyo or Los Angeles or a completely new conurbation, such as California’s custom-built Night City, or a new urban mass that amalgamated out of previous cities, such as Mega-City One or the Sprawl, two separate ultra-cities which both formed out of existing US cities along the Eastern Seaboard of North America. A lot of people wear sunglasses, even at night. Chrome is everywhere, and is cool. Virtually everyone is a cyborg, from extreme techno-fetishists who have replaced limbs with weaponry or techno-enhanced prosthetics to the everyday people who look just like we do, but might have bionic eyes or a computer interface port behind their ears.

A key complaint and criticism of cyberpunk is that whilst “cyber” shows up in almost all examples of the genre, the “punk” element may or may not be present. Punk usually refers to low-level, “street” kids and people who are non-conformist, anti-authoritarian and anti-corporate, who work for themselves and despise the idea of selling out. In cyberpunk works, the protagonists are often idealistic, seeking to bring down the supercorporations who now wield unfettered power, or sometimes the government which has become enhanced by corporate power.

Cyberpunk is also generally held to be Earth-based, or at least planet-bound. Space travel is often available in a cyberpunk setting but is not a key part of the genre; offworld colonies are sometimes used as a place of escape or refuge for the ultra-rich, leaving the poor masses behind. Sometimes space operas visit Earth or other planets to find vast, semi-dystopian cities and people integrated with technology, such as Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn Trilogy with its vast, cyberpunk-ish arcologies on Earth or even those instalments of Star Wars which dwell on events on the city-planet of Coruscant, but generally these are held to be space operas first and foremost, with cyberpunk elements of secondary interest.

The genre is often held to be inherently a dystopian vision of the future where technology has run amok and been used to solidify the power of corrupt governments, corporations and other elites at the expense of the masses, who use what technology they can to fight back. Utopian cyberpunk is an oxymoron, with some holding that the closest would be something like Star Trek, in which advanced technology is available to everyone and is genuinely used to improve the lifestyles of all humanity, which in this setting has abandoned capitalism and the acquisition of wealth and power as personal motivations.

Cyberpunk is also often said to be a direct successor to the noir thriller genre, often employing a detective – either a traditional gumshoe, a police officer or a hacker analogue – as the main character or in a supporting role. If the main character is a police officer, they frequently become disillusioned by the corruption exposed during their investigation and quit in disgust, or come into conflict with the system and go rogue. Director James Cameron in fact proposed “technoir” as an alternative name for the genre in his 1984 film The Terminator, but it never really caught on.

 

Doctor Who's Cybermen in their 1966 debut appearance, in The Tenth Planet.

Protocyberpunk

Antecedents of cyberpunk are numerous and arguable. A key early ancestor is Alfred Bester’s Tiger! Tiger! (1956), better-known under its revised title of The Stars My Destination. The novel predicted a world where corporations would become more powerful than governments and that the human body would be enhanced by machine implants. The protagonist is, unusually for science fiction of the era, an antihero, a ruthless man named Gully Foyle who is driven arguably sociopathic after he is left to die, marooned in space. His unwavering commitment to destroying his enemies leads him to commit numerous crimes under the justification of his own righteousness; his faith wavers at key moments but at the end of the story he has become a religious icon for his commitment and his revelations about the nature of reality. Foyle is not a laudable figure – he is a rapist and murderer – but his status as an antihero and one-man force of destruction has made him something of a progenitor of later cyberpunk protagonists (or antagonists).

Other works contain elements of later cyberpunk without perhaps fully committing to them: William S. Burroughs’ The Soft Machine (1961) features cyberspace-like rationalised hallucinations, albeit achieved through drugs and biological means (a theme revisited in Jeff Noon’s popular 1993 quasi-cyberpunk work Vurt). Isaac Asimov’s Robots saga, beginning with I, Robot (1950), asks hard questions about the morality of creating artificial intelligence and what limitations should be put on them, whilst Samuel R. Delany’s Nova (1968) features cyborgs hanging out on the street. British SF TV series Doctor Who several times addressed the issue of merging biological and machine life, with first the Daleks (debuting in the serial The Dead Planet in 1963) and then, more relevantly, the Cybermen (The Tenth Planet, 1966) addressing what happens when man becomes more machine than biological.

 

Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968), a key cyberpunk progentior.

Early and Semi-Cyberpunk

The first work which is often cited as cyberpunk is Philip K. Dick’s 1968 short novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The novel revolves around a bounty hunter named Deckard who is contracted to terminate six androids who have escaped from the offworld colonies and fled to Earth to live normal lives among the population. Deckard pursues them across a post-apocalyptic, semi-dystopian North America where the populace huddles in futuristic cities such as San Francisco and Seattle. A common pastime is using “empathy boxes” to link to a communal virtual reality centred around suffering and martyrdom. It is also revealed that almost all animals have been wiped out in a nuclear war, leading to people acquiring robotic animals as pets, with only the ultra-rich able to afford real animals.

The status of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – and its later loose film adaptation, Blade Runner (1982) – as cyberpunk remains contentious as many elements of the genre are missing, such as the role of ultra-powerful corporations. Deckard is also very much not a punk hero, lacking idealism at all and in fact suffering existential ennui which he hopes to assuage by acquiring a real goat to replace his robot sheep. He later has an affair with an android, and experiences doubt over whether he himself is an android or a real human. The novel has a somewhat surreal ending where he finds himself performing the same tasks as the martyr in the empathy boxes’ virtual reality and finds a wild toad, which later turns out to be a robot.

Some of Dick’s later work also employs cyberpunk tropes, perhaps most notably Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said (1974). Set in a dystopian near-future where the US democratic system has collapsed after a second civil war, it concerns a protagonist, Taverner, who status as a genetically-engineered TV star is abruptly lost when his identity is somehow erased from existence. Trying to desperately avoid being identified as a non-entity, which would reduce him to one of the near-starving, poverty-inflicted majority whose rebellious instincts are only kept in check by television and vacuous entertainment, he goes on the run and eventually is able to restore his identity. The story and background themes, particularly the student-led revolution which is gathering against the technologically superior elite, are at least cyberpunk-adjacent.

Alice Sheldon explored themes which would later be labelled as cyberpunk in her 1973 novel The Girl Who Was Plugged In, published under her pen name of James Tiptree, Jr. The novel takes place in a dystopian future where powerful corporations create genetically-engineered celebrities, who are controlled by operators via a neural interface. These celebrities engage in elaborate games of product placement to get around strict laws on corporate advertising. The book delves deeply into the idea of identity and the idea that the face a person wears is not necessarily their true one, here taken to extremes through technology.

J.G. Ballard explored societal alienation – a common theme in cyberpunk – in numerous works, but a particularly interesting take was in Concrete Island (1974), where a car accident leaves the protagonist stranded on a median strip, the titular concrete island, between several motorway intersections where traffic is constantly moving at dangerous speeds. Unable to leave without being killed, the protagonist joins the subculture of the concrete island, where other rejects from society have gathered, which soon devolves into conflict. The book recalls the spaces outside the city or between the lines of civilisation in cyberpunk, where characters fall and it is questionable if they will emerge again. More directly evoking cyberpunk is Ballard’s High-Rise (1975), where the main character Robert moves into a high-rise apartment block on the outskirts of London. The apartment is a self-contained city in itself, with its own bank, supermarket, shopping mall, gym and school. The high-rise provides so many amenities that its inhabitants can choose to never leave. Some, fearful of reports of crime outside the block, take up that option. Power failures and social and class stratification soon set in, with the richer inhabitants of the upper floors hoarding their wealth against the poorer (but more numerous) inhabitants of the lower levels, leading to a highly localised civil war and revolution (of which the outer world proceeds in apparent ignorance). The novel foreshadows the arrival of the mini-arcology or self-contained “megablock” that becomes a key feature of many cyberpunk stories, whilst thematically the idea of an “ideal society” rapidly devolving in class warfare is pure cyberpunk, with technological warfare (in this case, exemplified by the building’s lifts becoming strategic chokepoints) being a key part of the struggle. The novel was filmed in 2015 by Ben Wheatley with Tom Hiddleston in the title role, to great effect.

In 1976, Doctor Who tackled a key cyberpunk theme in the serial The Deadly Assassin, when it had the Doctor return to his homeworld of Gallifrey to do battle with his arch-nemesis, the Master. At a key point in the narrative, the Doctor has to seek information in the repository of all Time Lord knowledge, the Matrix (a not-uncommon name for such a database). Because the repository is so vast and complex, the best way to use it is via a neural interface to generate a virtual reality through which the Doctor can move in an illusion of the computer system being an actual place. This is one of the earliest examples of such a conflation of computer systems, virtual reality and brain interfaces being used in a manner that would later become extremely common in cyberpunk.

An interesting take on the genre appeared in 1977, when Christopher Priest published A Dream of Wessex. Much of Priest’s work is concerned with layers of reality, doubles, shifting or blurred existences and identity surviving across universes. Given this interest, it is remarkable that only once, in Wessex, he used technology to explore the idea. In this novel an elite group of thinkers create a virtual reality interface which can transport the collective unconscious of some of Britain’s greatest minds into an illusory world where their intelligence and experience can be mined for ideas on how to ensure humanity’s long-term survival. The idea of forcibly transporting people into a cyberspace against their will as a way of extracting information is a common cyberpunk trope, but the idea of doing it stealthily so the target is unaware of what is happening is intriguing.

In 1978, the BBC launched a new science fiction TV show, Blake’s 7. Blake’s 7 is primarily a space opera about a band of plucky rebels trying to bring down the dystopian Terran Federation, but some cyberpunk themes do proliferate. The rebels are a mixture of genuine idealists, profit-driven criminals and career sociopaths (reflecting the often-mixed band of protagonists encounter in cyberpunk fiction). The population on Earth (apparently reduced by atomic war) are kept under constant surveillance and control in domed mega-cities, made docile by drugs and ruled over by corrupt officials. The war with the Federation often takes the form of a game of technological one-upmanship, with Blake’s early advantage of finding an advanced alien starship swiftly matched by the Federation’s improving spacecraft and weapons technology, particularly in the field of AI where many of Blake’s victories are helped by his securing of the ORAC supercomputer. Memory and personality alteration through technology, drugs and brain implants abound. Blake’s 7 is notable for its mature exploration of such themes (as compared to its American contemporary, Star Wars, and its much more superficial and heroic struggles) and also its nihilism: in the final episode the much-reduced crew are betrayed and brutally gunned down by the enemy after their erstwhile leader, the cynical Avon, had effectively had a personality breakdown.

 

John Brunner's The Shockwave Rider (1975), arguably the first novel to fully embody the key themes of cyberpunk.

Cyberpunk’s Forgotten Visionary: John Brunner

In 1968, British SF author John Brunner published the first of three thematically-linked novels which would effectively set the stage for cyberpunk. The first of these novels is the best-known, Stand on Zanzibar, set in an overpopulated world which is threatened with ecological catastrophe by population pressure. Overpopulation is a key plot point in cyberpunk (often explaining the vast cities where the action tends to unfold), but beyond that Brunner engages with other ideas: a powerful supercomputer forms an important part of the plot, whilst television has become interactive, with viewers becoming part of the programme itself. Genetically-engineered bioweapons proliferate, and nightmarish supercorporations dominate the world.

The Sheep Look Up (1972) explores further the notion of the Earth becoming uninhabitable due to toxic waste, pollution and climate change. The declining quality of the environment sparks societal collapse and war. Attempts to regulate ecological damage are watered down for economic reasons. Ecological protestors turn to violence when their peaceful protests are ignored, eventually sparking a terrorist campaign against the US government. The "cyber" is missing from the argument, but the "punk" is very much present, and the novel's depiction of ecological catastrophe would become a familiar cyberpunk trope.

The third of the three works is The Shockwave Rider (1975), a novel which is less proto or early cyberpunk, but actually just proper cyberpunk. The book takes place in a near future dystopian city where the protagonist uses his computer hacking skills to escape detection and avoid pursuit. The term "worm," for a computer virus, was first coined in this novel. The book's story is pure cyberpunk, where the protagonist, Nick, is a computer programmer who becomes aware that an education program reported as educating children is in fact indoctrinating them to further the interests of the state (effectively a criminal oligarchy), as well as genetically-engineering children to their own ends. Nick rebels and goes up against the state in an escalating battle that ends with them trying to drop a nuke on him; his response is a powerful computer virus that exposes their schemes and plans and blows open the government's duplicity. The novel, unusually for Brunner and for a lot of cyberpunk, ends optimistically.

 

Judge Dredd (1977-present), a key satire of cyberpunk tropes told from the POV of the fascist enforcers of the corrupt government's laws.

The Anti-Cyberpunk

A strong early example of cyberpunk, or at least an example of anti-cyberpunk (or even a satire of the genre), is the British comic book character Judge Dredd. Debuting in the pages of the 2000AD anthology comic in 1977, Judge Dredd is a law enforcement officer on the streets of Mega-City One, a vast super-metropolis stretching along the Eastern Seaboard of the former United States. The Judges are judge, jury and sometimes executioner all in one, able to dispense summary justice to the half-billion inhabitants of the crowded streets of the city, sometimes getting it right and sometimes (in the case of some Judges, maybe almost always) getting it wrong. Dredd and his fellow Judges are, effectively, the fascist enforcers of a totalitarian, unelected state who are not above using corporations and their latest gizmos and entertainment products to keep the population quiescent. Revolutionary fervour intermittently burns but is expertly redirected by a form of ultra-local nationalism: people are extremely loyal to the mega-blocks they live in, and rather than directing violence against the police state which keeps them cooped up all day (the unemployment rate runs at something between 92% and 98%, due to robots, AI and automation running almost all services), they instead tend to declare war on neighbouring blocks, resulting in psychotic “block wars” which act as pressure valves on the city’s malcontents. Dredd is unusual in that he believes absolutely the propaganda of being an unwavering avatar of the law, sometimes leading to him siding with the people against their oft-corrupt rulers, but more often than not unquestioningly following their orders.

If Joe Dredd is not a cyberpunk protagonist, he at least illuminates cyberpunk themes, and in fact arguably has done so more consistently and more frequently than any other character: the comic and Dredd himself continue to run today, with the timeline advancing in realtime, so forty-four years have passed in the story and for the character. Dredd himself experiments with rebelling against the system, at one point betraying his fellow Judges to support a pro-democracy call for election…which formally elects for the oppressive status quo to continue. Judge Dredd’s relentless cynicism and satire makes for one of the most interesting explorations of the genre, if one that too many readers seem to take on face value as a mindless action story.

Ridley Scott's seminal 1982 film, Blade Runner, which gave cyberpunk both its key visual and musical identities.

Visualising the Genre

In 1982, two major works were released which had a profound impact on the nascent genre, particularly its visuals. Most notable was the film Blade Runner, a very loose adaptation of Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Like the novel, the film features a bounty hunter named Deckard (here played by a taciturn Harrison Ford, keen to shed the wisecracking image of Han Solo and Indiana Jones) who is commissioned to track down a band of rogue androids. Unlike the novel, the action does not criss-cross the western United States, instead being restricted to just one location, Los Angeles in 2019. Blade Runner’s Los Angeles would become perhaps the most definitive visual take on a cyberpunk city ever: a sprawling urban landscape of endless industrial complexes surrounding a conglomeration of vast skyscrapers emblazoned with familiar logos, whilst the techno-pyramid of a monstrously powerful super-corporation squats menacingly above the poor masses just trying to get by on the streets.

The film’s status in cyberpunk is sometimes disputed. There’s nary a brain/AI interface in sight and if Deckard becomes a rebel against the system, it’s something of a reluctant one. But so much cyberpunk draws on Blade Runner’s aesthetics, and its central question of what it means to be human in the midst of so much existentially-overloading technology is so core to the genre, that such arguments feel forced. Blade Runner is almost the last word in the visual imagery – if only superficially – of cyberpunk. It also had a strong impact on the audio perception of the genre: Vangelis's synth-heavy soundtrack inextricably bound cyberpunk to the sound of synthesisers and any cyberpunk work which suggests that maybe people in the future won't be in love with a 1980s musical fad faces an uphill struggle gaining acceptance with some fans (particularly Cyberpunk 2077 and its apparently controversial idea that people might have a more eclectic and wide-ranging musical taste by the late 21st Century).

The other work would come from Japan. Katsuhiro Otomo had already been playing with cyberpunk forms in his debut manga, Fireball (1979-81). Set in a future city secretly ruled by the ATOM supercomputer though human proxies, the story follows a band of rebels who are trying to expose the truth and inspire a revolution. Otomo quickly realised that the setup was too simplistic and hurriedly wrapped the story up to explore another idea. This resulted in Domu (1980-81), a more contemporary story exploring the psychic link between an old man and a child. Although more satisfied by this story, Otomo realised that there was scope for a much, much more ambitious story combining the two elements into one.

On 6 December 1982, Otomo published the first issue of a new serial in Young Magazine. The story appeared under a very simple, short name: Akira.

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Cyberpunk 2077

In 2023, the Fourth Corporate War ended when a group of terrorists led by charismatic rock star Johnny Silverhand smuggled a thermonuclear device into Arasaka Tower in Night City, California, and destroyed it. Silverhand vanished during the attack and was never seen again. Fifty-four years later, this minor historical detail becomes crucially important to mercenary V when they are offered a contract to steal an advanced biochip from Arasaka Corporation. What seems to be a normal gig turns into a gruelling nightmare of high-stakes international geo-politics, existential confusion and corporate intrigue. A clock is ticking and V now has to build up a network of allies so they can save themselves and survive what is coming.

Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot of Things in it. These Things include: Sentient Waymo; a hyperactive anime girl band whose signature song could become the next "Gangnam Style" if it didn't have a swear in the title; a soundtrack of near non-stop bangers; iguanas; cats; characters you actually want to hang out with in real life; giant holographic fish; wonderful dialogue; superb stealth; Hideo Kojima playing himself; a shotgun that sets people on fire; decidedly non-cringey romances; the red bike from Akira; Keanu Actual Reeves; GLaDOS from Portal; several YouTube streamers; hard moral choices; really cringey first-person sex scenes; a rocket launcher which is also your arm; a sentient gun; Half-Life gags that dated before the game even came out; mysteriously teleporting cops; a vending machine who becomes your friend; lots and lots of freezers you can hide bodies in; inventive hacking; city blocks from Judge Dredd; cars that drive like bricks; and a slew of bugs (mostly minor, very occasionally major).

The number of Things in Cyberpunk 2077 is so overwhelming that it's hard to fully appreciate them all in one go. Cyberpunk 2077 is a towering achievement, a story-driven, open-world RPG with a gripping central narrative and a lot of player choice in how you achieve objectives. It's also - rather infamously by now - a janky game which, in order to hit its punishingly optimistic release date, has had to not so much cut corners as sear them from existence with industrial-strength flamethrowers. There are moments in this game that are polished beyond brilliance, with storytelling and character beats that, even more than the developers' previous game, The Witcher 3, contemptuously rewrite your expectations of what video games are capable of in terms of storytelling and characterisation. Five seconds later you'll be driving down the street wondering why cars are fading in and out of existence two hundred yards away and why the police only chased you (on foot!) for three yards after you accidentally ran someone over before eerily dematerialising.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that started life (way back in 2012) as an RPG but over the course of its development metamorphosed into something else: The Metagame, The Ubergame, the game that would include all other games within itself. CDPR decided that as well as an RPG, it also had to be an immersive sim like the Deus Ex and Dishonored series; a first-person stealth version of recent cult hits Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun and Desperados III; an apocalyptic collect 'em up which at times feels like a Fallout title; and an open-world, icon-hoovering action game with driving, like Grand Theft Auto V or (maybe more appropriately, given the hacking angle) the Watch_Dogs series.

At some point CDPR must have realised that the game was never going to achieve all of these goals simultaneously, but rather than manage expectations it decided to expand them. In the last two-and-a-half years of development, they released no less than 72 videos, ranging from expansive trailers to detailed behind-the-scenes development videos about the music, weapons, the involvement of Keanu Reeves and the work needed to translate the game into other languages. CDPR decided to pour petrol on the flames of hype rather than try to keep them under control. The result is a game that delights and frustrates in turn, sometimes in the same minute of gameplay.

Most importantly, Cyberpunk 2077 emerges as a good game. It's very nearly a great game, a classic ranking alongside CDPR's previous title, but the sheer volume of jank in the game and the evidently cut or compromised features reduces its impact.

Cyberpunk 2077 casts you as "V", a mercenary working in and around Night City, California. You can't choose V's name, but you can choose their gender, sexuality, appearance and background before being set loose in the city. At any time you'll have a series of main story missions to follow, which push forward the overall narrative, and a number of side-missions, mostly phoned in to you by various "fixers" who work all over the city (who also have side-jobs begging you to buy really rubbish used cars for some reason). You also get side-jobs from characters you meet in the main story missions. These side-jobs can extend into lengthy, multi-hour quest chains of their own, sometimes ending in romances or at least winning the loyalty of the character in question. On top of these, there's also a truly startling number of map icons, depicting crimes in progress (V is a subcontractor for the police, for reasons that are hazily explained), yet more side-missions, shops and sites of interest. Cyberpunk 2077 easily has a hundred hours of content in the base game, easily a lot more if you experiment with different builds and different quest choices, and more still if you're happy just travelling around looking at things.

Cyberpunk 2077 is gorgeous. Night City is one of the most gawp-worthy settings for a video game, ever, and your screenshot key (enhanced by a comprehensive photo mode) may burn out from overuse during the course of the game. If you grew up watching Blade Runner, reading Neuromancer, watching Akira or playing Syndicate, you've probably fantasised about a game that put you right in the middle of a cyberpunk city and let you just walk around sampling the sights. This year's cult hit Cloudpunk got a huge amount of mileage of that on a budget comfortably less than 1% of Cyberpunk 2077, and unsurprisingly this game takes it to a whole new level. Whether its watching the sun rise over town-sized solar collectors, the rain falling between city apartment blocks taller than the Sears Tower or homeless folk living on the toxic beaches of Pacifica, the game throws more memorable images at you per hour than most some major franchises have managed in countless iterations. Those on more powerful hardware with ray-tracing and 4K resolutions will get the best out of the game, but even those on modest hardware will appreciate the art direction and atmosphere.

The story and its attendant characters are the main draw here. V's journey through Night City's criminal underworld and corporate entanglements is engrossing. The major characters you meet - fellow merc Jackie Welles, ripperdoc Viktor Vector, braindance expert Judy Alvarez, Nomad Panam Palmer, racing driver turned barmaid Claire, Tarot expert Misty, fixer Rogue, grumpy modern samurai Takemura and, of course, the ghostly Johnny Silverhand - are fleshed-out individuals with complex motivations and intriguing backstories. Like The Witcher 3 before it, CDPR has created some wonderfully real characters you enjoy spending time with (unlike, say, almost every Bethesda game ever, with an honourable exception made for Nick Valentine), with characterisation that exceeds BioWare at their long-ago best. There are a few characters who aren't as well fleshed-out and whose stories aren't as well-done - effective arch-villains Yorinobu Araska and Adam Smasher get very little screentime, whilst a fascinating story about a mayoral candidate who's being mentally manipulated seems to peter out - but for the most part the stories and characters are excellent, with real, emotionally satisfying moments and a surprising amount of heart. Cyberpunk 2077 can be an at times cynical and brutal game, but it also has a lot of warmth in its character relationships and humour. The only weakness with the story is that your choice of opening background feels less significant than it really should, and it may have been better to have just given you one set background.

The story and characters are also surprisingly powerful in the matters of representation: the game's marketing was deliberately "edgy," with a marketing campaign that seemed intent on making the game appear transphobic (until the marketing person responsible for that was fired). The game itself is decidedly much more LGBTQ+ friendly, with straight and gay romantic relationships available and your character able to present as non-gender-specific (albeit with somewhat limited parameters, with your pronouns dependent on your choice of voice actor). Gay, straight and trans characters are present in the narrative (contrary to some reviewers, who erroneously claimed there are no trans characters in the game, which just goes to show how many reviewers didn't bother to play the full game) and presented as people, with no fuss at all made about gender or sexuality. The only iffy area in the game is some of its advertising, which feels exploitative and tawdry, but given the nature of the game's corporations, that's almost certainly deliberate.

Mechanically, the game tries to give players a lot of choice in how to advance their character, perhaps with the developers feeling that The Witcher 3 rolled back too many RPG systems in favour of being more of an action RPG. Cyberpunk 2077 has a level-based system where you can choose to upgrade stats and skills, but also an advance-by-doing system where skills can also be upgraded by simply using those skills. You can also pick up shards (datafiles) which update skills directly. It's a complex and interesting system, but one that feels like it was designed to allow skill points to be spread more evenly. If you decide to focus on stealth and hacking and pour most of your skill points into those skill trees, you can quickly become a ghost-like superhacker who can wipe out entire platoons of enemies from afar by hacking into their systems and setting them literally on fire, or short-circuiting them, or creating a localised computer virus that can do tremendous damage to entire groups with one hack (by the end of the game you can literally kill entire gangs of 5-10 enemies with hacking attacks long before they can locate you). You also have elaborate systems for armour, implants, cyberdecks and weapons mods which can dramatically increase your damage output and reduce incoming damage. This is all very cool but can get quite over-powered, and enemies cease being a serious threat by around the halfway point of the game, unless you crank the difficulty way up.

The open world is an area where Cyberpunk 2077 falters, surprisingly. Night City is gorgeous and it's fun to travel around the city and its environs, but you'll quickly discover that the city simulation aspect of the game is illusory. Pedestrians and cars fade into and out of view rather artificially (shades of the early 2000s Grand Theft Auto games on the PlayStation 2), it's almost pitifully easy to evade the police (especially since they can't chase after you in police cars!) and the randomly-encountered hostile gang members and street crimes can be dealt with with almost contemptuous ease. Shopping at street vendors and shops opens a rather functional menu screen for buying food, clothes and equipment, despite elaborate animations existing in missions for eating at food stalls, which would have been more fun to do at will. There's also a bizarrely limited number of ways for pedestrians to react to you. Pulling out a gun or causing an explosion will root everyone to the spot rather than more sensibly running away, and passing civilians whom you save from criminals will almost never express any kind of gratitude or talk to you, usually instead sauntering off (or even responding with the same automated "f--k off!" response most passers-by give you when you try to talk to them). Ten years ago, you might have gotten away with these kind of limited reactions but with not just Grand Theft Auto V but also the Watch_Dogs series (each game of which has had a lower budget than Cyberpunk 2077) and even forgotten classic Sleeping Dogs having much more realistic, immersive open city features, Night City feels a lot more disappointing. The lack of a functioning metro system (despite featuring in trailers) and the presence of flying cars and aircraft but not being able to use them feel like weird limitations as well.

This isn't helped by the fact that most cars in the game feel too heavy and unwieldy, with ridiculous turning circles and poor design (the driving model is highly reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto IV's underwhelming performance, in fact, and not GTAV's much smoother experience). Only a couple of cars, like a Batmobile-like sports car variant you find in a tunnel and Silverhand's Porsche 911 you inherit through a later mission, are really worthwhile. Much better are the motorbikes, which allow you to cut through alleys and side-streets and across the Badlands in a more dynamic manner.

Fortunately then, the game's systems in use feel very satisfying. Combat can be chunky and visceral, with a nice mixture of options. You can blow people away with a rocket launcher arm implant, get close and personal with shotguns, or stand off with sniper rifles (which are more like railguns given their propensity for popping heads like helium balloons). You can even attach a silencer to a pistol for more a violent approach to stealth. Stealth itself is reasonably solid, although a little flaky at first until you get the skill which slows down time when you're spotted, giving you an opportunity to slip back into hiding. Stealth feels more like a first-person version of recent isometric games like Desperados III, although without vision cones so you have to be more careful in how you approach enemies. Stealth takedowns are fun and you can actually move bodies and hide them in containers (unlike Watch_Dogs 2, which allowed you to knock people out and...just leave them where they fell, for other people to find), making it a very viable strategy. Hacking computer systems to turn off cameras or make turrets friendly is also enjoyable, and taking out an entire enemy squad of guards by turning their own weapons against them may make you sit back and twirl your moustache (metaphorical or real) whilst cackling in satisfaction.

In several missions, this combination of systems turns Cyberpunk 2077 into a worthy follow-up to Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Mankind Divided, with you infiltrating elaborately-designed locations, hacking computer systems, stealth-knocking out guards of even ghosting your way through entire missions. The main game quest locations are the best for these, with slipping out of a massive hotel after an important mission goes south being one of my favourite stealth experiences in any game ever, and infiltrating a huge Arasaka compound later on not being far behind. There are also several side-missions with comparable design strengths, and the game even manages to enhance stealth by taking away one of Deus Ex's more contrived standbys, the surprisingly common handy human-sized air vents that no-one ever thinks to look in. However, the overall number of excellently-designed mission environments is relatively low, and the more optional activities, like crime-fighting, afford far less challenge to those inclined to go with stealth or hacking options, leaving you rather over-powered in those circumstances. But whilst the illusion lasts, it's a powerfully satisfying one.

It's also impossible to talk about the game without talking about its music. The original soundtrack itself is solid, if a bit underwhelming (Deus Ex: Human Revolution's soundtrack remains unmatched in this area), but the enormous battery of artists and original songs assembled for the game is incredible. Lots of other games have had as many, if not more, licensed songs, but for original tracks assembled specifically for a video game, Cyberpunk 2077 is likely unmatched, and most of them are impressive bangers, often presented in multiple versions. The music is one area this game has definitely not skimped on.

Cyberpunk 2077 (****) is an accomplished game in many key areas. Its story and characters are among the very best-in-class with some of the most outstanding story beats and quiet character moments in a video game that I've ever experienced; its RPG systems are adequate to very good; it has great combat and stealth; and its design, graphics, music and atmosphere are fantastic. Ranged against that is that its open world design is flaky as hell, and key game systems like driving, police, traffic AI and pedestrian reactions feel like they need major revisions, not to mention lingering bugs (see below) which need to stamped out fast.

Also, whilst the PC version of the game is (mostly) excellent, CDPR deserve all the criticism that've gotten for trying to release barely-functional versions of the game on X-Box One and PlayStation 4 and hiding the state they were in from reviewers. CDPR have spent thirteen years building up a formidable reputation for player friendliness and integrity and that reputation is now in the gutter, and they're going to have to work very hard to get it back again.

Cyberpunk 2077 is available now on PC, Stadia, X-Box One and X-Box Series X. The PlayStation 4 and 5 versions are on hold pending further patches.

Technical Note: I played the game on a relatively middling gaming PC (nVidia 2060 graphics card, 16 GB RAM) and experienced exactly one (1) crash. I did experience minor but relatively common graphical bugs, like flickering as new textures loaded in and occasional objects left hanging in mid-air (loot, cigarettes, weapons). Once or twice, especially in the Badlands, vehicles spawned upside down. Towards the end of the game, as I wrapped up more and more side-jobs and activities, graphical bugs seemed to increase, with street textures failing to load until I was already driving over them. These problems were rare; numerous gaming sessions failed to produce a single bug of note. This year alone, I experienced far more crashes, graphical problems and bugs in both Horizon Zero Dawn and Red Dead Redemption 2. For this review I completed the main story, every side-quest and every optional activity, which took 95 hours. I will revise the review in future should CDPR make substantial improvements to the game in the coming months.

Franchise Familiariser: Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is a few days away from hitting shelves and will almost certainly become the biggest video game of 2020 when it launches. Eight years in development, the game will allow players to create a character of their own design and then live a life of crime in the late 21st Century metropolis of Night City, California. But did you know that the game is merely the latest part of a franchise which is more than thirty years old? If you don’t know your rockerboys from your Arasaka corporate suits from your netrunners, a franchise familiariser may be helpful. 

The Basics

Cyberpunk is a science fiction franchise created by writer and games designer Mike Pondsmith, originally published by his company, R. Talsorian Games, in 1988. Pondsmith named the game after the science fiction subgenre of the same name, which in turn was named after a 1983 short story written by Bruce Bethke. This story was actually published somewhat late in the development of the genre, as several previous works had been important in establishing the genre, particularly Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and John Brunner’s 1975 book The Shockwave Rider, as well as the 1982 movie Blade Runner, loosely based on Dick’s novel.

Pondsmith and his fellow designers have cited Walter Jon Williams’ 1986 novel Hardwired as being extremely influential on the design of the game, along with Dick and Blade Runner (William Gibson’s 1984 novel Neuromancer, often arguably cited as cyberpunk’s codifying moment, was not read until later in the game’s development).

To make it clearer that the reader is not speaking about the short story or genre, it’s common for fans to refer to Cyberpunk by one of its edition subtitles: Cyberpunk 2013, Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberpunk v3.0 or Cyberpunk Red.

Each of the four editions of the game is set in a different decade and reflects the passage of time in the Cyberpunk universe. The original Cyberpunk (1988), now almost always referred to as Cyberpunk 2013, is set in that year and depicts a near-future dystopia where corporations have become as powerful as governments and fight one another for supremacy and where takeovers are more literally hostile than you might expect. The game is predominantly set in Night City, a custom-designed and built metropolis on the coast of Morro Bay, California, roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and sees players taking on roles such as mercenaries, corporate players, police officers and netrunners, as hackers are known in this world.

Cyberpunk 2020 is the second and most popular and well-known iteration of the game, to the point that “Cyberpunk 2020” is often used to refer to the entire franchise. It was originally published in 1990 and remained continuously in print for fifteen years, accumulating a vast array of supporting supplements and adventures. The game’s rule system, Interlock, was highly praised for being customisable and allowing players to much finely adjust their character’s development through skills rather than being tied into much broader levels (the approach favoured by the medium’s heavyweight game, Dungeons and Dragons, for which Pondsmith had worked on some sourcebooks). The setting was also praised for its attitude and punk ethos.

After experimenting with a spin-off project revolving around young characters who get superhero-like powers from technology, CyberGeneration, the game returned properly in 2005 with Cyberpunk v3.0. The game switched to the Fuzion system, advanced the timeline to the mid-2030s and also adopted a transhuman approach, with much more sophisticated SF ideas such as humans downloading their consciousness into robotic bodies and thus becoming immortal. The setting also dropped some of the aesthetics of the original setting, Pondsmith reasoning that fashion and styles would move on. However, despite some praise for trying to move past cyberpunk clichés and explore more advanced ideas, the game had some negative feedback for exactly the same reason, as well as the change in rules.

Cyberpunk Red (2020) tacitly omits v3.0 from the canon and instead serves as a direct sequel to Cyberpunk 2020, with the timeline now advanced to the 2040s but the old cyberpunk styles and ideas are still very much around. The newest edition of the game also acts as a prequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (the tabletop game and the video game developed in tandem), with Pondsmith confirming that a Cyberpunk 2077 sourcebook updating the Cyberpunk Red timeline and rules to 2077 will follow.

As well as the tabletop roleplaying game and the imminent video game, the franchise consists of six tie-in novels, the first edition of the popular Netrunner collectible card game and the Cyberpunk: Arasaka Plot mobile game. 

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

CYBERPUNK 2077 delayed by three weeks

In slightly surprising news (or utterly unsurprising news, depending on how cynical you are), CD Projekt Red have confirmed they are delaying the release of Cyberpunk 2077 yet again. This is their most modest delay yet, being by just 21 days to 10 December.

Cyberpunk 2077's delays are becoming meme-like at this point. The game was originally announced on 19 October 2012 - yup, eight years ago - before getting its first teaser trailer on 10 January 2013. After going completely radio silent on the game for five years, CDPR started revving up the hype engine again by releasing a much bigger trailer on 10 June 2018.

CDPR finally announced a release date with a trailer that they released on 9 June 2019, which confirmed both the participation of Keanu Reeves and the release date of 16 April 2020. However, this was delayed, first until 17 September and then 19 November.

The news seems to have taken the CDPR Twitter team by surprise: as recently as yesterday they were telling people it was fine to take 19 November off of work because the game would definitely, 100% come out on that date. Unsurprisingly, a lot of fans (especially those who have arranged holidays around the date) are unhappy with the news.

CDPR has cited multiple reasons for the delay, including a switch to work-from-home for staff during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have also been testing nine versions of the game simultaneously: one each for the PC, Stadia, X-Box One and X-Box One X, PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, X-Box S, X-Box X and PlayStation 5 platforms. The cross-generational release of Cyberpunk 2077 (not a problem facing their last, mid-generation release of The Witcher 3 in 2015) and ensuring a bug-free launch seems to be their key concern here.

The news will be disappointing to many, although the delay is somewhat modest and the game will still arrive this side of Christmas (assuming no further delays).

CYBERPUNK tabletop RPG launching alongside CYBERPUNK 2077 next month

Talsorian Games have confirmed that Cyberpunk Red, the latest edition of the long-running Cyberpunk tabletop RPG franchise, is to launch on 14 November, just ahead of the release of the Cyberpunk 2077 video game (set in the same universe) five days later. They also have a detailed breakdown of the game contents here.

The Cyberpunk RPG franchise began in 1988 with the release of the original Cyberpunk RPG, set in the year 2013 in the new metropolis of Night City, a custom-build technical megalopolis located in Morro Bay, California. It depicted high-end corporate warfare and espionage in a high-tech future (which is now, of course, an alternate past), with street hustlers and hackers working missions on the Net and in the real world on behalf of shadowy interests.

The RPG hit its stride with the release of the second edition, Cyberpunk 2020, in 1990, which became arguably the definitive version of the game and remained in print for fifteen years, spawning dozens of expansions, several novels and a stand-alone spin-off, Cybergeneration, aimed at younger players. The game also inspired the immensely popular collectible card game Netrunner as a spinoff (although the current edition of the game, Android: Netrunner, has used a different setting since 2012).

A third edition, Cyberpunk V3.0, was released in 2005 and saw the game move to a further-future transhuman setting, with major changes to the rules system that were received negatively.

Cyberpunk Red features a revamped (and better-received) rules system and advances the timeline of the tabletop game to the 2040s. The title - which was decided before CD Projekt Red optioned the franchise for a video game - comes from the skies over Night City, which have turned red after particulate matter thrown into the atmosphere during nuclear exchanges in the Fourth Corporate War.

Cyberpunk Red's digital edition will launch on 14 November. Its physical release - a chunky 456 page rulebook - will be on 19 November, the same day as the video game, although the publishers note that COVID-related delays are possible.

Cyberpunk ranks as one of the great, venerable tabletop RPGs, alongside the likes of Dungeons & Dragons, Traveller, Shadowrun and World of Darkness, and it's good to see it back in print and its world about to be introduced to vastly more people than ever before through CD Projekt Red's video game.

CD Projekt Red enter home stretch of development on CYBERPUNK 2077

CD Projekt Red have entered the home stretch of development on their massive, eagerly-awaited video game Cyberpunk 2077. They have sent a complete build to Sony and Microsoft for release certification for their consoles and the game is effectively complete and working. The focus now for the final two months is bug-crunching and stress-testing for different PC configurations, which will entail forced overtime on the project, contradicting previous promises that such mandatory "crunch" would be avoided for this title.

The game was announced in 2012 and had its first proper trailer released in January 2013. The studio moved into full-time production on the game after the release of The Witcher 3 in May 2015. CDPR began spooling up to full release in June 2018, and since then have issued numerous trailers, previews and interviews. The incredibly lengthy gestation period of the game - only Star Citizen and Beyond Good and Evil 2 have officially been in development for longer and arguably Bethesda's Starfield - has led to its development becoming a meme and many people expressing doubt the game would ever come out. In reality the development process is, although long, not unprecedented; CDPR simply started talking about the game way earlier in the process than most companies normally would.

As covered (although not as in much detail as might be wished) in Jason Schreier's fine book Blood, Sweat and Pixels, CDPR suffered a huge amount of worker attrition during the development of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its expansions in the period 2011-16. Staff were forced to work mandatory six-day and sometimes seven-day weeks for many months on end, and talented, experienced staff ended the experience by quitting. This move was self-defeating, since it meant that CDPR had to train up new staff with their procedures, software and the engine rather than using the skills and talent that had been built up over years. Labour laws in the European Union (CDPR are based in Poland) means that such "crunch" is compensated, which is not always the case in the United States, but it still takes its toll on the workforce.

More and more software developers are taking action to avoid crunch, noting that the (often temporary) boost in productivity it grants is often outweighed by the loss of talented and experienced staff in the process. Bethesda Game Studios, for example, take pride in how long they retain staff for and for their last several titles have avoided announcing any kind of release date until 3-4 months before they are there, at a point when the game is functionally complete, thus avoiding the issue.

In the specific case of Cyberpunk 2077, the head of the company has noted that the crunch period will only be for the last seven weeks of development and will be fully financially compensated. It's also typical for companies to offer extended periods of leave for non-essential staff (i.e. those not needed to address post-release patches) once the product ships and before they have to start firing up their next project. CDPR also note that 10% of the game's profits will be shared by staff. With their last game, The Witcher 3, having sold almost 30 million copies to become one of the biggest-selling games of the decade, this bonus will not be inconsiderable.

This doesn't excuse the hardship and problems caused by crunch, but in this specific case CD Projekt Red have taken steps to mitigate it and do better next time.

Cyberpunk 2077 now looks pretty locked on for its release date on 19 November on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Xbox X and PlayStation 5 versions will follow in 2021.