Cyberpunk: Edgerunner review

CT Phipps

CT Phipps

Carbon Dated and Proud
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https://unitedfederationofcharles.blogspot.com/2022/09/cyberpunk-edgerunners-review.html

CYBERPUNK 2077 is a game that I keep close to my heart but it's a bit like Night City itself in that it is a relationship that is probably toxic for both of us. She's a beautiful lady with all the pretty chrome, neon hair, and bad attitude but we've had our ups and downs. She wrecked my apartment, there were accusations of cheating, and then we hooked up again but I was already in another relationship. Harsh words were exchanged. Okay, sorry, this metaphor has wandered way off topic.

In any case, I played Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 Slim, PS4 Pro, and PS5. I've put five hundred hours into the game and I have read a lot of the spin-off comics, played the tabletop RPG that proceeded it, and have always been a cyberpunk. Hell, I write cyberpunk fiction in general and wrote Daughter of the Cyber Dragons in anticipation of the game. However, it is a game that also disappointed me with its massive bugs, lack of promised features, and incrediby railroaded plot that didn't live up to what could have been.

So I approached Cyberpunk: Edgerunners with trepidation. Anime and cyberpunk have a long and well-documented history with Akira, Ghost in the Shell, Cyber City Oedo 080, and Bubblegum Crisis being some of my favorite of both. I'd also heard good things about Studio Trigger, even though I wasn't familiar with any of their works. Still, I had to ask myself whether or not they'd be able to produce something truly up to snuff. Did they?

For the most part, yes. This is going to be one of those "power metal" series. Which is to say that it's not going to be for everyone but those people that do like it, will love it to an absurd degree. It is an ultra cynical, ultra violent, hyper-stylized series that perfectly encapsulates the Earthly Inferno that is Night City, California. Those who aren't familiar with the games will not be fine but should note that Night City is basically Frank Miller's Sin City except with better technology as well as a (slightly) more respectful attitude toward women.

The premise is David Martinez is a poor kid attending a rich kid's school due to his mother somehow making enough Eddies on the side to send him there. David doesn't want to be there, doesn't care about becoming a corpo, and swiftly earns the everlasting enmity of his peers. His bad attitude doesn't help him when a horrific accident claims the lives of his mother and he is left bankrupt by the medical expenses that weren't enough to save her.

Not to get too deep into the series but David finds crime as a lucrative-seeming alternative to school and ends up joining a group of cyberpunks AKA Edgerunners. They're a semi-friendly group at the best of times but David is deeply in love with a beautiful mercenary-thief named Lucy. Unfortunately, David is addicted to the power he feels getting his body cybernetically upgraded and doesn't care about building a future for himself.

Generally, I really liked the characters with David being as close to a "canon" Street Kid V as can get without actually ruining anyone's internal canon. Well, canon and about ten years younger. Lucy also incorporates elements of Evelyn and cyberpunk female characters that make her an ideal femme fatale for the younger set. The other characters are enjoyable as well with Adam Smasher finally being treated as the terrifying monster he is in lore.

The animation is not remotely "realistic" but it is kinetic and eye-popping when on screen. Night City is beautifully realized and players of the video game will be able to spot numerous locations from the story. It is a story that can be an excellent introduction in the world of Mike Pondsmith if you haven't played the games but will not be for the faint of heart. Also, "wrong city, wrong people" if you're looking for everyone to end up rich as well as happy.
 
Guess I'll have to watch it then. But I have a feeling people are hyping this up a little bit too much. Like as this kind of thing was never done before - and probably better by some other shows. However not in this kind of Cyberpunk setting I guess so that's something unique, which is based on a game and actually set in in the Cyberpunk universe that started it all and many animes used as inspiration and influence. Things have come full circle in that department I guess. So I'll give it that.

If only the game was doing it actually justice.
 
Crni Vuk said:
Guess I'll have to watch it then. But I have a feeling people are hyping this up a little bit too much. Like as this kind of thing was never done before - and probably better by some other shows. However not in this kind of Cyberpunk setting I guess so that's something unique, which is based on a game and actually set in in the Cyberpunk universe that started it all and many animes used as inspiration and influence. Things have come full circle in that department I guess. So I'll give it that.

If only the game was doing it actually justice.
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There's a spectrum of the people complaining about Cyberpunk 2077 the video game with the majority of the complaints being reasonable like Night City not having much interactivity, the bugs, the terrible driving, and not being able to run on older hardware. They spent 2 years dealing with that and with the patches we now have acceptable driving [an absolute must], stability, and most of the bugs fixed.

There's still plenty they could do to make it better but the experience I had is now night and day on my newly acquired PS5.

However, I also know some people who had utterly asinine and bizarre expectations, asking why they couldn't play a corpo from beginning to end and had to be a criminal or the story must have been changed for Keanu Reeves because it wasn't what they wanted--apparently not understanding Cyberpunk 2020 is a game about playing criminals.

But I really recommend the anime.
 
But the lack of depth is an issue in my opinion an this is as much true for the story as it is for the world of night city and the gameplay. It's just the bare bones of a Role Playing Game in my opinion. And it kinda sucks because there is potential in the game and stylistically it's outright awesome. They absolutely nailed the aesthetics of the cyberpunk universe.

But I can see where people are coming from with their expectations of playing corpo. - You're not necessarily playing a criminal though more a mercenary. But 90% of the missions outside of a few are boring. Most of the NPCs you do interact with (including the story) are flat. The quests have very little role playing in them. And the game goes often in very strange directions because the player character is a mish-mash of different motivations. It's like they tried to repeat what they had with Gerald in The Witcher but with more ambiguity. Apparantly the intention they had was to actually have a more open Role Playing experience closer to the PnP setting of Cyberpunk.

I don't know. The game is definetly in a much better and playable state than it was at release. I mean they outright lied to people and shiped not only a "buged" game but an unfinished game. Which becomes really obvious when you compare "early" footage with the finished game :



People had super crazy expectations for the game. But that is the bed the developers made for themself I think because they DID put the bar extremely high in the first place. Hyping the game up like it was the next coming of Jesus Christ. Night City being this world where you can do and be everything you want with tons of ways to "role play". And what they delivered was pretty much just a stat-driven shooter type of game. - And one that I personaly can not enjoy without a mod making the weapons a lot more deadly removing the bullet sponges.
 
This scene helped me to realize that 40K Imperial Titan and Imperial Knight might be more agile than we ever thought and give middle finger to law of square-cube physics. Thanks to Anti-Grav tech and reality screwing inducement Void Shield.



Lots of coolness and fuel for Sci Fi ideas in that anime.
 
The plot of the game is a series of loosely connected set pieces that lack a lot of connecting tissue in between, characters regularly just show up and disappear without fanfare, rhyme or reason, build up or proper closure to their plotlines. Questlines similarly were mediocre at best, with the few that have any choice involved being on the level of Fallout 4 most mediocre quests, specially when it comes to communicating points of choice as well. Keanu Reeves also just serves as a running commentary EXACTLY like the Joker plotline in Arkham Knight, itself a pretty shitty story so it's kinda hilarious they did exactly the same but the entire rest of the story revolves around it exclusively. Night city doesn't feel alive or like anything really is happening and for being a "cyberpunk game about criminals" you mostly just take jobs from fixers who themselves just work with the cops and the corpos and you trying to do any crime outside of cutscenes just quickly results in crappy car chases or glitchy deaths.

None of that happens in Edgerunners, which is really weird because Studio Trigger usually has problems with characterization and giving their stories closure, I am not familiar with their staff but I suspect the story wasn't done by their usual collaborators. There are personal stakes, character exploration, an overarching narrative that doesn't even need to be world changing to be engaging, no magic mind cancer from a USB and no Keanu Reeves Joker, it explores mental decay in a pretty interesting fashion both visually and narratively, no stupid AI bullshit plotline about magic usbs.
Flaws I can point out is the very obvious usage of traced photo mode backgrounds, like it is specially distracting the first few episodes (The Martinez' apartment is just V's apartment whole cloth lol, same with David's personal apartment later on being just the end cutscene apartment) but gets better once they start exploring more original locations but still pops up every now and then. Also the loli character dies so 10/10.
 
She doesn't just die. She gats smashed.

eissa said:
This scene helped me to realize that 40K Imperial Titan and Imperial Knight might be more agile than we ever thought and give middle finger to law of square-cube physics. Thanks to Anti-Grav tech and reality screwing inducement Void Shield.



Lots of coolness and fuel for Sci Fi ideas in that anime.
Click to expand...

The thing that's SERIOUSLY fucked up though, are the Hellbrutes. A 40k Chaos Dreadnaught.

Each Helbrute holds a living Heretic Astartes within its plated metal chest -- a Chaos Space Marine driven over the edge of madness by the never-ending cycle of battle that defines the Long War. A Helbrute is piloted by a warrior who, like his Loyalist Dreadnought counterparts, has suffered extreme bodily damage in combat.

The critically injured Heretic Astartes is then bound into an amniotic sarcophagus at the combat walker's heart, connected by cybernetic nervous system implants and a Mind Impulse Unit to the controls of the war machine.

However, while Loyalist Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes consider it an honour to serve their Chapter for eternity as a Dreadnought, Chaos Space Marines consider such a fate to be little more than a living death -- a torturous, mocking punishment from the Ruinous Powers.

They abhor the thought of such a miserable half-life locked away in a dank and imprisoning cybernetic womb, where they can no longer drink in the sights of battle with their own eyes or feel the kick of a Bolter in their own hands. For Chaos Space Marines, it would be better to die and find final release in the maelstrom of the Warp than to spend eternity locked in a hard, adamantium shell.

As a result, most Helbrutes are completely psychotic, even before the Warp melds the metal of their hated prison with the flesh within. A creeping insanity, mingled with desperation and fury, eats away at them over the long passage of the millennia.

But hold on. It gets better. Or well worse.

With Nurgle the Hellbrutes are actually living beings that mutated their host. Kinda like a parastic state. But where the host is out of controll and yet fully aware.
 
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Crni Vuk said:
He is Adam Smasher in Edge Runner.
But Adam Sandler in Cyberpunk 2077.

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Still Gunther Hermann > Adam Smasher, 'cause Skull guns.



Hmmm....we need to do epic Death Battle about strongest cybernetic characters that ever exist in Sci Fi. Bring some AdMech too.
 
Glad to see that other people hate the loli as well. Just a human chihuahua.

The show and character developments felt very rushed throughtout the show but I still liked a few. Scenes felt mashed together similar to if you were skipping through the show. The best part of it was Maines last stand and the end of the show. The scenes where Smasher activates his sandy after David and then when he re-engages on the elevator were pretty cool.

7/10
It's nice that it's helping the game out.
 
It has it's problems but I still like it overall.



Average Rebecca stan. Can't tell if this guy is trolling or not. I wish CDPR would have stuck to their guns about removing this character. Trigger insisted though.
 
Well from the sales boost they cancelled the rest of the roadmap and announced a sequel instead. Also it comes on the followup to them announcing ending support for the PS4 and Xbone versions, so no.
 
But funnily enough, if there is one setting where I would expect people to actually use such Cyberware (a "child-like" cyborg) then it would be Cyberpunk.
 
She isn't a cyborg tho, she is simply a woman that looks like a child. I don't think Cyberpunk has self aware cyborgs.
 
Walpknut said:
Well from the sales boost they cancelled the rest of the roadmap and announced a sequel instead. Also it comes on the followup to them announcing ending support for the PS4 and Xbone versions, so no.
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I don't see any of that as a bad thing though. Last gen consoles struggled with the game anyways and it'd just be a resource sink away from other stuff. I'd rather there be a sequel in the works than a road map or whatever for the current game.
Crni Vuk said:
But funnily enough, if there is one setting where I would expect people to actually use such Cyberware (a "child-like" cyborg) then it would be Cyberpunk.
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It's the portrayal that's an issue. GiTS also had this and it was fine. This is just a sexualized childs body meant to be fan service.
 
"Last gen consoles" = The console they developed them for lmao. Those "last gen" consoles ran RDD2 a game that does a lot more than CBP2077 and didn't do the anti consumer shit CDPR did. Them getting rewarded for all of that shit is bad thing specially after the road map was outlined as an asurance to the people that bought it that the game would eventually be what they promised...
 
A sequel that it didn't even earned, hilarious. Honestly glad that i didn't even touched the game and didn't get caught by the hype, allowed me to avoid all the bullshit.
 
I'm referring to the sequel not the original game when I say last gen consoles. If anything they could chill on the graphics. It wouldn't kill them. I don't know anything about anti consumer practices, haven't read about it. Not familiar with what was promised either. They've put out a lot of patches and content since launch, that should be enough. If they make the same mistakes with the sequel then that's on them. They may have to just hire a lot more people like how Rockstar does if they're going to do projects of the same size.
 
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