Monthly Archives: July 2024

Nobody Wants to Die doesn't bring much invention to the table - but while it lacks originality, it has atmosphere, heart and relevance in spades.

Sometimes a game comes along and sucker punches you right in the gut. You can be completely aware of the premise going in, but some element of the setting or the mechanics takes a broader theme or commentary and makes it deeply, intensely personal. Papers, Please got me like that. My job at the time involved identity verification and, while it was nowhere near as life or death as the game, it still made it all too real, too visceral. Dragon Age: Inquisition completely caught me off guard, with NPC reactions to my Qunari Inquisitor feeling way too close to my experiences as a very visible trans woman.

Nobody Wants to Die is a work of dystopian science fiction, so I was expecting some hard hitting moments. I'm hardly the first person to point out that the last few years have felt increasingly like living in a cyberpunk novel - only without the ability to get shiny chrome replacements for my ageing knees. As a disabled person with a veritable laundry list of health conditions forced to rely on the underfunded NHS, the games' medical themes hit way too close to home.

Nobody Wants to Die is set in New York circa 2329, which, in a completely shocking and surprising twist, looks a lot like New York circa 1929, complete with tommy guns and prohibition. The sci-fi angle brings flying cars, 500+ story high apartment blocks and, most importantly, immortality. The discovery of a substance called ichorite allows brains to be encoded and transferred to new bodies, making death little more than an inconvenience, other than on the rare occasions that ichorite is completely destroyed. It's all very Altered Carbon, really.

The really dystopian bit is that there doesn't seem to have been any comparable advancement in cloning or artificially grown bodies. Instead, fresh bodies for the rich and powerful come from regular folks who haven't been able to pay their subscription fees. Yep, in 2369 you no longer own your body, you merely rent it. If you can't keep up, you're arrested, your body is auctioned off to the highest bidder and your ichorite is locked up in the Memory Bank.

Into this hellish vision of the future steps protagonist James Karra, a pro baseball player turned detective, and the cheesiest collection of noir clichs you could possibly imagine. Noir and dystopia go together like hot lead and even hotter dames, but Critical Hit Games have taken it to extremes and it is glorious. It's all done with a nod and a wink that's self-aware, but not self-deprecating, and this commitment to the bit helps you accept the setting on its own terms.

Karra, still adjusting to a new body after a recent on-the-job accident, is predictably pulled into a murder investigation with the aid of remote liaison Sara, who provides the audience for Karra's monologues and musings as he pokes around each crime scene. What follows is a linear series of investigations where you use a selection of tools, most importantly a fancy time-manipulation bracelet, to reconstruct each crime scene, amassing evidence on the way. Afterwards, you'll head back to Karra's apartment and use an evidence board to make connections and figure out the who, what, why and how of each murder.

I say you'll do these things, but it's really Karra and Sara doing it all, while you pilot James around and press some buttons. Investigative video games are hard to get right, but Nobody Wants to Die is so afraid that you'll miss something or get stuck for even a moment that it doesn't just hold your hand, it drags you through the process, giving clear instructions every step of the way. There's a selection wheel for your assorted tools, but you never have to use it, because not only will you be told what to use, but a button prompt will pop up to select the correct device. If you want to flex your detecting muscles, Nobody Wants to Die isn't the place to do it.

That being said, you're not completely devoid of agency. As you make your way through the game, you'll be presented with dialogue options and some genuinely thorny moral conundrums, and frequently have to justify them to Sara or other characters. You can't make drastic changes to Varra's personality, but you do get a good amount of leeway to decide how he reacts to events and consider how he, and you, feels about it all.

Once I'd gotten over my initial disappointment at how guided the investigations were, I really started to appreciate the structure. The step by step process of moving back and forth through the timeline of each crime scene helps to properly comprehend the sequence of events, while at least one scene turns out to be a full-blown shootout. Being able to watch the fully reconstructed firefight play out in slow motion was a real icing on the cake moment. It's a bit like reading a good mystery novel in that you're going to be told what happened, but there's a lot of satisfaction to be gained from figuring it out for yourself before then.

Even more important is how every scene is an opportunity to immerse you in Nobody Wants to Die's beautiful, intriguing world. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at, all dramatic cityscapes, opulent bars and run-down slums, and the slow reveal of precisely how messed up things are veers from humorous to horrifying, often simultaneously. Like when you discover that Karra shares a bathroom with his neighbours, which involves pressing a button on the door to summon it like a lift and having to wait if it's already in use.

Subtitles, crosshair customisation, limited excessive flashing option, FoV slider.

These mundane moments provide a welcome contrast to the grand intrigues of the plot, and it's what makes Nobody Wants to Die so successful. We're shown how the wealthy and the powerful have created this dystopia, how they continue to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, but we also see the utterly banal ways in which this manifests, like terrible processed food and omnipresent acid rain. Karra is the ideal protagonist for this environment, representing the squeezed middle, once a lauded celebrity, now trapped in a broken body, one wrong move away from the Memory Bank.

There's nothing new in Nobody Wants to Die; the story and characters are built from long-established tropes and archetypes, the world constructed from well-worn elements. This doesn't make it any less powerful. Instead the confidence with which it presents itself allows these familiar elements to resonate all the more strongly. Its five to six hour runtime keeps the story tight and makes replaying to see the results of different choices much more manageable. It's not subtle, but the issues Critical Hit Games have highlighted are more pressing now than ever, and the time for subtlety has long passed.

A copy of Nobody Wants to Die was provided for review by Plaion.

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Nobody Wants to Die review - a noiry cyberpunk tale told beautifully - Eurogamer

Behind the wheel of my car in Cyberpunk 2077, the real-world slips away. The troubles weighing on me are pushed to one side, and suddenly all that matters is the road in front me. Sometimes I don't even have a set destination in mind. I just drive; soaking in the sights of the neon-tinted city through my windshield. Then, I relive quests and gigs I've done many times before. Keanu Reeves' abrasive rocker Johnny Silverhand keeps me company all the while, weirdly helping me stave off the loneliness that can so often take hold. For a place dripping with danger, corruption, and violence, it might sound odd to say I find it relaxing to get lost in Night City. But with almost 700 hours behind me in CD Projekt Red's RPG, I've come to the conclusion that V's adventure continues to be unexpectedly comforting.

I've always found solace in repetition. I often rewatch the same shows, reread my favorite books, or replay the same games over and over. It's something I've done for as long as I can remember, and I know I'm far from alone in that. There's a sense of safety that comes from knowing what to expect, and the familiarity that comes from revisiting a virtual world you know so well can also bring a sense of consolation or reprieve. Whether it be an escape from everyday concerns, or as means to help pull you through a particularly hard time, there are certain games I always return to.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I never expected V's action-packed journey would be one such source of comfort. Following its rocky launch, I made the decision to hold out for the Cyberpunk 2077 PS5 upgrade, which eventually landed in early 2022. At that point, many parts of the world were still shut down as a result of the pandemic, and I was still processing two years of isolation. With a more polished Night City to explore, I immediately got sucked in, and as I drove through the streets, I found just the space I needed. When I played it, it felt like I could breathe again, and I couldn't seem to get enough of the driving. Even now, when I can go outside again, I still find myself getting back behind the wheel just to shut off for a while on tough days.

Racing games have always been a major source of stress relief, and I often fall into a flow state when I zip across tracks or drive through the roads of any one of the Forza Horizon entries. I never expected Cyberpunk 2077's open-world would help me decompress in much the same way. On occasion, I'll even boot up the game for that express purpose, shirking all quests to take my time driving from district to district. Listening to The Dirge or Body Heat radio station, nothing beats cruising around at night (particularly when it rains); the city is all aglow with animated advertisements and I feel like I'm transported right into the car.

Any time I get the chance to sit in the passenger seat as the likes of Panam, Judy, Jackie, or Claire take the wheel, I never skip the ride. In fact, I relish any opportunity to sit take in the views from the window - much as I do aboard the metro these days. Just as V sits still for a moment, I sink into the moment on my couch right along with them.

What's perhaps more surprising is that Johnny Silverhand often brings me a sense of companionship that helps me far more than it has any right to. Let's be honest, he's not the most likable fellow to begin with, and your partnership is entirely forced after a shot at the big leagues gone wrong. In fact, the first time I played Cyberpunk 2077, I actively tried to distance myself from him. I outright refused to engage or give him anything he wanted; unknowingly locking off an ending in the process. But the more I played in subsequent runs, the more I opened up to his presence. Eventually, I actually started enjoying his company and as I did some of Silverhands quests through the latter part of the game, it even got me through some particularly lonely episodes in my own life.

That's not to say I care for him half as much as any one of the companions in BioWare's RPGs, and I wouldn't say he's stolen my heart in the same way as, say, Parvati did in The Outer Worlds or Karlach in Baldur's Gate 3. But in a place like Night City, where V is alone much of the time, Silverhand makes everything feel less lonely. He may be selfish and harsh at times, but he's with you through every dangerous mission, gig, and side quest. After all, since he's in your head, there's no getting away from him, but it does mean you'll always have someone with you - for better or worse.

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The more hours I spend in Night City, the more I've come to accept it's a place I want to keep coming back to, if only to get away from everything for a while. I'm sure I'll no doubt continue to find myself behind the wheel in Cyberpunk 2077 anytime I need to kick back and unwind.

For more, see why playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the very first time, is making one of our writers question everything they knew about how an RPG should look and feel.

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After 700 hours, Cyberpunk 2077 has unexpectedly become one of my comfort RPGs - Gamesradar

There is no subgenre I love more than cyberpunk. I've written about it several times. And yet, as much as I love it, it often disappoints me it's filled with ambitious swings, but few true masterpieces. Even the canonical greats, like Blade Runner, tend to be flawed. It wasn't until that film's 25th anniversary in 2007 that we got the Final Cut, the definitive version that you should watch today. And even that best possible version is long on mood and short on compelling plot. It's a movie I deeply love for its masterful production design, moody cinematography, and evocative score, but if you're immune to those aesthetic charms, it doesn't really hang together.

This is the difficulty cyberpunk fiction often runs into. Few subgenres do mood as well, but most storytellers working within its confines fumble the actual story. There are the rare masterpieces, like The Matrix, that manage to bring everything together, but cyberpunk works usually emphasize one quality to the detriment of all others, like a cybernetically enhanced boxer who keeps building up the top-half of his body until he can't stand anymore. This is a genre of massive strengths and obvious weaknesses.

With "The Hunt," Cyberpunk 2077 heads into The Silence of the Lambs territory, and it rules.

However, reviews of Nobody Wants To Die make it sound like a cyberpunk unicorn. The new first-person adventure from independent Polish developer Critical Hit seems to emphasize story while still building a world that consistently wows you. This game looks incredible, is right up my alley, and presumably due to the struggles of marketing indie titles in a saturated market, I hadn't heard about it until today.

Almost as soon as I saw the screenshots I had the retrofuturist walking sim downloading onto my PS5. But it is wild to have a game like this that, in normal circumstances, I would have been eagerly anticipating, setting aside money and time for, seeking out previews on YouTube just suddenly appear. This can happen to anyone, even if you cover the industry for a living. The gaming industry is so diffuse now that if you skip one indie showcase on the packed June schedule, you might not hear about a game that would become your next obsession.

That's a downside of the splintering of E3, but it's a massive endorsement of the independent space as it stands today. Nobody Wants To Die, which I'm going to start playing as soon as I clock out, has reminded me that incredible things are happening in gaming all the time. I often see posts on social media where gamers express nostalgia for the good old days when gaming was more exciting and, yeah, there are trends that I think have made triple-A games more safe and homogenized than they used to be. But the indie scene is doing more than enough to pick up the slack.

I've played a few triple-A games that I've liked this year. I'm putting in the time to get good at XDefiant, slowly playing through Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and having a good, if repetitive time with Rise of the Ronin. But the standouts this year have all been smaller games from smaller teams. There isn't a triple-A game in my current top five for the year. Instead, I have picks like Anger Foot, Crow Country, Celeste 64: Fragments of the Mountain, Fallen Aces, and Harold Halibut. None of those games are from big teams and, in a few cases, I had no idea they were coming out until they were tempting me from a new releases list.

Nobody Wants To Die is just the latest example of this trend. A cool-as-hell indie game with impressive production values and standout art design that has captured my imagination more than anything made by a triple-A team this year.

As Lucy comes to Guilty Gear Strive, it's time to look back on the modern anime classic.

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How Had I Not Heard About Nobody Wants To Die Until Now? - TheGamer

Guilty Gear Strive is now entering its fourth year of content updates, and despite now earning the reptutation as being the "old man" on the block, especially when put side-to-side with more recent releases like Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, and Mortal Kombat 1, Strive is still continuing on just as strong as ever.

Which brings us to Evo 2024, where Arc System Works made perhaps their biggest announcement involving Guilty Gear Strive to date: In addition to two returning characters, Dizzy and Venom, and one brand new character, Unika, they would also be adding their first guest character to the roster: Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners. I got a chance to catch up with Guilty Gear Strive Producer Ken Miyauchi to find out how this surprising collaboration came to be, along with getting some insight regarding Strive's future.

IGN: We learned that Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners is going to be in Strive. Can you talk a little bit about how long this has been in the works and how this collaboration came around?

Ken Miyauchi, Guilty Gear Strive Producer: So yeah, we've tried to find who will be a good guest character for Guilty Gear Strive. And we've been doing this work since 2023, actually. And we've been talking to CD PROJEKT RED because our lead artist, Hidehiko Sakamura, is actually a big fan of The Witchers series. And we've been in talks with CD PROJEKT RED, and then there was several conversation going on and that kind of led to the decision to get Lucy from Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

Now, I'm not opposed to the idea of Lucy, but Lucy's not the main character of Cyberpunk Edgerunners, David is. What made you want to go with Lucy instead of David?

Miyauchi: So I cannot talk much about why because that might spoil what we are trying to do. But there is a reason we decided Lucy. Of course, I personally wanted to see David with Sandevistan, but yeah, so I can't talk about it right now, but I hope people will figure [it] out in the future.

Is there any kind of collaboration happening between you and Studio Trigger who made the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime? Are you working together with them to make Lucy happen in Strive?

Miyauchi: Honestly, we've been in talks with CD PROJEKT RED directly, not through Trigger, but if there could be any kind of collaboration that we [would] be able to do with Trigger, I'd like to do [it]. But that's still not in [the] plan.

Another thing that you guys announced, which is something that you've talked about in the past, is the 3-on-3 mode. Can you talk a little bit about what makes this mode different than something like Dragon Ball FighterZ or a Marvel vs Capcom?

Miyauchi: So you'll eventually see the game mechanics explanation from our website or social post. So what makes the Team of 3 unique compared to the other games is that people will play at the same time, not just you controlling the character and doing the 1v1 in one screen. So I'm just going to explain the first layer of this game mechanic. The team will be formed with one main role and two assist roles, and the two assist roles will be able to select their skills to interact in the battle.

Oh, interesting.

Miyauchi: And of course, during the battle, the assist players can switch with main players or assist player can interact into the battle with their own character in certain condition. Well the game mechanics-wise in the open beta test, I think people will be able to find out in tutorial, there's a Team of 3 tutorial mode in open beta test. So I hope people will figure out how they can utilize the new game mechanics that's exclusive for team of 3.

And then another character that I'm sure people are very excited for is Dizzy. Can you talk a little bit about how Dizzy is going to perform in this iteration of Guilty Gear? And specifically, I saw that she was Queen Dizzy, can you talk a little bit about what the significance of that is?

Miyauchi: I want to explain the details, but I'll keep it secret for now why she's called Queen Dizzy. I had the same question when I first received [the] Queen Dizzy name from Daisuke Ishiwatari. There's a interesting story going on and you if actually see the trailer, you might find some hint of why she's called Queen. But for more details I'd like to say please look forward to actual her arcade story mode.

And then other characters that were announced were Venom and Unika, from the anime. I know they're probably early on development, but is there anything you can tell us about how those characters are going to play in Strive?

Miyauchi: So yeah, Venom, and also Unika, I can't explain the details of how their battle styles are for now. I think Venom is going to be quite similar to how he played in the past series, but sort of like how we've been doing, [it won't be] exactly same as the past series. Because if you want to play his past series style, you can play for example Xrd or XX. At the same time there is certain type of [uniqueness] in what makes Venom, Venom. And we would like to keep that as his gameplay. Regarding Unika, anything that I talk about her is going to spoil the anime series. So I'm going to expect people to watch the anime and then also try to maybe bring up their own theory of how she's going to play in the game play and check her actual game style later.

Did you ever expect Strive to be going this strong for this long? It had a lot of entries at Evo this year.

Miyauchi: Yeah. I'm actually very, very surprised to see that we've been getting [consistently] over 2000 [entrants], throughout all the years of Evo for now. And I'm really, really happy that communities are supporting our game. And it's achieved all because I think the Guilty Gear community is very enthusiastic and they keeps wanting to support the game, and really appreciate it, and I really want to pay back their support with Gear Guilty updates.

Is there anything you can tell us, any kind of hints you can give us about what to expect mechanically from the updates that you're bringing to Season 4?

Miyauchi: In a Developer's Backyard just a month ago that I released, I kind of talked about what's coming in the next few months, which are the Battle Balance updates, the minor version, it's coming out at the end of this month. And also the major one is coming sometime... I don't remember when I said this, but I think it's around October, end of October timing.

But the minor updates is more of mainly targeted to those characters who have less chance of getting access to their potential. So more of, buffs to those characters. And also adjusting on some of the universal mechanics such as the burst meter gain and also the positive bonus kind of thing. And also we have some changes to Roman Canceling mechanics on some of the invincible moves. So those are coming in the next character balance update. And I think this update will sort of shake up some meta in the current competitive fighting scene and I hope people will look forward to it.

Beyond new mechanics, is there any kind of intention of improving some of Strive's more, let's say, base level features? Are we ever going to get frame data in training mode? Are we ever going to get matchmaking that doesn't go through the lobby system? Anything like that in the works?

Miyauchi: So those are updates that I've been always thinking that I want to accomplish, I mean, implement in some point. This is just from the producer perspective, I've been always talking about it with director. And we are always talking about when we'll be able to do this update. And currently we announced the new updates that's coming in next, which is the Team of 3, and the development on Team of 3 is going so hard right now. And once we release that, I think we'll be able to take our hands on those updates. So I'd like players to look forward to them, too.

I apologize for this in advance because I feel like I ask you this every single time that I've talked to you, but insta-kills, fans love them. It's one of the things that I think fans love the most about the Guilty Gear series. What are the chances of them still making their way into Strive? And if it's something that you've thought about, are there any unique challenges involved with implementing insta-kills into Strive?

Miyauchi: So implementing instant kills is something that we would also like to do, and I do agree that it's some, how do I say, very, very unique mechanic that presents Guilty Gear. So we would like to make that happen sometime in the future. I can't tell when will that be possible because developing instant kill actually takes a lot of time. And also the character animations, emotions, which makes instant kills very, very unique and cool, will take a lot of time developing.

We try to make it unique because we animates them by frame, by frame. And if the instant kill motions are long and cool, that means we have to have more time to make sure every pattern looks cool, right? And if we decide to implement instant kill to all characters, that means we have to develop that to all characters, which is almost nearly equal to developing maybe two characters. So we'll try to find a chance. Our team has been expanding still even now, we have our motion designers and animators recruited in our team and our team is getting bigger. So I'm looking, please look forward to future updates if we'll be able to do it.

Final question, I'm asking this of pretty much everyone that I'm talking to here at Evo, but we've just crossed a milestone of Rollback netcode, everyone kind of has rollback netcode now. It's now become standard among fighting games. I think fighting games are a lot better for it. What do you think is the next step for fighting game evolution across the genre?

Miyauchi: That's something that we've been also discussing among the development team. Of course, as you know, Arc System Works has been making fighting games and we'll continue making fighting games. And if we make new fighting games, we'll always discuss about what will be something that we can bring, revolutionize the fighting game, how do I say, industry. And I don't have the answers yet or I can't share any answers for it, but I will be always thinking about it. And I honestly think the community right now, fighting game community right now, is in the best form of the current era. In the past, there was always... I mean, I wish if I would be a player in this fighting game era right now, people are expecting more and more fun things to the fighting game and we'll try to find out what we'll be able to provide to the community.

Mitchell Saltzman is a Senior Producer at IGN. You can find him on Twitter @JurassicRabbit

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Guilty Gear Strive Producer Talks Lucy From Cyberpunk Edgerunners - Evo 2024 - IGN

Highlights

Night City is a vast, neon metropolis. It's a city so vast that even three and a half years later, players are discovering its secrets, new and old, for the first time.

Recently, a player ran into an issue with a hostile vending machine flatlining a citizen, and now, players are discovering that there's a button that can turn the lights out across the whole of Cyberpunk 2077's conurbation.

The magic button, which was initially discovered during the early stages of the game but overlooked by millions of newer players, can be inconspicuously found on the side of a road in Westbrook.

The small red button is found on the side of a yellow box. The box has neon writing above it, with messages that rotate between "Turn out the lights, the party's over", "Baby when the lights go out", and "Press me after dark!"

Upon being pressed, the button appears to switch the streetlights out across the whole of Night City. Reddit user Aggressive_Seacock, who re-discovered the secret, said they "drove around a bit, and where I was, it was off everywhere", when questioned if it hit the whole of the city.

It comes as no surprise that, given how wild Cyberpunk 2077's Night City is, none of the citizens react to the fact that there are suddenly no streetlights. Maybe it's because they're used to chaos, or maybe it's because there are so many luminous signs illuminating the streets that, actually, they just didn't notice.

Cyberpunk 2077, which has now been completed with the release of the Phantom Liberty DLC, has a sequel in the works. Developers CD Projekt Red recently shared advice for anybody looking to get into game development, saying that players should "learn how to mod", just like the creator of the recent "Taxi Work in Night City" mod.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Players Are Just Discovering A Button That Turns Night City's Lights Off - TheGamer

Summary

Thematically, Cyberpunk 2077's Night City can be quite a dark place, with various criminal factions looking to stab each other in the back to gain control, while many are just fighting for any gigs and scraps they can get to survive, no matter how dirty the deed may be. There is one hidden feature that can make the futuristic city even darker; however, this is in a far more literal sense.

As shared to the r/cyberpunkgame Subreddit, there is a switch hidden in plain sight on a sidewalk in Westbrook, with a message that reads "Don't press me after dark!" above it. Of course, this reverse psychology is practically begging those with a curious mind to push the button, and while nothing happens during the day, if they do this any time at night, many of the lights will go out across Night City, plunging entire streets into darkness, with only select buildings' lights illuminating the way.

This hidden feature wasn't in the launch version of Cyberpunk 2077, and was added as part of its 1.5 patch in February 2022 alongside the game's next-gen upgrade, which brought new lighting features and graphics modes.

The nearest fast travel point to the switch is Republic & Vine.

In a game as long and complex as Cyberpunk 2077, it can be frustrating to face unexpected consequences hours after making a small decision.

Once the light switch is activated and Night City is plunged into darkness, the message above it - which remains illuminated - changes. Instead of its previous warning, the text changes to various song lyrics, with the example shown in the video being "Turn out the lights, the party's over" from the Willie Nelson song, The Party's Over.

As spotted by Redditor MockingBirdBox, all of the lyrics the light switch displays are as follows:

The lights don't come back on automatically, giving players a chance to explore the entire city with this newfound ambiance. Fortunately, this is ultimately undone each time Cyberpunk 2077's day and night cycle resets, so players don't need to worry about having to find the switch each time they want to turn the power back on. Still, it's a fun feature to have and can make exploring Night City at night feel even more atmospheric and somewhat intimidating, with more shadows for potential threats to be lurking in.

While its story is certainly engaging, Cyberpunk 2077 is absolutely filled to the brim with hidden features and Easter eggs like this one for those who want to explore Night City. It may not change the game drastically, but they're fun components that reward those who spend more hours going off the beaten path or curiously pushing buttons.

Sources: r/cyberpunkgame//Reddit, MockingBirdBox/Reddit

Based on the 1988 tabletop game, Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person action RPG game set in a dystopian cyber future developed by CD Projekt Red. Players will tackle the streets of Night City as customizable protagonist V, who struggles to keep their memories intact after receiving a strange cybernetic implant that slowly overrides their memories by a deceased celebrity known as Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Player Discovers Secret Button That Changes Night City Completely - Screen Rant

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What The Witcher 4 Can Learn From Cyberpunk 2077 - The Caledonian-Record

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What The Witcher 4 Can Learn From Cyberpunk 2077 - Citizentribune

Bandai Namco has just announced that Lucy from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners will be coming to Guilty Gear Strive as part of a future season pass. This is the most surprising crossover in fighting games since Negan came to Tekken 7, and once again proves that if characters are iconic enough, nothing can stop them from securing a spot on a well-fitting roster.

Lucy has an iconic design with her myriad augmentations and gorgeous eyeliner, alongside her white outfit complemented by a fierce black leotard. She is sexy, daring, and would breezily kick your butt in a fight. And half the cast of Guilty Gear Strive's butts too, apparently. Fans were awfully surprised to see her revealed as a playable fighter at EVO 2024, but the more I think about it, the more I see how Lucy belongs, and the more it speaks to how iconic Edgerunners really is.

The Netflix anime from Studio Trigger arrived in September 2022 and was an instant hit. As a part of Cyberpunk 2077s emerging redemption arc, it encouraged thousands to jump into the flawed RPG after seeing the stories of David Martinez and Lucyna Kushinada unfold. It helped that CD Projekt Red took the time to implement new quests, weapons, and amazing easter eggs that directly referenced the prequel series.

What its ensemble cast gets up to is pretty massive in the grand scheme of things, so it makes sense to retrofit their existence in a game that they wouldnt exist without. But looking back, I remember far more about all the stories from Edgerunners than I do 2077, and for good reason.

It used Night City as a foundation for something entirely unique, while simultaneously trying to flesh out the game world and make it feel lived in. 2077 is a great game, but hardly any of the inhabitants you encounter feel like living creatures. They walk in circles only to provide a false illusion of purpose, while Edgerunners is able to show the main and supporting characters trying to make a living in this dystopian world while uncovering small pockets of joy between all the misery.

Its a harrowing watch, but also undeniably heartfelt and beautiful. Thats why we cant help but rewatch it over and over, or get all choked up when we recall what Davids journey was ultimately leading towards. Phantom Liberty would ape David and Lucys wistful desire to leave their planet behind and find a second home on the Moon too, so it must have left an impression. There is a lot of heart in this universe, and Edgerunners understands that.

One look at Twitter or TikTok following the Edgerunners premiere told me all I needed to know about its cultural longevity. Across its ten episodes, it took its time establishing all the motivations and quirks of its characters, ensuring that big plot twists and tragic events would feel like a twisting knife. I fell in love with the ensemble cast only to end up hurt and betrayed when they changed allegiances in pursuit of profits and survival.

Its also testament to the world CD Projekt Red created in its adaptation of the tabletop title, and how satisfying it is to see it become a place of everyday triumph and struggles, where death is an everyday occurence and the main cast fights to survive on the slimmest of margins, just like the rest of the denizens of Night City. But it doesnt stop them from dreaming big, or fighting back against corporate forces capable of obliterating them in seconds.

Edgerunners legacy can be defined by one song - I Really Want To Stay At Your House by Rosa Walton and Hallie Coggins. The melancholic bop plays in the final episode just as Lucy lands on the Moon and lives out Davids lifelong dream following his death. The two have so many conversations about leaving Night City behind and finding purpose elsewhere, so they can live a normal life away from sex, violence, and corruption.

But deep down, they know its impossible, so they develop this eccentric fantasy of leaving the atmosphere in pursuit of a normal existence. Where you can fall in love with someone and go round their place and fall asleep in their arms, knowing that a gun isnt going to be pressed against your head just as you drift off to sleep. Its a song with a message that craves the mundane, something which Edgerunners craves.

Thats a beautiful thing, and a defining message I will remember years from now even as the show fades from memory. But as you can probably tell, theres no chance of that happening.

Developed by CD Projekt Red, Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person action role-playing game based on the Cyberpunk tabletop RPG. You must choose your path through life in the lawless Night City, while contending with the memories of Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves).

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Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Is Going To Outlive The Game Its Based On - TheGamer

Guilty Gear Strive somewhat-surprised fans late last week when it announced its first crossover character, Lucy from the excellent anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, a show based on CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 (and, consequently, the OG Cyberpunk TTRPG).

I say "somewhat", because crossover characters (or 'guest' fighters) aren't at all uncommon in fighting gamesthey're practically tradition. However, Guilty Gear Strive came out in 2021making it three years without so much as a multiversal cough in its direction, so the sudden debut of Lucy was at least enough to raise my eyebrows and make me say 'huh, neat!'

In an interview with IGN, though, producer Ken Miyauchi has hinted that there may very well be more guest fighters coming: "We've been doing this work since 2023, actually. And we've been talking to CD PROJEKT RED because our lead artist, Hidehiko Sakamura, is actually a big fan of The Witcher series."

Miyauchi then reveals that the conversation drifted from The Witcher to Cyberpunk (reasonable, since I think Lucy jacks into Strive's post-sci fi mythology better). She is however, as the interviewer notes, an interesting pick for a crossover: Sandevistan savant David Martinez is the series' leading man.

"I cannot talk much about why [we chose Lucy], because that might spoil what we are trying to do. But there is a reason we decided Lucy. Of course, I personally wanted to see David with Sandevistan, but yeah, so I can't talk about it right now, but I hope people will figure [it] out in the future."

That seems like a pretty clear-cut moment of 'ah, I've said too much'not being able to talk about Lucy's selection because it might spoil something does imply that something else is in the works, even if it's not necessarily another Edgerunners character.

However, Miyauchi could simply be hinting at Lucy's in-game justification for blaming the beasts since, and I'm about to spoil Cyberpunk: Edgerunners here, she's one of the few surviving members of the original cast. David is donezo, as are most fan-favourite choices that'd be first in line for a guest appearance.

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Either way, the care with which Miyauchi handles the topic is confirmation that something's going on. Strive's continued relevance, either way, adds more fuel to the rip-roaring success that is the fighting game scene this year, according to our own button-mashing aficionado and features producer Mollie Taylor.

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Guilty Gear Strive's producer hints at further Cyberpunk: Edgerunners charactersor a continuation of Lucy's story from the animebefore clamming up to...