![\"Poster](\"https:\/\/huangyizhou.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com\/poster\/CEPoster.jpg\")
<\/a><\/br>Poster of Cyberpunk Edgerunner<\/p><\/div>
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Back in November 2020, I was struck by lottery-winning luck and received my Nvidia 3080 card, just one month before the widely anticipated, and later, universally scolded launch of CDPR\u2019s Cyberpunk 2077 game. So instead, I waited a few months into the summer of 2021, before I christened this mighty card with a game worthy of its capacities. Then there came the anime series \u201cCyberpunk Edgerunner\u201d, which shares most visual elements with the CDPR game to game enthusiasts\u2019 furor. Yet after going through the series in just one day, I felt it\u2019s a better recreation of the cyberpunk world, in almost every aspect. <\/p>\n To begin, it being an anime series meant the graphics could be dramatized. It no longer took an out-of-stock video card to enjoy the glamors of Night City, which, from time to time, was a bit too dark in the shadows. Instead, the cyberpunk theme meant simple patches of colors in the anime could have maximum contrast, a great way to reflect the world where the story took place.<\/p>\n In just a few cutscenes in the first episode, the series depicted a world of huge wealth disparity, and through the few scenes in the school, one that\u2019s also deprived of mobility. Looking back at the cyberpunk game, the idea of mobility was mostly absent, if blowing up corporate towers would do any good at reshuffling the social order. I applaud efforts by the anime series to set up a teenage protagonist, and for just a few minutes, allow him the civil but futile rebellion against his fate.<\/p>\n At the end of the first episode, the fate of protagonist David Martinez was sealed by the moment he decided to install the implant. Had he chosen to sell it, the rest of his life was likely destitute and inconsequential, like countless others in the city. The installation made him a target by the corporations, by which death in the last episode is a certainty. While playing CDPR\u2019s game, there was a sense of invincibility that came with it. V\u2019s character had the legendary Johnny Silverhand in it, had access to the best gears and implants on the market (with no cost to sanity), and in the worst case scenario, could always resurrect himself from a previous save. V eventually defeated Adam Smasher, a remarkable triumph against the corporations. Depending on the choices made, V lived to become a Night City legend.
\nBy that time, most of the bugs in the game were fixed, and I could boast, albeit only to the early players, that the program crashed only once during my 60+ hours of play. I enjoyed its combat system, that\u2019s both challenging and fulfilling to someone not that good at video games. The storytelling was nicely done, the amount of choices and the different consequences they led to was both subtle and staggering, especially in the early stages of the game. And after grinding through the myriad of side quests, its end was heroically moving.
\nBut at the same time, I felt the game was, from time to time, overwhelming. While some of the side quests were well-designed, a lot of them, especially the gigs, felt detached to the main storyline. It\u2019s a bit like the ubiquitous question marks from Ubisoft, that more often than not, I felt compelled to clear them, just that the city map didn\u2019t look as clustered. If I had the patience to read through the pages of quest details and the random shards scattered around the places, or decipher the jargon during the often untimely phone calls with fixers, I might empathize more with these quests, but sadly that\u2019s rarely the case. Adding that to the not-that-great<\/del> poorly-optimized graphics, it\u2019s hardly a game that lived up to its disproportionate facade.<\/p>\n
\nFor a 17-year-old, whose teenage life was much under the protective wings of his mother, to the point of being allergic to carbonated drinks, the loss of his mother was monumental to him. He overcame the loss by joining a group of cyberpunks, as if it\u2019s a way to climb up the social order, his mother\u2019s last wish for him. And when the leader of the group, Maine, died in a gunfire as cyberpsychosis, he assumed leadership of that group and tried to better himself with more implants, one of Maine\u2019s wishes for him. And when his girlfriend was abducted, he took on the last, most powerful implant at the edge of sanity, sacrificed his life to save another that he cared about. Through this series, it\u2019s not hard to see a teenager that\u2019s innocent, selfless, and maybe a bit overconfident and lost at the same time. On this matter, I think the series could be more deliberate with David\u2019s character building. The gap between episode 6 and 7, from a sobbing youngster to a trustworthy leader, felt a bit sudden, and his newfound frenzy for implants, baffling. Commentaries explained the latter either as Maine\u2019s late expectation for him, as if that injected purpose into his otherwise aimless life; or that David\u2019s belief in his gifted implant tolerance sustained him through the initial installation of Sandevistan, but that belief could only be upheld by the installation of more implants. Either way, David\u2019s path towards demise was sealed in the plot, but not that evident in the series.<\/p>\n
\nIn the anime, David had his life leashed by the fixers, who in turn were puppets of the powerful corporations. Despite his talent for implants, he was crushed by Adam Smasher and the corporate system he served. This ending was tragic but more heroic. Had David won the duel against Adam Smasher, this victory would likely be attributed to his implant talent, \u201cDeus ex machina\u201d. Instead, we audiences witnessed David\u2019s talent and development through the series, but that\u2019s no match for the omnipotent corporations in the cyberpunk world, and the desolation they imparted on everyone else in the society.<\/p>\n