Over the week-end, I played a one-shot of the table-top role-playing game Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2024), a spin-off of Cyberpunk: RED (2020). This in turn motivated me to watch the eponymous one-season anime released in 2022. While the tie-ins between the video game Cyberpunk: 2077 (2020), the anime and the TTRPG are numerous, it reminded me of a specific detail in the video game:
You can trigger optional encounters with "cyberpsychos", people initially described as having lost their humanity by replacing too much of their own body with cybernetic implants and entered a non-recoverable state of violent rage. Each encounter plays like a boss fight against a unique strong opponent, often in an enclosed area. Upon defeating the cyberpsycho, you can search the environment for clues at what triggered the cyberpsychosis event you put an end to.
And invariably, it turns out they got wronged or exploited in egregious ways, which ultimately caused the outburst of violence. As if the cruel society they lived in was more inhuman than anything they did to their own body...
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