Adam Smasher
Cyberpunk 2077 is having more than just a “moment” at this point, but a true explosion of interest nearly two years after it was released with a thousand percent increase in players, which is still increasing as we speak. Yes, part of this is due to a sale and a new patch, but the major driving force is the excellent TRIGGER anime on Netflix, which has perfect scores from critics and some of the best audience reviews of any series on the entire streaming service.
What’s interesting about Edgerunners is not that it’s a new window into Night City, but that it actually fundamentally transforms the way you look at the storyline of Cyberpunk 2077 itself. No, main characters V and Johnny are not involved in Edgerunners, but there is one major point of crossover. One that actually transforms Cyberpunk 2077 into a revenge story.
Spoilers follow.
The main storyline of Cyberpunk Edgerunners is that David and his crew find themselves pulled in two directions, stuck as pawns in the corporate war of Militech versus Arasaka. Ultimately, Arasaka wants them all dead, and sends their hitman after them, Adam Smasher, the legendary merc who is more or less 100% just a robot at this point, having replaced his entire body with weaponry.
The end of the show is absolutely tragic. While over the course of the series, other members of the team die, the end fight with Adam versus David ends up killing fan favorite Rebecca, who is crushed to death as Adam leaps down from Arasaka tower, and then David himself who is simply…bested by Smasher, who tears apart his new mecha body and executes him as Falco and Lucy make their escape.
Adam Smasher
This is the main point of crossover, as in Cyberpunk 2077, you encounter Adam Smasher as an Arasaka bodyguard, the main protector of the central villain of the story. Previously, Smasher was simply a roadblock you would have to overcome in one of the game’s final fights. Now? If you’ve seen Edgerunners, you want to utterly destroy him for what he did to your friends, David and Rebecca. Not V’s friends of course, she only ever hears of David in passing, but for the player? There is certainly a new kind of satisfaction in killing Adam Smasher in the game, not to mention you have a new context for just how powerful a merc that V actually becomes by the end of the game.
I’ve seen a lot of Edgerunners viewers get actually excited when you tell them that you can end up fighting Adam Smasher in the game itself, and joking or not, a wave of new memes have arrived about players marching into the game to go destroy Adam after he’s killed “Best Girl” Rebecca and main character David.
I’ve…just never seen anything like this before, and it shows the power of transmedia, and how you can connect two wildly different formats. Usually when we see video game adaptations they don’t really play into the games at all. The Halo show on Paramount Plus, for instance, has zero synergy whatsoever with the live Halo Infinite game. Even a great series like The Witcher probably isn’t going to reshape your perception of the events of The Witcher 3. Cyberpunk Edgerunners is a different animal, something that lives alongside Cyberpunk 2077, and enhances, and changes it in the players’ mind. Truly impressive to see.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
