Many of us love Cyberpunk 2077 for the amazing Action Role Playing Game it is with its hyper-realistic graphics and breathtaking story. But. It was not always this gorgeous-looking video game we know it to be today. And, no, we are not talking about the rocky launch in 2020 riddled with bugs. Believe it or not, Cyberpunk actually had its start as a tabletop RPG back in 1988.
The Term Cyberpunk first appeared in a novel by Bruce Bethke in 1983 as the title of that novel and was later popularized by William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer and the Blade Runner movie. It was around this time when Mike Pondsmith, an aspiring board games designer, released the first official Cyberpunk Game.
Cyberpunk Complete Universe in Order
Here we talk about all the games connected to Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk Universe which Cyberpunk 2077 is a part of. We will not be discussing games like Deus Ex and Ghost Runner, although these games definitely fall under the category of the Cyberpunk Genre, they are in no way connected to Cyberpunk 2077.
We have laid these Cyberpunk games out in chronological order and will briefly go over the settings and narrative content of each of these entries.
Cyberpunk: The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future
As stated earlier, the first Cyberpunk game was in fact a Tabletop RPG titled Cyberpunk: The Roleplaying Game of the Dark Future. It was released in 1988 and the “futuristic” setting was supposedly the year 2013. Hence the game was often referred to as Cyberpunk 2013. This game introduced the characters like Johnny Silverhand and Morgan Blackhand taking Night City by storm.
Cyberpunk 2013 came boxed with 3 booklets with information about the game, a pair of dice, and several character sheets. The Three books include:
- Friday Night Firefight – Details how various combat encounters work.
- View from the Edge – Essentially the Character Creator screen with choices regarding which role you would want to play. Players could choose from the classes such as Rockerboy, Solo, Netrunner, Techie, Media, Cop, Corporate, Fixers and Nomads.
- Welcome to Night City – This book contained information about the world setting the game takes place in. This is also where the iconic character of Johnny Silverhand made his first appearance.
Cyberpunk 2020
The second edition to the TTPRG was released in 1990. This time it was set in the year 2020 and was often referred to as Cyberpunk 2020. The boxed set for Cyberpunk 2020 included the updated rulebook a screamsheet booklet.
This was followed by several sourcebooks and Adventure books. These spin-offs took the world of Cyberpunk to the start of the Fourth Corporate War.
Several Sourcebooks were released for Cyberpunk 2020 including the mini-series of adventurebooks like Firestorm and CyberGeneration. This is where the Cyberpunk lore was at its thickest.
Cyberpunk V3.0 (non-canon)
Cyberpunk V3.0 was the third edition of the pen-and-paper RPG released by Mike Pondsmith. This was the first time the setting of Cyberpunk was so dramatically changed and altcults were introduced. Another major change was the use of action figures instead of traditional art books. Most of the fans were unhappy and confused with all these changes to gameplay and the setting and eventually the game was removed from the canon. However, some elements introduced in V3.0 were carried over to the next canon installation – Cyberpunk RED.
Cyberpunk RED
Cyberpunk Red was released in November 2020, just one month before the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. It was meant to bridge the time jump between 2020 and 2077. Cyberpunk Red made significant changes to the core ruleset of the game including replacing the Health Track with Hit Points. Other changes mainly included improvements to the weapons, Lifepath Choices and surprisingly Netrunning.
Cyberpunk Red paved the way for a lot of stories and elements we see in Cyberpunk 2077. It was a bold jump from a tabletop RPG to a fully immersive 3D-action RPG with incredible graphics. And we are lucky to have been here to witness it.
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020 release)
At long last 2020 came and Cyberpunk 2077 was released in the last month of 2020. Which is fitting as the setting or major part of the Cyberpunk universe was the year 2020. Unfortunately, this meant that the devs had to rush the development to meet this deadline and even though Cyberpunk 2077 had been in development for almost 7 years, it was still released as an unpolished product. This rushed release of Cyberpunk disappointed many fans who had been eagerly awaiting this game for years only to be met with a broken mess with dozens of game-breaking bugs.
It turned out 2020 was just not the year for Cyberpunk. Players had given up on the series due to its unplayability and CDPR, despite being hailed for their work on Witcher 3, had lost a lot of cred points.
Cyberpunk 1.6 and Edgerunners
After the overwhelmingly negative feedback at launch from critics and gamers all over the world, most developers would call it quits and move on to some other project. But not CDPR, they had put in blood and sweat in the development of this game and it showed in the way they refused to give up on it. CDPR kept releasing patches and updates to fix all the bugs and issues Cyberpunk 2077 was suffering from. The First major update came following the release of Cyberpunk Edgerunners Anime by Netflix.
Chronologically Edgerunners served as a prequel to Cyberpunk 2077 game. The anime tells the story of David Martinez, a high school dropout from Santo Domingo who got his hands on a military-grade Sandevistan and the rest is history. The anime won the hearts of many anime fans with its breathtakingly beautiful neon-lit landscapes and dark undertones.
All the major issues had been fixed with the release of patch 1.6 and the hype created by the Edgerunners anime caused the Cyberpunk player count to surge 1 year after its release. Cyberpunk had just made the greatest comeback in the history of videogames but CDPR were not done just yet.
Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty
The first and only expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 was announced on September 6th 2022 and released a year later in September of 2023. Before the release of Phantom Liberty, CDPR had already redeemed themselves with patch 1.6 but they still went above and beyond with the Phantom Liberty DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, adding 16 new main missions, 3 endings to the DLC along with a bunch of side jobs and gigs.
The patch 2.0 also brought a lot of quality-of-life changes to the base game as well as a ton of new items like weapons and cyberware. A lot of core features of the game were completely overhauled like the perks system and the way certain attributes functioned.
Phantom Liberty was released to almost completely positive reviews from the critics and the fans fell head over heels for the new characters and the spy-thriller story this DLC featured. With all the story, missions, side jobs, and the amount of time you could stay immersed in it, This DLC was more fleshed-out than many AAA games as a whole today.
Upcoming Projects
Having proven their salt, CDPR is nowhere near done with this universe yet. Work has already begun on the next big Cyberpunk Game called Project Orion. This will most likely be a sequel with a completely different protagonist. There is no word what year will it be set in however, there are several exciting possibilities for the new game. With Silverhand and Smasher out of the picture, they can bring back several iconic characters like Morgan Blackhand or Ripperjack.
Apart from the Video game, there is confirmation of a Live-Action adaptation of the Cyberpunk universe as either a film or a series. We might also be getting another anime by Studio Trigger to bring us more Edgerunner Stories. Needless to say, this is only the start of the Cyberpunk Franchise and it will only get bigger and better from here on, so stick around.
