Cyberpunk Live Action

 I knew this was gonna happen

Woah, another Cyberpunk blog? I must be obsessed or something! (This has to be my last one for a while else people gonna start thinking I've developed something personal with this game or something...) So there was a time when an incredibly questionable belief was making it's way around the world. A belief that video games adaptations are... possible. God it makes me shudder to even utter those words. All it took was one success amidst the sea of failures to spark money signs in the eyes of publishers the world over, and now we can no longer hide from the coming wave of Cyberpunk here to try and keep the spark alive in our hearts between now and the inevitable Cyberpunk 207- whatever. And after The Last of Us and One Piece to some degree, I guess we're going to have to become more used to seeing game franchises get their dues on the silver screen. At least they're starting with the one's that actually have some legs, but just wait until Ubisoft start hearing word of profits. >Shudder<.

I said the moment that The Last of Us started winning acclaim that it was going to change things, possibly for the worse. I kind of liked the perception of 'video game-to- film' adaptations being this unassailable mountain to climb because it offered itself up as a challenge for only the most dedicated to step up and try their hand making something truly special. But that trick was only ever going to work once. And boy did we have a rough couple of goes before Jackpot! Halo got the action right, for what little there was, but everything else was dreamt up in the mind of a starved Sci-Fi fanaticist who never got the go ahead to make their own show and thus forced their dreams upon this existing IP, and Resident Evil was just an attempt to get a easy CW show on the burner.

But it's not as though even 'The Last of Us' was a flawless adaptation. I'm pretty sure if you ask most (not brain broken) people they'll tell you that the best episode, the one which stuck with them for the longest, was the one which didn't even adapt anything that happened in the game itself. And it was a fantastic episode, don't get me wrong! One utterly filled to the brim with emotional and elegance and class, but it also wasn't something that the games offered the show, that was all the showrunner's brilliance. Mostly I think the thing people came away from the show with was confusion over the last episode, because this not being a game the show kind of struggled to show Joel's truly violently merciless side the way the game did. In a way the game was kind of geared towards an already gaming-familiar audience for that story beat, and on a TV audience is slight bounced off. Not a failure, per se, but not an all around success.

Still, we've probably got a buffer between now and the birth of this live action Cyberpunk adaptation to get a bit more used to the concept with the coming of the Fallout show. (Presumably at least, none of these shows have release dates and I seem to remember One Piece Netflix being in some form of production for about 8 years or something stupid.) The Fallout TV show seems like an easy lay-up, the series is big enough to tell any sort of story so there's no need to get wrapped up telling the story of any one game. However Fallout is increadibly notorious for somehow managing to retcon huge swathes of Lore with every entry in ways that don't even make sense a lot of the time, so I'm curious to see how that might manifest for a totally fresh audience's first look on the project. (Maybe the Brotherhood of Steel will be turned into a 'Team America' style bunch of day-saving do gooders again!)

What we have isn't quite an 'adaptation' as that concept is traditionally known- because retelling the events of the Cyberpunk game, or pretty much any game which offers the player freedom over RPG direction, is a direct assassination upon the source material. That would be like creating a choice based RPG with selectable gender and then telling everyone that only one of those genders and a certain path of choices is canon to the larger material- thank you very much, worst RPG ever made Assassin's Creed Odyssey- please accept your reward! Cyberpunk's show will be original, additive to the source material, and provide greater context into the the various corners of the mythos. Not unlike another show which recently did the rounds...

Edgerunners was robbed of it's Game Award simply by the existence of Arcane, but even then it has gone down as a simply legendary piece of content that brought hearts back to the beleaguered Cyberpunk fandom in droves. A spectacular Anime that offered us a more nuanced glimpse into the vast disparity and chaos of living in the world of Cyberpunk, as well as introducing us to one of the most beloved characters in the fiction and stole the hearts of millions with that finale. It was a banger of a show and whatever comes of this new 'adaptation' is going to end up slamming head-first into the expectation wall unless it's an absolute masterpiece. I don't even think an 'decently above average' show like The Last of Us will cut it- it'll have to be actual brilliance to not be treated to upturned noses for it's mere existence.

What really gets me is the thought of just how expensive a Cyberpunk TV show, or movie, would inevitably be- especially in a world as augmented as 2077's. Mechanised body horror is kind of the normal state of being for most people in the Cyberpunk world, from people crossing the street with their shiny chrome skin plates or spiky subdermal arm thorns to that one merchant from Phantom Liberty lacking the entire bottom half of his face in favour of a mechanical voice box. And an elbow flame thrower. Have to put props on the flamethrower. Getting all of that in a physical set sounds like a resounding technical nightmare, and a budgeting one too, and that's before we get to laying out the city. Thank god Night City at least resembles LA- they can save costs on filming locations at the very least. Still- it's going to have to be smash hit to recoup those expenditures.

Which leaves us with the question we always ask whenever one of these shows afflicts our screens- What now? What's next? Who's up for the chopping block next? Personally I am shocked we haven't heard hide nor hair of an Assassin's Creed series and I can only assume that because Ubisoft are keeping it uncharacteristic tight-lipped for once in their lives; they're way too opportunistic not to grab at the bag like that. Otherwise? We're supposed to be getting a Hogwarts Legacy themed show at some point... but if you ask me the world is ready for a bonkers and action packed adaptation of a Yakuza story. Let the insanity back in the real world just one more time! Elsewise? I am shocked there's never been an fresh Persona story told in a show. There's so much scope for one given the sorts of stories that the franchise tells. If we're in the video game adaptation age I say we make the most of it and get the shows that rock before we enter the 'MCU' age of diminishing returns.