Cyberpunk 2077 News, Updates and Trailer

Cyberpunk 2077 has finally given us some more news, with an updated trailer released yesterday at E3, along with the shocking revelation that Keanu Reeves will be featured in the video game as what may be an NPC called Johnny Silverhand. I, along with the rest of the collective internet, took a gasp of ecstatic surprise when Keanu appears out of nowhere at the end of the video game trailer. In case the connection with Keanu Reeves wasn’t already clear, Keanu is perhaps one of the most recurring actors to play lead-role cyberpunk films, such as Johnny Mnemonic and the Matrix franchise of course, which I’ve already covered extensively in my review here. In addition to quickly making it to the front page of Reddit, users are also comparing how Keanu looks in his digitized form in the video game compared to how he looked in the relatively successful single player games Enter the Matrix and Path of Neo (both of which I played extensively, and absolutely loved as a child growing up).

Whoa.

After the new video game footage was displayed at E3, Keanu himself walked out onto the stage to finally announce

the release date of Cyberpunk 2077, which is April 16th, 2020.

It was surreal to see Keanu in the game and then in real life walk out on stage, so I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to be there in the audience in person. One particular attendee expressed our collective adoration when Keanu announced “walking the streets of night city is breathtaking” to which this fan responded “YOU’RE breathtaking!” Without missing a beat, Keanu responds with “no, YOU’RE breathtaking…you’re all breathtaking!” Being the humble and friendly neighborhood Keanu that he is, the moment is also being immortalized on the internet as a classic awww moment.

To see the trailer with Keanu’s dramatic entrance, check it out here.

Pre-Order Cyberpunk 2077

With the announcement of the release date, Steam made Cyberpunk 2077 available for pre-order for $59.99, and apparently it’s already reaching #1 in sales on Steam. And it won’t even be available for another 10 months.

It’s hard to emphasize how much hype there is for this video game since it was announced way back in 2012. Ever since the success of The Witcher 3, there has been so much silence on when this game would come out, complete with rumor mills and countless articles about any little bit of information the internet could gather whenever a member of the CD Projekt Red team would change. The Hype Train got so loud that simply looking for any news on Cyberpunk media online, I had to put “-2077” in the google search bar because otherwise I would only see news related to the video game.

So what do we know so far about Cyberpunk 2077?

Well, although it has FPS elements, it’s first and foremost an RPG with a strong narrative component. The gameplay trailer released last year showed off a lot of the game’s systems, including character progression, combat, and how decision trees affect your gaming experience. There’s both a collector’s edition and standard edition available for pre-order, and it will be available on what looks like most systems (next-gen Xbox and Playstation, Steam, Epic, GOG, etc.)

The main character is called V, and can be visually with hair, tattoos, and clothing, including being male or female, each variant of which has its own voice actor of course. However, it doesn’t look like deep facial feature sliders will be an option. You can also choose your stats, similar to Fallout, apparently.

The Setting of Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in Night City, a fictional metropolis in Northern California named after its founder Richard Night. It features six districts with no loading screens between them. You can drive to get around in different vehicles using first or third person. The city is part of a world where the US suffered an extreme socioeconomic collapse that affected the rest of the planet by throwing it into chaos. The US government can only maintain a weak sense of order through the help of mega-corporations.

Its source material comes from a tabletop game written by Mike Pondsmith called Cyberpunk 2020. The game has been through three iterations, with the first two being Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 2020. Within these games, we can both take a deep dive into the lore and history, but also into the classes that we can expect.’

Cyberpunk 2020

Cyberpunk 2020 has 9 different distinct classes: Cop, Corporate, Fixer, Media, Netrunner, Nomad, Solo, Techie, and Rockerboy. The latter has one famous kind of Rockerboy: Johnny Silverhand. As a Rockerboy, Silverhand is a bard who uses his music to convey his message of anti-capitalism as a way of acting as the social conscience of the masses. Part Rebel, part street-poet, he’s charisma incarnate who hearten the oppressed and resist authority using their music and poetry. One representative said they were “beyond excited” for Reeves to take on the role. “As a musician and someone who believes in making an impact in the word, someone who has known fame and the way it can lift and cut, its clear Mr. Reeves can understand Johnny in a way few people can.”

To learn more about all the lore of the Cyberpunk setting and history, you can read up about it here.