The history of the Cyberpunk 2077, from Cyberpunk 2020 and Cyberpunk Red to get you up to speed on the state of the word, the US and of course Night City in just a few minutes in today’s Cyberpunk 2077 lore video.
The origins of the Cyberpunk World started with the 1994 crash of the world stock market as a result of European and American stock manipulation by the Gang of Four. This led to The Collapse of the United states in 1996 which was the definitive catalyst plunging the world into a high tech and low life.
During the years of The Collapse, life was pretty rough in the States. The homeless on the street in America had skyrocketed to 21 million, with the technological revolution splitting the classes into the wealthy elite & corporate professionals, and the poor unskilled blue collar workers. THe middle class was all but eradicated during this time, setting the foundation for more despair in the 2000s.
Business sectors and outer suburbs in large cities were the benefactors of increased standards, and were clean, free of crime and poverty and controlled and populated by powerful corporations whose emergence was accelerated by the prior years. The central areas were surrounded by ghettos and combat zones filled with the growing booster gangs and violent factions.
In the midwestern states, small towns were abandoned due to drought, gamine and economic chaos. Farms were bought out by Agri Corporations who took control of the means of production. Freeways inevitably became the battlegrounds for gangs that would travel from city to city to loot anything they could.
Megacities which replaced some small towns and suburbs annihilated in the Collapse became the focal points of society and fervent capitalism helped create a landscape where the megacorporations ruled with nation-like authority. They shaped everything around them and bolstered their interests with armies in their search for utter domination. With the overall prevalence of technology, the only leveler between the street and the skyscrapers was this technology. Cyberware, weapons and resourcefulness was utilized by Edgerunners, Cyberpunks and rebels to stand against these megacorporations.
This was the state of the world before the next radical shift, The 4th Corporate War in 2021. While there had been wars between corporations before, nothing quite compared to the mass scale devastation of the 4th corporate war. An initial confrontation between two aquacorps specializing in underwater shipping and tech, devolved into a conflict between Militech an armaments and security force and Arasaka a security services megacorp out of Japan, as they were brought on to aid in the initial conflict.
Both combatants had a military scale equivalent to smaller nations and moved from pockets of conflict between them, to all over the nation, to space and cyberattacks spurring an effective 3rd world war.
On august 20, 2023 unknown forces detonated a pocket nuke on the upper floors of an Arasaka towers complex in Night City, reducing the central city to rubble and killing thousands of people.
While there were sides who blamed both Arasaka and Militech this was the final straw, as President Elizabeth Kress nationalized Militech, and banished Arasaka with the threats of striking the Tokyo headquarters. Other nations swiftly followed the US’s lead.
The war was over, and for Night City, led to the Time of the Red. Named aptly for the red hue left in the Night City skies post fallout from the debris and toxic smog, this was a period of time in the US and Night City’s history which was categorized by an effort to rebuild. The US has lost much of its world superpower status, but Europe and the Far East had not fared much better.The military that still existed for the US was a combined operations group or COG force, and indication of how emaciated their separate forces were.
President Kress was the only thing holding Night City together, the hardest place hit by the war. 20 Years later there is still damage everywhere. Post-war night city is a wreck, but they are determined to rebuild. An alliance known as the Pacifica Confederation, between Washington, Origins, Idaho, North Cal and BC has allowed Night City to survive as an independent “City state”. Night City has become an entry point for the rest of the world who doesn’t want to deal with the US, as a free trade zone. It is dangerous, nearly lawless and a great place to get a big score.
The 4th Corporate war ended corpo domination, and wounded their infrastructure in a multitude of ways from their net presence to their global transportation means. The corporates however are far from out of the picture.
This has made the corporations even more ruthless in their desire to rise back to power, and they are willing to do anything to do so. In this post-war environment, the Cyberpunks and the Edgerunners have bridged the power gap.
Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk.