Robots Radio, Games, Lore, Stories, Community, Just Press Play. Welcome to the Cyberpunk Lorecast, where we brave scanning the net to find all the deep history and lore of Cyberpunk. I'm Toasty, a fixer that's new to Night City with a desire to jump into the details of the greedy setting. And I'm Genesis, an old school media tech with a love of character deep dives.
Together, we will bring you the foundations of the past, the state of Night City today, and the news of the future. We've got incoming. What's Delta? Welcome back, tunes to another episode of the Cyberpunk Lorecast.
I'm your girl, Genesis, and with me, as always, is Toasty. Hello. Hello. I'm excited because in less than 24 hours, you will actually be with me physically in this real world, and that makes me very, very excited.
I punched my microphone. I'm so excited. That's what we find out that I'm just an ingrant. Oh, no!
I'm not really sure these are just like, you just show up and it's just like you just get delivered like an envelope with a data sharding. It's just me. Well, then the flight was way overpaid for then because you could have just shipped yourself in the mail that way. They said it would take too long.
Hey, look, expedited shipping for stuff like this, you know, fragile material, this thing. It's actually more expensive than playing sometimes. Okay. All right.
Well, next week I will be able to announce whether or not Toasty is in fact a real human or if just an ingram that is pretty well done because I've never seen you physically glitched before. Mentally, it happens every once in a while. This is my, this is my, what's, what is it called an altered carbon sleeve? Oh, you are a Gemini.
You could be wearing the Gemini sleeve. Oh, we are starting to unravel it all. There's extensive toasty, Lauren. I can't tell you anything.
Remember, I am, I'm Brad. So that's right. I heard on the Witcher Lorecast that you decided you were Chibata. You're Chibata.
I'm sorry. Look, we, somebody asked the question and I proceeded to do like an hour of research in order to find an answer. As soon as you said that, I went, you can beat Chibata on the Witcher Lorecast, but on Cyberpunk, I think you're Chumbata. Well, that's been the Cyberpunk Lorecast.
Thanks for listening. That was a, that was a dead joke. That was, that was, that was a rough. Is Tom still on this podcast?
I didn't realize. Tom is not still on this podcast. And I guess it's been a great 100 episodes with toasty and Jen, but it was that, that joke that, that it, I'm sorry. You know, you know, it's fine.
That's probably a proper segue into what we're going to be talking about tonight, right? It is. And that's kind of why we're playing it loose and fast tonight. This is toasty and I's 100th recording episode of Cyberpunk together.
We've recorded several other podcast episodes together. So I don't know exactly what our count is if we were to total them all up together, but it's 100 of the Cyberpunk. I don't know. I was also about to say like, I don't know what the exact number is for me in Turbo, but obviously he and I have been patrons or were patrons on this for a long time beforehand.
So since 20, what does Cyberpunk come out 2020? Well, but the numbers are pretty even now because the originals with Tom and then Tom and Captain Logan were 106 episodes and then we joined on episode 107. And now this is episode 207. Yeah.
I've been here a long time. You have been. And Turbo's been here just one month longer. So we decided tonight that we're going to kind of talk about the origin of it, our origins with the Cyberpunk universe and some cool things that we've picked up along the way, fun lore facts or stuff that really stuck out that we've learned either listening to or talking about on this podcast.
Who wants to go first? Also, we have our patrons with us. It's Turbo tonight. It's only Turbo, but it's only me here.
I am inevitable. I am inevitable. Lack of anunciation on that was suck. I'm inevitable.
Someone has short, short-circed Turbo. Sorry. We need to get him fixed. You know, we haven't seen Turbo in real life either yet.
So maybe he's the ungram. I don't want to be fixed. I wouldn't be me anymore. You're not broken.
You're my left. How did you? It's a boy's in my mouth anyways. Maybe we should just do the rest of Turbo.
The roasting of Cyberpunk tonight. That's what we're here for. It's a 7vf. Anyways, yes, Turbo.
Yeah, but no. Oh. No. Oh, all the things we've done through the years.
Looking back, if you're old. You're the baby. You're the youngest out of all of us. I think, are you not only me?
I just turned 32. It's older than me. I'm the baby here. No, no, no.
I have an Italian with child, but no, no. I just turned 32. I just have my birthday on the 18th. You were not doing the work.
I was wondering, is off the rails and exactly how I would want it to be? What is the nature of this podcast? But Turbo, what made you like Cyberpunk? Were you a...
Go for it. I can remember the first time I heard about... Well, I didn't heard about the name of the first time, but the first time I interacted with Cyberpunk was when I was little, some of my... I forgive if it was a cousin, which cousin it was, a heavy cousin, because I had some of my siblings, but they were playing a tabletop with their friends.
I knew what Dudsey's guys was, and I was to decide, I'm like, what are you doing? I saw a sheet where they had drawn their own character. I was like, that looks so cool. I like the Terminator.
I was like, no, it was like, no, it's a network. I'm like, what? On the side, I'm like, can I play? I just remember coming up with all these characters where it's...
You can't do it, because you don't know the rules. You just try to make the most cool character you can think of. I remember eventually they just let me play. I didn't play by the rules.
I probably broke their game because my character was so weird. That's the first time I remember playing with Cyberpunk, because me coming along just like, Dad, it's me. Can I make this and this and this and eventually they'd talk to me down for making probably an out of Smashr where it breaks the game? Okay, that's really cool.
I didn't know that you played the TTRPG as a kid. That's actually really fun. Yeah, I probably didn't play by the rules. I just know my first person I literally made was like, I talked to a big fat dude that was...
I don't even remember what he had. I just remember I was a big fat dude. I was kind of basing him off that two-inch-toe guy. Or something that was like a person inside his belly.
Kang? Kang, thank you. I don't know all their names. Okay.
Okay. Well, that's kind of actually similar to my story. I wasn't a kid. I mean, I was a teenager when I first played the tabletop.
And I... It was the first time that my now husband was the game master for an RPG that I was playing. I think we had played in stuff together before, but it was the first time that he was reffing a game. And so I remember it.
It was the first character that I gave the moniker of Genesis to. And she was on the outside appearance. She was a solo. But in reality, she was a media who was there spying for Arasaka trying to collect information about this...
about this group of Edrunners who were trying to steal from Arasaka. And so I was given this secret mission to try and collect intel and everything. And then by the end of the campaign, my crew had helped me to realize Arasaka is a bunch of dickheads. And that I would then start using my cyberware, the implanted cameras, the recording devices, all these things that Arasaka knew that I had, they paid for it.
But I would use it to record Arasaka to report their movements back to my crew instead. So I became a double agent against Arasaka. And that would have been the original, I think we... I think 2020 might have just come out and that's why we started playing it.
Because this would have been early to mid-2000s. So that's why in our intro, I say that I'm Genesis an old school media tech. Because that's who I originally was. Genesis has been used on a bunch of different characters since then and has just been the name that I've used online for a really long time ever since then.
So see, what about you? What role did I pick? I can't remember. Oh wait, no man.
Of course you're no man. And I was like, wait a minute, what? It confuses me because the game makes no man a life path and not like it makes it not think of it being a role. And I'm like, wait, it is a role.
It's confusing. You know, mine, obviously I didn't start with the tabletop like YouTube. I started with the video game and I remember, this is like a dive back into, I guess, still in high school maybe. I think High School toasty was a big fan of this YouTube channel that I guess is gonna get a freaking reach out out.
Not that it matters because they're barely, they're probably bigger than us. But fudge them up it. Yeah, it's a weird S name. And all they, like their main thing is that they did like Skyrim builds.
Like they would make different characters and do different things on Skyrim. Turbo. I did do that. But they started talking about this game they were really excited for, which was Cyberpunk 2077.
And I was like, well, I mean, I obviously fuck with and vibe with these guys pretty heavily. So I was like, well, I guess I got to look out for this game. And they would do videos talking about like the things they were excited for when the game came out and like, you know, how they were going to do like build videos and stuff whenever it did and all this stuff. And so it kind of put cyberpunk on my radar, but it was kind of just like a passive thing for a while until a lot of like the trailer started coming out and we started getting closer whenever 2020 rolled around.
And then I mean, I played, I started playing 2077 when it came out. Obviously, I mean, I think turbo was on the first Patreon chat like after the game came out, but I followed like the next month or turbo might have even been on it before the game came out. I can't remember because I proceeded. I was like, wow, this game is really fucking cool.
I wonder like how much information there is on it and then proceeded to binge this entire podcast within like a week and a half, probably. Yeah, no, for real. I was it was it was very quick, which granted those early episodes were really short. So I wasn't like I wasn't wasting away my life.
But whatever you work like eight, eight and a half hour shifts or you're, you know, allowed, well, I guess I wasn't allowed to have headphones in, but I did anyways and just listen to podcasts. So and then obviously here I am. You all have anyone who listens to this podcast has known me since that moment that I got into it. So like y'all know my story, you know, since then and where I've, you know, gotten as a big fan of this, this series, the genre wise, I mean, I've learned most everything I've learned about the genre has pretty much been since then, you know, exposed to movies that I hadn't seen before and all sorts of things.
So you know, that's really kind of where it started was right when the game came out in 2020. I was a late adopter to the video game. It took me a while to get into it because my husband played it first. He definitely was like day one all there for it.
And but he was like, it's still really glitchy. And I don't know if you're going to fully enjoy the game yet. So it probably took me another year, if not two, to actually play the game. I watched Twitch streams of it.
I watched, you know, I watched him play it for a little bit. But I didn't have a whole lot of knowledge going into the game once I finally decided to play it. In fact, it was Utah-stee who also was like, nah, Jen, I don't know if you'd like this game right now. And so I decided not to play it for a while.
I mean, yeah, I think at the time it was very like most people were playing it on console as far as we're trying to anyways. And just at the time, like the consoles just couldn't run it. It was, I still stand by the opinion that they should have just released it on next-gen consoles only. I know they were trying to appeal to the mass like, you know, fan base, but you know, it just, the Xbox One and PS4, PS4, we, we, we, we, we, we, we just couldn't run it.
And like most people don't have like, you know, PCs with the specs able to like run stuff like that. I mean, my PC barely managed a great buy. I mean, I play on like medium graphics settings and stuff whenever I'm doing cyberpunk, which is, I mean, with how great the game looks like medium is still plenty. I think I can technically run it on high, but it's just for better performance wise mediums, just kind of the go-to there.
Yeah, most people don't have like PCs that are built for stuff like that, you know, and I mind, like, I mean, mine's very middle road. Like I have, I have a decent specs, nothing fancy in mind. So, but yeah, I mean, it's gotten definitely better. It's taking the time to make it better.
Oh, sure. I do have a secondary question of what we talked about how we started and how we've gotten, you know, to this moment in the podcasting and everything like that. But I kind of want to know some fun facts or lore bits that you've picked up along the way, but we will do that right after the mid-break. Welcome to the middle of the show where we talk about the show and not the lore of Cyberpunk.
Our listeners, our fans, y'all are the greatest. I appreciate every single one of you. Thank you for all that you do to support the show. You are continuously leaving Spotify comments.
We are seeing the ratings on Spotify and we are seeing the Patreons. We need to welcome in our newest patron Bones. Welcome in your Night City Mark. Very much appreciated.
And on Spotify, we got a new comment on the last episode, Arasaka, here to serve episode 206 from Jacobin. You guys are absolutely hilarious. Love the content, especially the history episodes. As a history PhD candidate, let me say you guys do a great job.
In academic history, there is something called collective memory. It's the general idea that the way history is remembered by the general public may not be how something actually happened. Do you think there is an event, era, or person in the history of Cyberpunk in the history of the Cyberpunk world that is misremembered or perhaps misrepresented? Love the pod, Jake.
I mean, I have to thank for a second to give an actual, like, in-depth answer to that question. But I mean, look at probably one of the most historic moments in Cyberpunk as we know it. The bombing of our soccer tower. That is misremembered because most people don't know that Johnny Silverhand did it.
That Militech was behind it. I guess there's rumors. Like, it's spread. A lot of people believe that Militech was the one that did it, but a lot of people don't know that Johnny was specifically the one that did it.
I mean, I even heard today I was listening to something like a Cyberpunk actual player, whatever. And they were like, they referred to, if you believe the stories in reference to Johnny setting the bombs. Yeah, I mean, that whole thing is misremembered. So, and specifically, there is actually a big Cyberpunk story beat about this topic in particular, because the data crash of 99 caused everything to go haywire.
There are now real true archive footage of Richard Nixon getting up on the Presidential podium, and moaning the entire audience during one of his Presidential speeches. That didn't happen. real true archive footage of President Richard Nixon getting up on the presidential podium and moaning the entire audience during one of his presidential speeches. Hmm.
That didn't happen at all, ever, not in real world history and not in cyberpunk history. But the fact is, is that it is a part of cyberpunk lore, because that is what the data crash did. It falsified information throughout the entire network. So there's a lot of deleted other information.
And like, I mean, could that then compound it with just the sheer amount of like propaganda that is a part of cyberpunk as well? Like, I mean, it's probably a miracle that we have anything that we can say concretely is true in cyberpunk. Agreed. I bet David is Mr.
Oh, yeah, for sure. I guess at least Falco and Lucy made it out to tell the story. So maybe at least there's that. But I imagine that our socket did a lot to, to, to, to sweep that under the rug or to display it as something different than what it was.
Um, we don't have to, I don't have to go back and like check and see if there's any like actual like data shards or anything in games that were like where our socket addresses it, you know, but I'm sure that whole thing is like misconstrued. Well, yeah. And then even the way that Lucy would remember her time with David is going to be colored by her own interpretation of events and isn't going to be the way that David saw things at all. So we only know the truth of it because we thought as third person, but even that we don't know.
Oh, this is a great question. But other than that, I don't think that I have anything else to add to the middle of the show so we can get right back into it unless you got something. All right. We are back in it.
So kind of wanted to get this whole idea of like the fun facts or lore that we've learned along the way came to my mind because my friends are amazing and they crowdfunded to get me the Luca designs leather jacket replica of the samurai jacket. So the one that V and Johnny were in game, it is fully detailed decked out replica jacket. It looks amazing. I love it so much.
And I love all of you who were a part of that. Thank you. But on it, and I never really picked this up in game, but on the lapel, it says crystal jock. And I was like, I don't even know what a crystal jock is.
And so I had to look it up today. And what it is, it's the old school hackers or what they call like what cyberpunk considers old school hackers. Um, reading directly from the wiki here, it says crystal jocks are old school hackers in the hardwired source book universe. They use viruses and apps instead of virtual reality interfaces.
So you're a hacker, but not necessarily a net runner. And so that's something cool that I learned just today about cyberpunk. Turbo, you got anything cool that you've learned about cyberpunk that you had no idea about? Most of any of the lore I learned about from this podcast.
So when time came out and stuff, because I just remember being a cool game memory wise. And then the first thing I saw that, like, I actually, I think the thing I remember is that YouTube video that came out when the game first even was talked about with the cyber cycle and the clock. I think that's the first thing I remember that is, I guess it's lore because it's lore in the cyberpunk game now. Because she shows up in it.
So I guess that's the first thing that the low icon remember is when that video first showed up and stuff, because I don't remember most of the lore from the games, because I only played a couple of times in the game. I didn't understand anything when it was less, you know, lore back then, I just remember playing eventually that fact that one character I said, the king one that's like the one I've ever been such played. And it was mostly just since I didn't know what to do about lore until the video game came out and then I started, uh, I read a little bit about like what the items were. I should have known any of the story until podcast when time started talking about it.
I mostly just read that I think maybe the tabletop game, like the items, I don't remember looking into the lore. Again, I have a goal-size memory, so maybe I did. I just forgot until Tom came around and then you guys. Do you have a favorite little nugget that has stuck in your brain?
Um, I think not paper number the night stays in my head is like, Anna Smasher is the Borgius of the Borg with I think only parts of his brains and some organs left. It's just that's what sticks in my head that he is mostly machine. And Smasher kind of sticks in your brain. Once you learn about him and once you see him, Smasher doesn't leave.
Master is technically not even smashing anymore. He's a robot with a Smasher AI. Is he? No, he's not.
He's not, but like he's 3% Smasher, 97% robot machine. Very much a cyborg. Yeah. Like one more good hit.
And if he doesn't have an engram, he's dead. He'd be he'd be robot. He's one more good hit. Um, it took like approximately like a hundred and seventeen good hits to actually take him down for what I remember, at least in my blade build.
Um, I haven't Smasher's a little bitch when I played Cyberpunk. I don't know. I think I played it before they read they read it and I played I got him, but he was so easy. Yeah, the beginning of the game is pretty easy to beat.
But now he is definitely not. He's a painless. Yeah, I think I'll back and do that again. Because I'm in the last, the last time I fought him, I think was right before Edward just came out.
Oh, so you played 2.0. So, oh, you just have a lot of time. Him since Soulkiller, the map, you know, think, think. We're ready.
Yes, I don't think I thought about it. But I played some lead. Maybe I did. I can't remember I might have, but I don't think I fought him for a while after maybe I did find him family.
So maybe it is last time. I don't remember him being that hard. It also depends on difficulty level that you're playing at and what your build is and everything like that. That definitely plays into it on how difficult the fight is.
Hey, you should try playing a throwing knife build in flight. I'm currently doing that. Yeah. You mean that I'm currently doing that?
Yeah. It's it's tough. Yeah, it's hard to aim for those headshots when he's so quick. When I'm cursing this game, it'll be your fault.
I still have like probably another 30 hours to go before I get through, though. Unless I'm fine. I'm fine. You can cheat and use a sword.
I don't know if anything will be mad about it. I do need to go back and make a new character just for the funnel. I do. But I probably won't.
To see what's cool stuff that's stuck into your brain. I mean, I don't even got like, I don't think I have any like real specifics, but like, I mean, all of the all of the research we've done regarding like the places outside of Night City, like we've done our little like tour on the world, like all of that information, like learning about all these other countries and how they run and how different they are. You know, like all of those strange little places and like, I guess, Eastern or Southern Asia or whatever that we like did that. And if they're like fucking pristine, like traditional city and then it's all of that stuff has been incredibly interesting to learn and like sticks out, I guess, in just the sense of like how much lore there is to everywhere else that's not Night City.
And we still spend 98% of our time in Night City. It's just fun. I think probably, I mean, just the kind of, I guess, answer the question better as far as something that stuck out with me. I guess I'll pick like allts like compound and Hong Kong.
Like the fact that she's got her like AI sanctuary over there where she kind of runs everything and then like all of these like people are like, you know, like virtual like entities in like live and it's like a safe place for them to exist where no one can interfere because Hong Kong is also like a fucking wasteland from the fights that happen there. So that's been that was a pretty, that was a pretty fun place to like research and learn about. No Hong Kong was definitely cool. And I remember talking a lot about Singapore.
We're like, um, Singapore because I mean, I've been there. So it definitely stuck out in my brain of like what would it look like now in cyberpunk land in comparison to the real world memories that I have at the place. It's definitely interesting. I would not want to go to Hong Kong though.
No, thank you. I, my body is not equipped to be behind the black wall. I am not prepared for that. But if it was, then it'd be pretty neat.
True. Well, I don't have a Middle East is all glass too. That was an interesting thing to learn. We've done a lot that sometimes it's hard to remember everything that we've done.
I think the favorite lore that you guys talk about that like is that one really rich, like city that we talked about on like the last page and like, if we like a new game you wanted to come out like and stuff like that. I think that was on my favorite lore. So I just popped in my head where like I started making my own like, I think that talked about that town was my favorite lore part. Yeah, I remember that one.
I'd be careful when you're doing cyberpunk because I read so much like fanfic stuff, like not fanfic stuff, but people write their own stories with the lore. And it's like, is that actually true? Has cyberpunk made that up or is that just someone I read that love cyberpunk that followed all the lore, but it's not technically official. So it's like, I love the community stuff.
The Brunei, the Rousalom place. Yeah. Just one. And of course, listeners, we want to hear from you too.
What are some of your favorite moments from the podcast or favorite lore bits that you've learned about along the way? And your origin story. You can leave those as Spotify comments or in the discord or you could send us an email. I mean, I still check the email every day.
See if there's anything new in there. The email, it's cyberpunk lorecast at gmail.com. All one word ran all together. It's pretty easy to get ahold of us.
Well, guys, I don't think that I have anything else to really add. We'll make this a little bit shorter of an episode tonight. The first half of it definitely went off the rails, but that is true, patreon fashion. And that's why we love it around here.
Turbo. You got any final thoughts about cyberpunk lore? Or anything that you've got going on? Nothing I got going on.
No final thoughts, but I do have a question for after the podcast. OK. Well, if you'd like to hear more from me, you can find me on the two girls, one ship podcast where we analyze, rate and review all the world of video game romances has to offer. I almost went back to turbo.
Nope. That's not right. You should be back to me. That's true.
You were here before both of us. You want to hear more from me? You can check out the Witcher Lookest. And at the end of every episode, we shout out Miracle of Sound and thank him for being awesome and allowing his music to be used.
We use snips and clips from the neon red instrumental remix while you're out there. Stay safe in that city. Do you love Dragon Age? How you always wanted to learn more about its best world and detail more?
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I'm Austin, also known as T-Cup. And I'm Shelby, also known as T-Cup. And come and join us as we embark on a journey to explore and discover all things Dragon Age. We'll discuss all kinds of topics, from Lirium to the Chantry and the great mysteries of Old Gods and even more that even you Bioware Super fans might not know about.
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