Robots Radio. Games. Lore. Stories.
Community. Just press play. This podcast is brought to you by Anchor.fm. The absolute best and easiest way to host your podcast and get paid for it by running ads just like these.
And take it from me, I've hosted at least seven of my podcasts on Anchor.fm. I recommend it to every show on our network. And other hosts are going to charge you upwards of $100 every year just to run your podcast on their host. Anchor.fm does it for free.
So go check out Anchor.fm for more information. Robots Radio presents the Cyberpunk Lorecast. Welcome to the Cyberpunk Lorecast. Your style is just as important a substance.
Welcome to the podcast where we explore the lore, news, and gameplay of the cyberpunk games and other dystopian worlds. I'm your host, Robots. Hey there, cyberpunks. Welcome back to the Cyberpunk Lorecast, the podcast where we don't just talk about the lore and the world of cyberpunk.
We also talk about the news and the gameplay and all sorts of other stuff. And it has been a number of weeks now since we've had a news-focused episode. So that's the focus of today's episode. And today, we're going to be going into a number of different things.
It's been a few weeks since Night City Wire and the big news dump that was that. And there's not been a ton of news in the last few weeks, but we do have some things to go over. Things like the world of cyberpunk 2077 hardcover book. We also have some news about some beta invites that are going out and some things that you need to know about that.
A CD Projekt Red Gear contest. Some info about the dialogue scenes and the interactivity of the dialogue scenes. And some other details at the end of the episode about cyberpunk 2077. And some more gameplay nuggets that we've got some wind of.
Some wind of? Is that a phrase? Anyway, let's get into the episode. So let's talk about the world of cyberpunk 2077.
If you haven't seen this or you don't know about it, this is a hardcover book featuring a lot of lore and artwork from the creators of cyberpunk 2077. And it's published by Dark Horse Books. It is an extensive examination of the rich lore of cyberpunk 2077. And contains everything you need to know about the history and characters of the world.
I can't wait to get my hands on this myself. I am going to have to place an order, though, for the Kindle version of this in order to read it. Because it is currently out of stock. It just released a few days ago.
And I didn't pre-order mine. I should have known to do that. But I didn't. It is currently out of stock on Amazon.
But it is going right now for $24.84. That is a discount of $15 off the regular $40 price. $39.99. So you can go ahead and order it.
You can put it in your cart. They're going to ship it to you once they get some more in stock. It's a physical one that you actually get to look at in person. So I might have to get both.
I haven't decided yet. But I'm going to have to make a decision. If you're interested in checking this out, there is a link in the show notes you can use. And by the way, that is an affiliate link.
Meaning that I get a little bit of kickback for sending you guys there if you buy one. But it doesn't actually make it cost any more for you. So if you are going to purchase one, then that is an easy way to help the show out without costing you any more money. Go check it out.
At least click the link and go look at the images. Because the images you'll notice on the cover, there are images that have been passed around the net of these different characters that are going to show up in 2077. And as you thumb through the different screenshots, you will see some really cool looking art. And there's not just art.
This isn't just a book full of pages of artwork. There is a lot of text in here. A lot of details about different characters that will be showing up in the game. And the background of the world.
A lot of the things that I've touched on already, but other stuff as well. Including things that I haven't gotten to yet. So if you want to be diving even more into the lore of the world, go check this out. It's called The World of Cyberpunk 2077 Hardcover Book.
So let's move on to some very important news here. There is currently a scam going on. And I don't want any of you guys to be caught by this. But according to Eurogamer, they've reported that some scammers are luring unwitting fans into a fake beta sign-up to steal their information.
This isn't a new kind of thing, but this is specifically focused around Cyberpunk 2077. So if you are getting any sort of notification out there that you have been invited to a beta to get beta access to Cyberpunk 2077, that is absolutely false. They are not putting these out. CD Projekt Red themselves have come out to say that if you received a recent email claiming to be granting you access to the Cyberpunk 2077, it is not from us.
Unfortunately, there have been more of these being sent out over the past few weeks. And they specifically say here that if they are going to send you an email, they will contact you directly from a CDProjectRed.com address. So double-check the info on this. And as with anything on the internet, just be smart.
If it looks too good to be true, it probably is. And this is one of those ironic points of comparison between the real world and Cyberpunk. I'm sure this kind of stuff happens in Cyberpunk all the time. And guess what?
Scammers, hackers, people are using technology to get one over on us in this world, too. So congratulations. But don't fall for it. We're only a few months away.
And if you are going to get beta access for something, it will come directly from CD Projekt Red. So pay attention to that. In other news, at the beginning of July, CD Projekt Red announced a CDPR gear contest. Hashtag CDPR gear.
This was kind of similar to the PC modding contest that they were doing a few months back that I reported on. And I didn't actually catch wind of this until today, which means that they have already wrapped it up. This closed on July 31st. But what's interesting about this is that we will get to see the results hopefully very soon.
This contest was divided into four different categories for us, the people of the world, to design a pin that you would want to display on a backpack, a bag, a jacket, or wherever. And the different categories included CD Projekt Red, The Witcher series of games, The Witcher card game, Gwent, and Cyberpunk 2077. Now the winners of this, the four different winners, one for each category, would get their design made into a real pin, a limited edition community pin set with the designers' names credited on the store's website. Also, winners would get a $150 gift card to CDPR gear and a set of pins also.
So hopefully we get to see this pretty soon. I'm sure this is going to be some really cool artwork. I love, love, love artwork. I love it when people spend their time doing cool stuff like this because I can't.
I can create a podcast. I can dig into the lore of the world. But I can't create an awesome looking pin for Cyberpunk 2077. So hopefully we'll see the results of this soon.
I will try to keep up with this and post some results. Also, if I can find a number of these submissions, I will do a video like I did for the PC. One where I showcase the winners, hopefully, if I find the winners sooner or later. Or if I just find a whole lot of really, really cool submissions, I might showcase each of those as well.
So you can always check the Robots Radio YouTube for that kind of content. And we have here another story for the game Valorant. Valorant? Valorant?
I don't know the best way to pronounce this. You guys probably have seen people streaming this on Twitch. Riot Games put out this new Valorant game. It's kind of a mix between Counter-Strike and, I don't know, Overwatch or something.
It's got a little bit of all these newer elements. It's a shooter. So why am I talking about Valorant? We'll just say Valorant.
Well, because they put out a teaser on their Twitter account with a screen. It's just a loading screen with some swirling colors that look like a circle. But the colors are very Cyberpunk. You've got the pinks and then you've got this bright light-colored blue.
It looks very Cyberpunk. So the theory here, at least the most interesting theory to us talking about Cyberpunk, is that this is a teaser for Cyberpunk skins for the game, which seem to be mentioned in the files found by data miners. This has been reported on by a number of different sites, including Forbes, who say in their article, while there has been no confirmation that the Cyberpunk skin set is real and no images have been found in the game as they were for other sets, many fans on Reddit think this is the start of the reveal campaign for the skin set. So there's some hope out there that this is what's going on.
It seems like a smart idea. We know that Riot Games isn't against working with other studios, whether this is an official connection to CD Projekt Red or other IPs, like they've done with Marvel and Disney IPs, Star Wars. Or maybe this is just something they're doing that's stylized in a way that looks similar to some of the artwork and things that we've seen for Cyberpunk 2077, because Cyberpunk as a concept is much bigger than just the Cyberpunk IP itself. So maybe this is a thing they're tapping into to get into the zeitgeist of what's going on and the anticipation of Cyberpunk 2077 coming out.
We're going to have to wait and see. I don't know if you guys play the game. I myself have gotten the access to the beta, but I never actually jumped in yet. I've been doing a lot of other things and haven't really given it a try.
So I need to get in there, give it a try, and who knows? Maybe by the time I do that, we're going to have some skins come out that look really cool in Cyberpunk-y. So there you go. If you are a fan of Valorant, then there's some info for you, and who knows?
Maybe we'll get some cool stuff. All right. After the break, I will be back with two different articles about some new information about Cyberpunk 2077 that might just add to your hype for the game. So stay tuned.
Do you like adventure? Do you like life? Would you like to listen to a group of people you don't know, play D&D, and reference retro pop culture you vaguely remember? Excellent.
You're going to love Comedy Quest. We play D&D in the world of Amaranth. We use adventure modules and supplements made by people in the community. We also have a sweet Synthwave backing track.
Come and join us on our adventure. Volume 1 has been completed. Volume 2 coming the end of January. You can find us on iTunes, Podbean, or wherever you get your podcasts from.
All right, Cyberpunk, this is your host, Tom or Robots. Thank you for tuning in as usual. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors, Loot Crate and Gamefly. If you haven't given Gamefly a chance, then it is absolutely the best way for you to rent games as cheap as possible.
And you guys are getting a special deal because if you click the link in the show notes, you can get the first 30 days, an entire month of renting whatever games you want. Absolutely free. Free shipping. Turn them around.
If you get a game you don't like it, you can sign right back at the next game. An entire month. You guys can get an entire month of games. And then you don't even have to sign up for the rest of it if you don't like it.
So click the link in the show notes. Go check that out. Also, Loot Crate is an awesome way to get a bunch of really cool gear, things to put on your walls, t-shirts, and stuff like that, with our link. So click the link in the show notes so they know we sent you.
And the code ROBOTSRADIO. You can get 15% off Loot Crate. And the show is also brought to you by our patrons. If you're interested in an ad-free version of the show, then just go to patreon.com slash cyberpunkalorecast and help support me directly.
For as little as $3 a month or whatever you would like to pay, you can get an ad-free version of the show and help ensure that you keep getting content from yours truly. All right, let's get back to the show. So we have some really interesting details about Cyberpunk 20... Did I say Cyberpunk?
Cyberpunk 2077. I have been talking too fast today, guys. I need to slow it down. I need a...
I'm sure there's some sort of anti-stims out there to chill you out in the Cyberpunk world. Okay, so here's the deal. Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out. More details are being leaked.
And one of the big things that we have learned about recently has been reported on by ScreenRants.com in an article titled Cyberpunk 2077 Dialogue Scenes Will Be More Interactive and Dangerous. The subtitle here says Cyberpunk 2077's dialogue scenes are highly interactive and let the player keep an eye on their surroundings and sailor for danger. So interesting stuff. You know how a lot of dialogue in games work where the world pauses while you're having a conversation.
Well, in Cyberpunk 2077, that's not really the case. The world is more alive than that and you need to stay aware of what's going on around you. So I'm just going to quote the main section of the article here. It says, It's obvious from every factor of Cyberpunk 2077 that has been revealed so far that the development team is committed to details, filling out the world of the game as much as possible and making it all feel real.
As gameplay previews have shown, this level of realism and attention to detail extends even to the dialogue sequences. The player has full camera control while talking to NPCs and this has proven to be a very significant feature. While engaging in conversation, player character V can notice significant details about the environment around them. They can read body language and facial expressions to gain insight into how the other characters behave or notice someone reaching for their weapon, which could be a sub-warning that things are about to get ugly.
Night City is a dangerous place full of unscrupulous characters, and of course we all know that. To survive in an environment like this, V must stay constantly on guard. By incorporating this new level of interactivity into the dialogue sequences, CG Project ensures that the player will treat the setting with the weariness it deserves. In most other games with dialogue, engaging in a conversation is a good chance to relax a little and focus on choosing the right dialogue choices without fear of unexpected danger.
Like I noted before, Cyberpunk 2077 clearly has no intention of giving players that level of confidence and safety, forcing them to stay on their toes at all times. I'd love to hear what you were thinking about this, what your thoughts are. My thoughts are that this is both a welcome design aspect and also, you know, it's kind of nice when you're talking to a character in the game and you have that little moment of reprieve, that moment of, well, now I can just focus on one thing at a time. I get that that is comforting, but I also get that that breaks the immersion of the world because that's not the way the real world works.
Just because you're having a conversation with someone doesn't mean the rest of the world stops. That's not how it works. A lot of times, we live in a place, we work in environments, we regularly deal with environments where we rarely get to have a conversation, a simple conversation with another human being that is uninterrupted or unaffected by the world around us. So this makes sense.
This is the way the real world works. And designing a game that takes you into a real space that makes the world feel real, that pulls you in, then that would make sense. Now, there are some things that are going to come up in the next article that I'm going to mention that may play into the dangers of the situations that you will be in while you are having conversations with other characters. So let's move on to that.
So I have here another article, this one by comicbook.com slash gaming. It's from the gaming section of the comicbook.com site. And they're talking about your freedom of interactivity in the world of Cyberpunk 2077. A lot of people have been asking, is this going to be like an open world that we have seen from somebody like Rockstar?
Is this going to be like GTA? How much freedom will we have in the world? Will we be able to go anywhere and do anything from the beginning? Or will we be limited?
Will we be able to go on a crime spree? Is that a possibility? And we've talked about this a little bit in some of the previous episodes, but it seems that there's some more information here. So let's get to the meat of this article.
Quoting the article, it says, according to CD Projekt Red's Miles Toss, the Polish studio has an entire team dedicated to open world design. And this team is pretty big. thanks to the complexity of the game's open world. Speaking about the open world, Toss confirms that following the completion of the prologue, players will be able to explore the game freely.
Of course, this comes with a host of design headaches, but it sounds like the team has figured it out. Not only can players almost immediately explore the entire map, but they can cause utter chaos in it. And unlike Grand Theft Auto, there are some serious implications for this. For example, you may kill a quest giver or cause so much chaos that you will be a big target of the night city police.
And get this, they will label V as a cyber psycho. Making things even crazier is the fact that there are, of course, other cyber psychos running around the city who can run into you. You can run into them. And sometimes these encounters play into the story.
So let's go back and talk about that previous article. Let's say you are in the middle of the street having a conversation with another character. Well, the world around you is continuing, right? Things are still playing out.
And you might be in a dangerous part of town. Of course, what part of town isn't dangerous? But you might be in a place where a cyber psycho is currently on some sort of rampage and shows up and all hell breaks loose. This could be a thing, it seems, according to this article.
Now, is this going to happen all the time? I don't know. I can't comment on that. I haven't played the game.
But is there the potential for this to occur? It seems like it. Now, the other thing that I would be interested in knowing about this is, are these encounters, like in something like, let's talk about another Rockstar game, Red Dead, Red Dead Redemption, Red Dead Redemption 2. When you are traveling around the world, sometimes you come across things that occur just off the path.
You hear somebody yelling from the trees, ah, I got caught in a bear trap, come help me. Or somebody shooting at somebody and you have to go deal with it. Is this that kind of situation where each of these is a staged scenario that occurs as you travel throughout the game? Or is this, more interestingly, the effects of something happening in the game, a character outside of your current sphere of influence making some sort of decision and then the world reacting to them?
And that seems like it requires a whole lot more processing power. So I would speculate that that's probably not what's happening here. What probably happens is that you have a certain type of character, a certain type of events spawn in while you are near certain locations and there's a chance for something like a cyberpsycho to appear on the edge of the part of the world that's kind of loading for you and then the cops respond. That's probably more likely, what's even more likely than that is something like the Red Dead scenario where you're traveling throughout the world and a scenario just kind of loads in and it's predetermined.
Maybe not necessarily that every time you pass that location that that's the scenario you get. But that if you're going to deal with a cyberpsycho, that's the situation that's going to unfurl. Or you're going to deal with a situation that involves the trauma team showing up. Or somebody holding hostages over on the side of the building.
Or somebody who's going to commit suicide and jump off of something. These are the kinds of things that you might come across and there's probably several dozen of them and the game picks them randomly. This is the one that's going to occur. That would be my guess.
But again, I don't know. I didn't design the game. I haven't played it yet. So interesting that this is a thing.
I think this is good. This is the kind of thing that makes the game feel real. On the flip side of this, let's talk about the main idea here that you can go around the world and cause whatever chaos you want. What's even more interesting about this is the potential to kill quest givers.
And traditionally in more recent RPGs, they have gated that off. Let's talk about Rockstar Games or Bethesda. Many of these large RPG worlds, either you don't actually have access to quest givers outside of like the instanced areas that they're in, if instancing would be the correct term for it. They're gated off.
Or you do have access to quest givers, but they are indestructible. Either you can't actually shoot them. The game doesn't allow you to do damage to them. They don't take damage.
Or in something like Skyrim, you can do damage. They fall down. They limp around for a little bit and they get right back up. Either way, you can't close yourself off from certain content simply by killing a character.
You might be able to do so by making a bad decision and causing damage to that character might be included in the bad decision that gates off a quest line because you chose a different option. But usually it's not because you kill someone off. This is a very old RPG concept. This idea that you can accidentally or intentionally kill a quest giver and section that part of the game off from you completely is a very old school RPG kind of concept.
This happens in RPGs from the 90s. And people would complain about this because, one, you may not even know that that was a quest giver. And so now you don't even know that you're missing out on content in the game. But two, some people believe that, you know, if you're going to buy the game, you should be able to access all the content whenever you want.
And there aren't, you know, real implications on your actions if you decide to go on some sort of crime spree. So to me, this kind of design decision makes the game even more interesting. You genuinely have to deal with the results of your actions. This also makes this kind of game infinitely more replayable because choosing different actions, coming from different angles on things, playing out the character in a different way can fundamentally change what you can and can't do in the game, even at a base level for things like quest givers.
And I think that that is important. I'm optimistic about this design decision. Of course, we're going to have to wait to see how it actually plays out. But I think that this is an interesting way to take it, which will create very interesting stories when you talk to your friends about what you did or didn't do in Night City.
The article closes up and says, of course, all the choices you're making whilst doing all of this will impact everything around you. And as you progress through the game, it will take into account your choices, your background, and spit out something different depending on what these choices are. Again, kind of vague, but similar to the things I was talking about. Lastly, TOS confirms there's environmental destruction.
Though for now, it's unclear how complete this feature is and how it will tie into a player's ability to cause chaos. My guess is that environmental destruction is a limited set of things that are destructible. Things like the things in the environment while you're driving around, you know, for example, you hit holes or trash cans and those things break. Maybe even the edges of the sides of the road, like if you're going over a bridge or something, you bust through the concrete barrier.
Things like that, I would guess, are destructible. Maybe even some of the walls in some of the buildings. But I don't think you're going to be taking down an entire skyscraper unless that's like a story beat with an actual animation built into it. So that's the latest news.
Cyberpunks, I would love to hear your thoughts on some of this. Or better yet, jump in the Robots Radio Discord. We've got some conversations in there right now happening about how people are going to roleplay their characters. Some really cool stuff going on in the Cyberpunk Lorecast channel.
There's a bunch of channels for all the different shows on podcasts and all sorts of topics and things. Also, people are going to get their playing games. I, myself, have been playing Red Dead Redemption 2 online because of the new updates. I would love to get a posse together of some, I don't know, some ne'er-do-well cowboys.
So if you're playing that, jump on the Discord, say hi. I would love to group up with you guys. I'm on PC, so I know a lot of people are on console because the game came out on console first. But as you know, let's be friends.
And until next time, don't accidentally kill a quest giver, at least in the real world, because that would be a really, really bad idea. So stay safe in Night City. I'll talk to you guys again next week. See ya.
Thanks for tuning in to the Cyberpunk Lorecast. This show is a part of the Robots Radio Network, smart podcasts for interesting people. If you'd like to help support the show, please tell a friend and leave a five-star review on iTunes. If you'd like to get in contact, please send an email to cyberpunklorecast at gmail.com or follow us on Twitter at cyberpunklore.
Also, join the community on the Robots Radio Discord. The link is in the show notes. The music on the show was written and performed by The Midnight and was used with their permission. Go check them out at themidnightofficial.com.
Until next time, stay safe in Night City. We'll talk to you later. You've been listening to the Robots Radio Podcast. Smart shows for interesting people.
Check out all the shows at robotsradio.net. In a world where solid-state electronics and vacuum tubes are still meta, people never stopped loving atomic-powered everything. A chosen 500 stepped inside a subterranean vault to be spared the nuclear horror of the inevitable Great War. 25 years later, they emerge after the fallout settles to retake Appalachia.
Among them, two former rivals whose blood feud will tear West Virginia apart in their epic struggle for survival. Chad, a Volsbrook who has a strength of 15, an intelligence of 2, and is a complete wasteland. They can. Simon, a complicated anti-hero who chooses light and hope, but accidentally becomes a camel, and wakes up naked and afraid with a scorch-beat screen after a date goes terribly wrong.
What? I mean, it's a wild wasteland, right? This dark humor radio drama will have you driving off the road and crawling out from under the fallout. Two men, one wasteland, and so many nukes.
Chad, a Fallout 76 podcast. Rated R. Now streaming on your holotape player podcast, do you think? How well do you know you're video game lovers?
Have you ever wondered how your video game days stack up against all the other delectable digital dates? I'm Genesis, the girl whose motto in life is love, laugh, tequila. And on Two Girls, One Ship, we analyze, rate, and review all that the world of video game romances has to offer. And I'm Gravata, the hopeless romantic cat lady and lifelong gamer.
But you should know that our podcast centers on character and romance analysis and doesn't shy away from exploring the fun of physical connection. Or from the deep emotional connections built between two characters, using specific in-game dialogue and the overall narrative journey. So join the Two Girls, One Ship Shipsters, and remember, beauty is in the eye of the controller.