I want the Trigger ending to Cyperpunk Edgerunners where it's revealed that cyberpsychosis is a corpo plot to keep the workers/humanity down and you can defeat it by going beyond the impossible and kicking reason to the curb.
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2023
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Cyberpunk Red more or less has the same take as 2077.
And obviously at the end of the day it was just a quickly slapped together excuse for there being a limit on what can be installed so that every PC doesn't get six grenade launcher arms.
Also for what it's worth imo David's descent into "cyberpsychosis" is also parallel to a descent into regular psychosis due to having increasingly bad things happen to him (everyone he loves dies or gets kidnapped etc). In addition, the cyberskeleton seems to basically kill its user, which more or less matches up with the 2077 way of doing things. The characters in the show just don't know it because they're also subject to the propaganda and think "oh it's cyberpsychosis". Obviously this is all inferred and may be too generous to Trigger.
Preventing me from getting six grenade launcher arms is fascism
For every grenade launcher arm you install, I have to give the cops two more to maintain balance. Please reconsider
Curious how the cops don't get this "cyberpsychosis" from too many grenade launcher arms but I do. Very convenient for the state monopoly on violence.
They can get actual therapy and days off while you're stuck with mail-order SSRIs, the occasional skype call with an AI "doctor", and the constant stress of living in utter precarity.
nope it's because cyberpsychosis is TPM malware installed by the corpo elite
I probably should have elaborated a bit more: Pondsmith doesn't have a terrible take, and his take now is better than the older cyberpunk themes of machinery and change literally being innately corrupting things, but I still think it centers the very presence of cyberware as something that's dangerous in and of itself. He acknowledges the social issues, but still sort of frames it as more like having good personal circumstances protects someone from the consequences of having cyberware and having bad personal circumstances makes the risk of cyberware worse, when the cyberware should be tangential to the whole process: it is the horror of the setting and the trauma characters suffer that drives them to the edge, and the cyberware just goes along for the ride and makes them more dangerous if they start lashing out (or causes problems of its own that can be boiled down to the social issue of poor healthcare access).
Semi-off-topic, and this obviously isn't Pondsmith's intent, but this has me thinking of cyberware as a metaphor for capitalism. Capitalism has reshaped or destroyed many social bonds, breaking down communities to a series of untethered individuals, free from distractions and therefore able to be worked longer and harder. Cyberpunk takes this alienation to the next level: even breaking down to the individual is not enough, and they must be further divided down to their constituent parts, which will be replaced with more "useful" pieces.
I suppose this is all fairly fundamental to the genre but it's telling that I've never thought of it on these terms until now.