“There was a version…”: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Took an Almost Perfect World Away from Fans for an Alternate Storyline

The original series, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a huge hit in the anime community. It not only heralded Studio Trigger’s “return,” but it also told a compelling tale based in the universe of a CD PROJEKT RED game. While the game’s debut wasn’t the smoothest, the anime didn’t have any comparable problems and went on to win several honors, including Crunchyroll’s Anime of the Year and Anime Corner’s Best New Anime of 2022.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is an incredible story that takes the potential of Night City on CDPR and runs with it to create a violent, seductive, oddly depressing, and gripping action serial. Though it doesn’t directly relate to the game, saying that the program isn’t set in Night City is a little deceptive.

The intimate connection between Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and the game is one of the reasons it is so enjoyable. The locales, the language, the sound effects, the hacking and breaching animations, and even the destinations themselves are actual places that your character has been through in Cyberpunk 2077.

Bartosz Sztybor Talked About An Alternate Storyline For Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Anime Corner reached out to Bartosz Sztybor, a comic book and animation narrative director at CD PROJEKT RED, and also the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners screenwriter and producer. During the interview, Sztybor talked about interesting topics and engaged in various subjects. One of the questions asked in the interview was whether any of the characters significantly changed from how he originally imagined them in the concept.

Sztybor stated that there were several dozen different iterations of the plot and tens of character alterations. He also said that at times, character attributes and whole backstories were changed, and only their names remained. In other instances, two people would merge into one, or someone’s objectives would alter but their mindset would remain the same. He continued:

There was a version — one that I really liked — where David and Lucy knew each other before, they had a third friend and were a trio of thieves mostly stealing skill-chips and selling them to their neighborhood ripperdoc, dreaming to be like Maine, a famous cyberpunk from their block.

In one storyline Faraday was much closer to David. He was not as villainous as in the final version, but he was a really complex character struggling with the difficult choices he had to make. In another one, Falco became a good friend of David’s after — SPOILER ALERT! — Maine’s death. There was a moment during the creative process when a new storyline was made every week, so trust me, there were many great characters and a lot of changes.

Sztybor also revealed that his favorite character was David, the protagonist of the anime. He commented that they went through similar things and that he will always have a soft spot in his heart for tragic romantics. For this reason, he also enjoys Maine. He wanted to stop but was unable to do so; he is a lost cause. For him, Maine was the most tragic character of them all.

Bartosz Sztybor Wanted To Change The Fate Of Some Characters In Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

In the interview, Sztybor was asked if he had a moment while writing the story where he wanted to change the fate of some characters, and the producer replied that he did. He added:

Many times, because I felt so bad for them. You know, I spent more than three years with them or some versions of them, I started to really like them. So yes, I was thinking a lot about changing their fates.

But after many moments of doubt, I always knew some things just need to happen for their arcs and the story to be complete. It’s a tale about the meaning and legitimacy of sacrifice, so one way or another it would end with the death of one of the lovers and a glimpse of hope for the other.

The plot of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners centers around David who quits Arasaka Academy and becomes involved with the city’s Cyberpunk community through his friendship with Lucy, a Netrunner. She introduces David to her team and he quickly becomes an indispensable member due to his resistance to having a stolen augment installed.

The narrative’s underlying theme is an addiction to power, which is achieved by gradually augmenting one’s body with more “chrome,” strength, and weaponry, and ultimately driving oneself insane through “cyberpsychosis.” We spend the entire series trying to determine whether David’s belief that he is unique is accurate.