We have things from our universe in the game, like Porsche brand. Was there a point where the cyberpunk timeline started in real life timeline?
We have things from our universe in the game, like Porsche brand. Was there a point where the cyberpunk timeline started in real life timeline?
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Late 80s since the Soviet Union remained intact.
Roughly around 1992, when the US economy collapsed, and Richard Night purchased Morro Bay (which was renamed to Night City in 1994 when Richard Night was murdered.)
The universe of cyberpunk was originally written in the 80s by Mike Pondsmith, for a series of tabletop RPGs.
Johnny Silverhand is a character from Cyberpunk 2020, which, as a tabletop RPG, plays through the events of the 4th corporate war and ends with the nuke in Arasaka Tower. The canonical events of this game don’t line up with Johnny’s memories in 2077, proving that the copy of his engram is damaged.
I think though even after the divergence a lot of stuff in the Cyberpunk universe progressed the same as ours…for example all the songs that Johnny named quests after, have to still have happened in that universe.
Since WW2 when Arasaka started becoming big
after ww2 the universe split apart, most impactful stream is after the cold War when everybody loses. The soviet union reforms itself but NATO collapses because Germany wants to do its own thing again.
If you wanna get really specific the probably around the 1800s when the Arasaka family began.
For what’s actually significant it’s around the early 90s where the Soviet Union doesn’t collapse, wars break out, technology advances way faster than our world and cyberware begins to develop at the same time that many other problems begin to arise.
more or less this is where history diverged:
In the ’80s USSR didn’t invade afghanistan while in 1990 USA tried to conquer central american countries* to seize their natural resources with the official reason to slay down drug cartels. As consequence of this USSR never collapsed while USA dragged them self in a war that was giving no results but drug cartels nuking new york (twin towers too) as a counterstrike in 1993. USA retired next year when world economy collapsed out of world stock crash.
USA economy collapsed forcing government to use martial law across the whole country, EEC (that never evolved in EU) became the world leading economy organization being the only one able to manipulate €$ rates at will as also not european states started using that currency. Arasaka not only was financially strong enough to survive the stock crash but consolidated its position becoming more powerful than governments of japan and other asian countries.
In this period, distrusted by politicians, an ambitious dreamer known as richard night purchased morro bay lands to create his city, a capitalism heaven self managed by corporations alone, out from governments madness.
That city was completed by late ’90s becoming night city in honour of his founder (who was assinated some time earlier).
Up early ’00s, because of martial law USA, political power was in the hands of the gang of four (CIA, NSA, FBI, DEA) that instigated a second central american war** in the effort to try again to seize control of natural resources of central and south american countries to save american economy. Once again the war was justified as a war against drug cartels.
War lasted up to late 00’s and USA was forced to retire again after USSR and EEC started supporting south american countries, obtaining exclusive contracts and commercial partnership in return of their help, sovoil managed to get long term contracts lasting up to 2077 with countries like brazil to seize control of south american economy and won second corporate war against petrochem to have control of east asia oil forniture too.
At the end of the war, by early ’10s, gang of four and their agencies were disbanded (it’s in this period CIA and NSA merged to become FIA) and power returned in the hands of US president, leading a country next to the self destruction in the middle of a third world economy and states like texas beginning their process to sort out from the confederation. In this period, american and foreign corps like arasaka, having sniffed a big void of political power, massively moved into biggest american cities building there their north american HQs and quickly becoming way more powerful and influent than american government it self.
American cities became the playground of megacorps with the streets full of chromed mercs ready to make a name for them selves, or more simply useful idiot at the payroll of corporations.
Things continued this way until the 4th corporate war that leaded the world on the verge of the apocalypse and later to the time of red.
*first prototypes of cyberware were used by USA army in this war, morgan blackhand was one of the cyber enhanced soldiers taking part to the war, becoming the leader of his squad replacing the previous one who went nut of cyberpsychosis in the middle of the battlefield
**DEA propaganda convinced young people like johnny silverhand to be recruited as soldiers, basically unequipped and untrained guys to send to die into the battlefield. Many of them defected and travelled back to US where they were “welcomed” as criminals to reject, having same propaganda used those soldiers as the reason of the fail of the war. Morgan blackhand fought this war too and lost his right hand on the battlefield obtaining his famous black cyberarm from the medic that later will take part in his team of solos. He left army at the end of the war and returned in brooklyn where he was recruited by militech after a militech corporate watched morgan effortless zeroing the leader of a booster gang.
1988, when the first edition was released.
When the first cyberwear got released…
That’s the difference…
Cyberpunk has cool implants, prostheses, and seemingly affordable healthcare (everyone has kiroshi’s, etc.)
Big Corpo is already powerful as fuck…
Shell, and BP even have(had?) private, paramilitary troops…
Or DynCorp, which is basically MiliTec
WW2
Major diversion in the early 90s, the first generation of cyberware is much more advanced than any prosthesis that we have, the world of Cyberpunk also has better medical technology in 1990 than our world in 2024. By 2013 there were already AIs on the net, we only have glorified chatbots.
WW2
No later than World War II, when war vet Saburo Arasaka becomes a prominent Japanese industrialist
WW2-1980s
1980
Arasak’s history stretches back to where our worlds diverge. That’s when Saburo started his *mission.* Then the CP2077 world was defined by the DataKrash.
Things START changing as early as the 1800s, but the big changes start happening around the 1980s.