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Notes -
You realize they could have just written their own world if that was the case...
Not like even Gibson came up with anything expecially unique, he just brought all the elements together that other writers had put out in the 70s and layered a cool style over it.
No individual sci-fi elements hadn't already been done by someone else.
.
And honestly if anything they turned the silliness up... the Chainsaw arm became the mantiss blades or monkey arms, They explicitly made all the goofy rockerboy stuff Canon and made one of the main characters a rockerboy who did 9/11 but with nukes, played by Keanu reeves.
Like there are entire flashback missions in game that plays out exactly how they played in the 2020 corebook.
Hell the only 2 character from the corebook who aren't one to one transplanted into the 2077 game are morgan blackhand who doesn't appear, and Johnny silverhand, who's character design they had to redo to look like Keanu reeves.
Aside from that Rose, Alt, Rache Bartmoss, Spider, Adam Smasher, Saburo Arasaka... their character designs haven't even changed. Rose even has the big 80s hair and leather jacket in the flashbacks.
Its actually incredible how much CDPR leaned into the silliest aspects of 2020 and managed to make them work in a serious and dark setting
It's less silly, by a lot actually. Kinda plausible, though I think something like a shotgun or maybe a huge captive-bolt style system would be more popular.
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