author: Adam Belda
Chrome rock. A handy guide to Night City and Cyberpunk 2077
Table of Contents
Johnny Silverhand is an unquestionable chrome rock star. Chrome rock is a variety of heavy metal played in 2020. Perhaps we heard a snippet at the end of the E3 2019 trailer. Simple beat, aggressive lyrics and generally heavy sound.
In 2013 of the original timeline, Johnny has already had his career, and the band; he completed 5 solo albums and survived several assassination attempts. He also figuratively broke the hearts of a few women and less figuratively, of countless thugs. The lyrics of his songs touched upon important subjects for the future society. In the song Chippin In', for example, he sang "Cold chrome, molten lead; Can't be hurt cuz I'm already dead." The Clone Wars album, on the other hand, dealt with a breakthrough in cloning and, at the same time, caused the musician a lot of trouble due to the allusions to slavery that biotechnological corporations did not like.
Johnny Silverhand also has more atmospheric songs about the place of man in the urban jungle – (Out of) The City and Flashing Lights.
We can't wait to hear interpretation of Samurai's music by the very real band Refused in Cyberpunk 2077.
ON BASS – JOHN WICK
Keanu Reeves is primarily known as an actor, but he also has a certain musical output. Keanu was the bassist of the grunge band Dogstar (sometimes also sang), active between 1991 and 2002. Ultimately, however, he decided that an acting career was more important than music and left the band to play in movies.
Cyberspace
In an interview forPC Gamer, Pawel Sasko, lead quest designer in the team working on Cyberpunk, said that in their world, cyberspace is an extremely dark and dangerous place. That in order to survive there at all, you need the assistance of several netrunners. What's more, the influence of cyberspace on the body is very physical and very tangible – it can raise the body temperature, so without proper cooling, it literally can fry your brain. Sasko compared it to a processor running under heavy load – in this case, the whole netrunner is the processor.
Does this mean that access to the network is rare and difficult? Not at all. The authors draw a vision of a layered access – the one that has already been described is the deepest one, likely allowing to obtain the most valuable data. The online activity of medium risk is influencing the operations of devices or implants. This will certainly be the crux of the universe.
What remains is the most superficial layer, or the Internet. The Internet is controlled by armies and corporations, so that the content appearing on the web pages cannot be contrary to the interests of one or the other. Given how much influence Google and Facebook have in the real world, or how governments or associations thereof increasingly interfere and curb the freedom of the web, this vision does not seem far-off.
