Television is becoming full fan for video game adaptations.
Earlier this month, Amazon gave the green light to a new series based on the award-winning PlayStation game God of Warwith Wheel of Time presenter Rafe Judkins and extension creators Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby on board.
by HBO Our LastThe much-anticipated small-screen version of the 2013 action-adventure game by Naughty Dog and Sony, created by ChernobylCraig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, one of the game’s original directors, will premiere on January 15.
They join a long list of game-to-series adaptations, from Halo (Paramount+) to Twisted metal (peacock) and horizon (Netflix). Besides war gameAmazon is also moving forward with a TV version of its post-apocalyptic strategy game Fall outgoverned by western world creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan.
The adaptations all hope to capitalize on the game’s devoted loyal fan base. But Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the hit anime series released by Netflix earlier this year, does much more. Almost alone, the series restored the game it was based on: Electronic 2077.
Flashback to 2020. Polish video game company CD Projekt, following the success of its global hit series witch — which has just been adapted into a hit Netflix show starring Henry Cavill — has released a new title, Electronic 2077: a sci-fi adventure story set in a futuristic world where biotechnological innovations have become the norm and the boundaries between physical and digital are increasingly blurred. . It was arguably the biggest game release of the year and was heavily touted in gigabytes, in part due to the involvement of Keanu Reeves, who appeared as a (unplayable) cyberpunk mercenary. be) in the game’s open world, the megacity called Night. City.
Keanu Reeves in ‘Cyberpunk 2077’
Courtesy of Bandai Namco Entertainment
Then there was the backlash. The first release is buggy and error prone. Massive customer complaints. Some of the game’s investors even sued CD Projekt, claiming that they were scammed (the company settled the case out of court for about $1.85 million). Patches and updates are tracked and Electronic 2077 went on to become the hit everyone expected, selling over 20 million copies worldwide. But the stain is still there. For many gamers, the initial faulty release caused electronic a dictionary for disaster.
Until Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. The Netflix series was announced shortly after Electronic 2077‘s bows at the E3 video game trade show in Los Angeles and Europe’s Gamescom but before the backlash against the game begins. By the time the series premiered — Netflix ended its showing on September 13 of this year — expectations, at least from video game fans, were low.
They were wrong. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a hit out of the gate. The series is set in Night City about a year before the events of the video game and focuses on a teenager (voiced in English by Zach Aguilar) who becomes “Edgerunner” — a mercenary hacker — to survive, the show immediately made it to Netflix’s list of the 10 most watched (non-English) shows worldwide. During its first week of streaming, September 12-18, the show racked up about 14,880,000 hours of viewing, according to Netflix’s own figures.
Equally impressive, the show is one of the highest rated shows ever in Netflix history, with a 100% score on Rotten Tomato.
Saya Elder, producer and director of English localization, said: “We didn’t target the target audience and we didn’t expect this success. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. Talking to Hollywood Reporter at the latest edition of the Lucca Comics and Games trade fair, in five days CD Projekt’s booth was filled with thousands of electronic fan. “For us, border runner supposed to be a good series, but we weren’t expecting a hit. The host, Rafal Jaki, told us: ‘I need to do something that I like, that’s like my own; if it’s like that then others will like it too.’”
It helped with that border runner Animated by renowned Japanese animation studio Studio Trigger and directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi, the team behind series like Kill la Kill and Star Wars: Vision. And that the series was abandoned at a time when worldwide anime was booming.
Elder said: “Anime can transcend borders and other divisions with their own special features. “In the US, the number of anime fans is increasing. The audience is no longer prejudiced. Things are different in the industry, even in regards to video games. For a long time, the source material was not respected and we have seen the results. However [now] Everything has changed and is changing.”
The success of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners even restored the original game’s tarnished reputation. For the Elder, the lesson of border runner is to never give up: despite the backlash Electronic 2077CD Projekt continues to push for implementation border runner as best as possible, taking fan feedback into account when formulating the story of the series, which many reviewers see as an improvement over the game’s original.
Currently, there are no specific plans for a second season of border runner, but, Elder said, she doesn’t rule anything out. “We invite our fans to continue to follow us. We will not let them down.”
