411266 No.16627965
Your community on Multiculturalism.
>I actually love Rio and SP. And I have lots of friends in both cities. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that they are both dangerous and edge-living cities. I remember when I was last flying out of Rio, I turned on the local TV news and saw the local favela gangs were fighting the Policia Militare with rocket launchers. It doesn't get much more cyberpunk than that.
> after meeting a former Rio police officer, we decided to further arm the NCPD - after learning more about the Brazilian security force, the Night City Police Department have been too weak in comparison
http://archive.is/ebgOP
985060 No.16627991
>>16627965
H U E H U E B R B R
China is also pretty up there in terms of corruption and "White collar" crime.
7c4ee9 No.16627997
>>16627965
>starting a thread with Reddit screencaps
>making a thread on current year /v/ talking about any new vidya news that isn't Japanese or new Smash DLC
As excited as I am for 2077 OP this thread is a mistake and will be dragged to oblivion with people calling everyone shills.
0c6c75 No.16628005
Brazil is a beautiful country, try visiting it sometime to appreciate other people's culture. Not sure if Brazil's sunny weather is appropriate for grim dark cyberpunk game though.
89c01b No.16628007
so cyberpunk is another word for dystopian in his eyes?
985060 No.16628008
>>16628005
Just wait until it's night.
3d3c39 No.16628015
>>16628007
Cyberpunk is supposed to be dystopian, yes.
0c6c75 No.16628016
>>16628008
>game has day and night cycle
>have to always wait for the night to get into cyberpunk atmosphere
I don't like where this game is going.
985060 No.16628017
>>16628016
I was talking about Brazil, not the game.
107b84 No.16628034
>>16627991
Yea but China is *gasp* ethnically homogenuous.
0c6c75 No.16628046
Remember when all cyberpunk books and movies had to rely on japanese stuff? Those were the times when tokyo was seen as the most cyberpunk city ever.
022fa9 No.16628053
Apparently you can't get more cyberpunk than Vice City.
d1fa73 No.16628062
>>16628007
Are you actually retarded?
107b84 No.16628066
>>16628053
Vice City is more authentically 80s than anything this nu-neo-retro-wave-punk flood has achieved.
762c30 No.16628082
>>16628005
Nothing about the cyberpunk genre requires there to be no sun. There's a distinction between cyberpunk, and the particular aesthetic of Blade Runner.
cda8fd No.16628101
>>16628066
Obviously, since it was made by people who were actually cognizant during those times.
762c30 No.16628107
>>16628007
Dystopia - a society designed to oppress it's people
Cyberpunk - a society that is slowly crumbling and giving way to chaos
7c4ee9 No.16628120
>>16628082
NO! CYBERPUNK IS MEANT TO BE ABOUT NIGHT TIME NEON AND PERTURBATOR!!!!11
I hate how even if the game ends up being good it's going to be verboten to talk about here because underage faggots/idiots unfamiliar with the source material don't actually know what the genre is about.
022fa9 No.16628131
>>16628107
Wrong. Oppression is not a requirement of a dystopia. Any fictional horrible society is a dystopia. It could very well be crumbling and giving way to chaos.
107b84 No.16628133
>>16628120
"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."
>tfw zoomers think this means the sky was blue
262037 No.16628137
>>16628015
>>16628062
>cyberpunk is dystopian
no but you may be
0c6c75 No.16628138
>>16628120
Mike Pondsmith himself said that cyberpunk is all about night and rain.
b00233 No.16628149
Which video game is this thread about?
107b84 No.16628151
>>16628138
Maybe he's a faggot who doesn't grasp the differences between cyberpunk and noir.
441b3c No.16628159
>>16627965
Is that a roundabout way of saying he considers those two cities to be the biggest shitholes on the planet?
762c30 No.16628160
>>16628131
I think some kind of intentional design was always a requirement. An ineffectual society isn't a dystopia. That's just a failed society. Your go-to dystopias (1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451), are all settings where the society is operating exactly as it's designed to.
8f5aff No.16628161
>>16627965
1st world cities are fucking boring now tbh. sterile and full of oversensitive soypeople who cant produce anything beyond the cultural equivalent of drywall.
99e318 No.16628163
>>16628138
I don't think anybody is arguing that rainy nighttime cityscapes aren't a core aesthetic of the genre, but anybody who tells you that's an absolute requirement for a piece of media to be cyberpunk is retarded
>>16628151
The cyberpunk genre took a lot of its cues from paperback detective novels and noir fiction
441b3c No.16628167
>>16628005
>Brazil is a beautiful country
Africa is a beautiful continent, pity it's full of niggers, just like Brazil is full of disgusting spics.
762c30 No.16628170
>>16628133
>one setting in one novel
>it could have just been an overcast day
10e0f1 No.16628171
>>16628149
Cyberpunk 2077, sagefag.
485c15 No.16628173
>>16628161
you're saying that ghettos are soulful and everyone should imitate them, fellate a shotgun
107b84 No.16628176
>>16628170
How does that relate to what I posted?
441b3c No.16628178
>>16628138
Oh God, not this shit again. There's plenty of cyberpunk books, movies and games that don't push the "night neon" aesthetic. It's not a requirement of the setting, and it's mostly a callback to 80s Japan being a big influence on sci-fi of the era.
762c30 No.16628182
>>16628173
Cities in general are kind of horrible. People should live in towns and villages. I'd still much rather live in a boring city than a "soulful" city though.
762c30 No.16628186
>>16628176
It's a line from Neuromancer, isn't it?
441b3c No.16628199
>>16628186
IIRC it's the opening line for Neuromancer. But then you have shit like the Bridge Trilogy, from the same author, that usually takes place in broad daylight around San Francisco, so it's not like it's a requirement.
022fa9 No.16628202
>>16628160
Fahrenheit 451's society is coming apart at the seams, it doesn't last beyond the end of the book.
107b84 No.16628207
>>16628186
Yes, and?
The very first line in Neuromancer clearly states that it is, in fact, day. Otherwise the sky would simply be black.
441b3c No.16628217
>>16628182
>Cities in general are kind of horrible
That just translates to "cities are full of leftists and the niggers/spics/mudshits they import". Remove the two groups and cities are magically not shit again.
022fa9 No.16628244
>>16628202
Also, it wasn't designed to be the way it is, it came about accidentally through the actions of different groups.
762c30 No.16628267
>>16628207
Fair enough.
>>16628217
People aren't supposed to live in ant colonies regardless.
6cfe25 No.16628271
This is no surprise, there are plenty of examples in South America, especially so in SP and Rio that show the divide between rich and poor. Easily served as inspiration for CP2077.
But these places aren't just normal North American McMansion gated communities, these are sometimes entire city blocks with their own privatised roads and utilities, shopping malls, communal areas, work and school districts. Almost entirely self sufficient. Like with the case of Barra da Tijuca, its an entire island pretty much. I know of a Brazilian who got the opportunity to go into one of these places, and he said the border areas are constantly sat on by guards and designed in this sort of circular 'one way in-one way out' kind of way. Absolutely everything there was held to a higher standard too, including food and products sold in stores
227b39 No.16628273
>>16628034
Not at all, China is an empire. They have shitload of minorities and even culturally regions differ from each other, North and South China have almost nothing in common. Not having niggers doesn't mean you are homogenous, I wish burgers would understand this.
177518 No.16628291
>>16628217
Nah, even in a white conservative city you'd still have to deal with noise and traffic and shit. A large population of anything would be annoying.
f709c9 No.16628310
>>16627965
>>16628151
>implying cyberpunk's roots have not always been painted in noir
>implying novels and movies which inform "cyberpunk" as a genre haven't been largely Blade Runner style narratives–which, again, is inspired by noir
It's not that it NEEDS to be rainy nights and neon signs, it's that it needs to carry that feeling to it.
Cloudy days, gray hearts, hopeful rays of sunlight strangled by the factories' thick, choking clouds as they plume into the air and discolor the sky like blood corrupts water. A grim, oppressed yet perpetual atmosphere rife with the conflict between high corporatism and the forgotten man, the antagonism between the grimace of the morose or embittered soul below and the televised simulacrum of joy above, a joy sold like the promise of a drug that carries a high just as fleeting before you're dropped back down to the damp gutters of an alley so rotten, so forgotten, that days have passed with no one noticing the rotting limb sticking out of the dumpster.
BUT DUDE IT'S GOT TRUCKERS WITH ELECTRIC SHOTGUNS LAWL
I'm not saying Cyberpunk 2077 is gonna suck but there's a reason people are wary about it and as a defense mechanism are starting to dump on it so hard. We WANT a good cyberpunk game. Ruiner was the closest we've had in a long time, the pinnacle is probably Deus Ex, but we don't expect another Deus Ex nor do we want Ruiner 2.0 I mean, I do, but /v/ isn't a hivemind. People who like cyberpunk just want proper cyberpunk, and dumb jackasses who try to boil the issue down to
>"It's not at night and rainy so it sux gay lol"
are just retarding the discussion and being as stupid as those who tarnished the immigration issue with "dey took our jobs". It's South Park-tier willful ignorance of the issue.
If the aesthetic of your cyberpunk setting looks like somewhere people would like to visit, let alone live, then you failed.
3d3c39 No.16628320
>>16628271
That's what the sanfran corporate marxists want in the long term. Shitskin slave hordes living in poverty next to rich jewish tech fags.
762c30 No.16628321
>>16628310
>sunlight is attractive in and of itself.
Go and live in Africa then. The setting of Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a slum. I don't know what you're seeing in it.
f709c9 No.16628373
>>16628321
>The setting of Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a slum.
>like a slum
It looks like a tourist destination with a 1/3 Blade Runner copy (the building designs and billboards) and a "poor" part of town where the electro truckers live.
Considering their inspiration was RIO I can't imagine it looking any different. Not China, not Taiwan, not places which resemble cyberpunk's themes of corporatism run amok and further–but RIO.
>it's the wealth disparity tho
Not it's CDProjekt getting a free trip to the sexy parts of South America and justifying it with this nonsense.
note how most of their later trailers and almost all of the production artwork is set at nighttime, though. That's pretty funny.
762c30 No.16628377
>>16628373
It looks disgusting, hot and stifling. I'd rather visit the Blade Runner city, which actually has cosy aesthetics.
ce9ff3 No.16628391
>crying about days
There is a night and day cycle you fucking nigger, you'll get your balderunner shit.
f709c9 No.16628401
>>16628377
>It looks disgusting, hot and stifling
>Blade Runner has cosy aesthetics
You're trying too hard.
I posted what Bladerunner looks like during the day in my first post. I also posted what China and Taiwan can look like on their most oppressively toxic days (China is pretty frequent with that one). You're gonna compare that to techno-Rio and say it's better. You're gonna look at BR and say it's "cozy". get real
>>16628391
Way to make yourself look like a retard by not lurking before posting, faggot
3d3c39 No.16628405
>>16628391
It's like people think the sun doesn't shine on dystopian hellholes.
762c30 No.16628408
>>16628401
No, I'd much rather cool tech pyramids than future Brazil.
99e318 No.16628424
>>16628310
>>16628373
>M-M-MUH TRUCKERS
First you bitch about daylight, now you bitch about rednecks existing? Why would rednecks disappear just because society has transformed into a corporate-controlled globalist hellhole? You arguments are as weak as your attempt at a Gibsonian writing style.
b32102 No.16628429
>>16628373
I have a terrible feeling the main character is gonna be a huge douche or it's gonna be short as fuck.
f709c9 No.16628431
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>16628405
>It's like people think the sun doesn't shine
>>16628408
>I'd much rather cool tech pyramids
vid related. "cozy"
You're an idiot.
Also,
>future Brazil
future Brazil is gonna look like those actual slums in Africa, ghost towns filled with nothing but animals and goon hordes rape-beating one another.
99e318 No.16628433
>>16628431
>future Brazil is gonna look like those actual slums in Africa, ghost towns filled with nothing but animals and goon hordes rape-beating one another.
Isn't that what modern Brazil looks like?
762c30 No.16628438
>>16628431
Yeah, that's legitimately more cosy than anything I'm seeing in 2077. There's a certain quiet order to it all, and there are no random gang wars breaking on in the street.
ce9ff3 No.16628444
>>16628405
I don't know what the fuck you expect faggot.
Cybepunk film constantly portrays daytime.
Maybe you you want some shit like VTMB and Desu Sex but this is hardly that style of game and is based much more on free roam akin to GTA.
ce9ff3 No.16628450
>>16628438
>you will be engaging in gang warfare 100% of the time
762c30 No.16628454
>>16628450
That's basically the setting, yes.
a98345 No.16628456
>>16628133
Doesn't the book start in NIGHT CITY? You're forgetting the Rastafarian space stations and orbiting colonies. They go to sunny places in Neuromancer. There's a world there. It's not just one city.
762c30 No.16628460
>>16628456
No. The city is referred to as The Sprawl.
3d3c39 No.16628468
>>16628431
>vid related. "cozy"
Blade Runner is one comfy film. 2049 tried to get away from the comfyness with brutalist architecture and a more sterile indoor look but I still found it comfy.
>>16628444
I'm saying it's stupid to expect the sun to stop shining during daytime or turning the game into Morrowind. Git gud at reading comprehension.
99e318 No.16628469
>>16628460
Please stop posting. In Gibson's novels The Sprawl is a specific location in the United States. Neuromancer begins on an overcast, rainy day in Chiba, Japan.
f42e7a No.16628475
>>16628120
>>16628082
Nigger no one is complaining about the fact that it isn't neon/night you dumb fucking shill.
The aesthetic is S H I T. The game looks like a neat and orderly modern city without anything to relieve it of it's blandness.
When you have one of the god damn progenitors of the genre saying your game looks like "A gta5 mod" you have a damn problem.
762c30 No.16628486
>>16628469
Well, I haven't read it in ten years. It's not Night City though.
99e318 No.16628487
>>16628475
>When you have one of the god damn progenitors of the genre saying your game looks like "A gta5 mod" you have a damn problem.
William Gibson is a fucking retard who spends all day on Twitter complaining about how white people need to pay blacks reparations. He hasn't written a single good book since "All Tomorrow's Parties" in fucking 1999. He's been a has-been for two decades and you're an idiot if you treat anything he says as insightful.
f709c9 No.16628491
>>16628424
>First you bitch about daylight
Are you blind or stupid? When did I bitch about daylight? I said making the thing look like a tourist spot with a trailer park at one end doesn't fit with the genre and that noir was, in some small part, always part of cyberpunk's setting, because making the place look shiny and sunny and like rio de janero but with wires and lots of cyber billboards is stupid.
And apparently the devs agree since most of the production artwork is nighttime shots, too. It doesn't need to be at night, just needs to convey the cyberpunk aesthetic.
>Why would rednecks disappear just because society has transformed into a corporate-controlled globalist hellhole?
First, you're out of your mind if you think CDProjekt is gonna do anything even thematically, even just in their setting, about globalism. You're out of your mind. Their "diversity" is not about that message of the poison of open boarders though it would be great if it was.
Second, what the hell are rednecks–
~Also, if you got rednecks I better see "urban youth" chimp-outs. I better see that. Aside from some diverse gang fights, though, I doubt I will. I doubt we will get chimp-outs. Just "white trash" and no black trash. Just got this feeling considering it's AAA
What the hell are rednecks doing in cyberpunk? Trailer parks are the furthest I think of when it comes to futuristic slums. It's just stupid, and the electro shotgun with the fatty trucker and his smoking pregnant wife is indicative of a lot of things on the dev's minds, with cyberpunk being furthest from it. That's why I keep bringing it up, as another reason people are suspicious about this.
>>16628468
>Blade Runner is one comfy film.
No it isn't. You probably find it comfy in hindsight, as an old classic to enjoy, like most people, but Blade Runner is nothing close to comfy or cozy, and it's certainly not a place anyone would want to live in if they are at all honest (and not currently living in a real hellhole)
762c30 No.16628493
>>16628475
It doesn't look neat and orderly. It does look a bit like a modern city, which is to say it looks like a crime ridden shithole.
3d3c39 No.16628504
>>16628487
I'd argue Gibson isn't just a retarded corporate marxist but has also never written a good book and the only reason cyberpunk is a thing is due to comics, Blade Runner and Akira. It's an aesthetic more than anything.
3d3c39 No.16628507
>>16628504
Oh and Ghost in the Shell.
ce9ff3 No.16628508
>>16628491
>What the hell are rednecks doing in cyberpunk?
Neon signed pit-stops during the night. Walking into a crowded bar filled with scum and smoke.
f42e7a No.16628516
>>16628487
>hurr durr his political opinions are typical retarded boomer trash this invalidates the point
>>16628493
I swear to fucking god CDProjektRed fans are the god damn worst. But they're Polish and "ebin based" so they can't do anything wrong, right?
The game looks bland and uninspired. They utterly fucked up the "High tech low life" aesthetic with generic designs and ugly artistic inspiration.
Also, you faggots who keep saying the complaint is about the sun existing clearly aren't very familiar with cyberpunk in the slightest. It outs you as the poser fanboys you fucking are.
Go look at Transmetropolitan for an example of something that's colourful and sunny whilst managing to establish the proper aesthetic and atmosphere.
>>16628507
The guy behind Ghost in the Shell literally spends all day making blacked porn and cuckshit these days.
762c30 No.16628521
>>16628504
Neuromancer's only really good for the initial third or so. Then it's all space traveling Rastafarians and muh evil rich people.
762c30 No.16628523
>>16628516
I played The Witcher for like ten minutes. I'm not invested in this company. I just think you're wrong.
d71616 No.16628530
>>16628273
yea but those are people who have been historically living there and they all live in separate regions they're not mixed together. Its like saying Norway isn't homogeneous because the of the few Sami who live up north
3d3c39 No.16628537
>>16628491
>No it isn't.
It is, and Blade Runner is almost utopian compared to modern day Rio.
>>16628516
>The guy behind Ghost in the Shell literally spends all day making blacked porn and cuckshit these days.
The manga or the animated film? I think the film had more impact than the manga honestly.
411266 No.16628558
You imagine CyberPunk the same way the leddit fags does, a bunch of pink visual pollution, you forget about the chaotic dystopia world as the principal.
485cf8 No.16628559
>>16628516
>The guy behind Ghost in the Shell literally spends all day making blacked porn and cuckshit these days.
Japan is falling fucking fast these days.
f42e7a No.16628597
>>16628537
The manga definitely lacked the impact the movie did. Then again you can say the same for a lot of cyberpunk media.
Warning ahead, these spoilers contain his awful shit.
>>16628559
To be fair Masamune Shirow is basically blacklisted. Supposedly they consider him a degenerate and he's fucking awful to work with.>>16628559
762c30 No.16628611
>>16628601
I don't know what I was expecting.
3d3c39 No.16628613
>>16628597
>Supposedly they consider him a degenerate
Rightfully so, even the original manga was degenerate as shit and it seems it has just gotten worse if those pics are anything to go by.
f5f911 No.16628621
441b3c No.16628651
>>16628597
>The manga definitely lacked the impact the movie did
And the movie pretty much set the tone for every other GitS adaptation thereafter since 2nd GIG and Arise pretty much look and feel like pseudo sequels and prequels to it.
>To be fair Masamune Shirow is basically blacklisted
He's not, though. He just seems to have given up on writing manga and now just draws bestiality and interracial porn. I remember him pretty much refusing to work on the adaptation of GitS after Tank Police for whatever reason.
>>16628613
>even the original manga was degenerate as shit
IIRC he refused to draw non-lesbian stuff because he didn't want to draw dicks. Guess dementia finally caught up with him in his old age.
762c30 No.16628667
GitS never quite worked for me as a franchise. I think it's because the Major is a boring Mary Sue waifu insert. I like it more when they focus on Batou and Togusa, since they're actual characters.
99e318 No.16628669
>>16628504
>has also never written a good book
I don't know about this, I rather enjoyed both the Sprawl and Bridge trilogies
>the only reason cyberpunk is a thing is due to comics, Blade Runner and Akira
This statement does have some merit as there were multiple cyberpunk works that came before Neuromancer, and to an extent Gibson's early work was fairly derivative. That being said, it was really Neuromancer that put the genre on the map for much of the mainstream West. It would be a bit extreme to claim that he had no influence.
>>16628516
>hurr durr his political opinions are typical retarded boomer trash this invalidates the point
Gibson hasn't done anything relevant for the genre in twenty years and it would be stupid to suggest that his opinions regarding modern cyberpunk fiction hold any value.
441b3c No.16628687
>>16628669
>in twenty years
He hasn't done anything relevant since 1999, period. Hell, has anyone heard about anything he's done since All Tomorrow's Parties came out?
Then again, outside of games cyberpunk has pretty much died out as a genre, largely because we're living it and so it became speculative fiction. With games it's basically retro-futurism at this point.
99e318 No.16628696
>>16628687
>Hell, has anyone heard about anything he's done since All Tomorrow's Parties came out?
There was a documentary about him called "No Maps for These Territories" that was made in 2000. It's essentially an hour and a half interview with him. It's an interesting watch. Other than that it seems like he's written a handful of articles, a so-bad-its-good X-Files episode, some short stories, and four books that aren't really fun to read.
441b3c No.16628722
>>16628696
It's still kind of surprising that a guy as technologically illiterate as Gibson is the most well known writer of the genre. Then again, he predicted Miku and 4chan years before they were a thing so maybe the guy was onto something.
99e318 No.16628860
>>16628491
>you're out of your mind if you think CDProjekt is gonna do anything even thematically, even just in their setting, about globalism
The entire cyberpunk genre is about globalism run amok. It's a scenario in which the nation-state has either been destroyed or made subservient to international financial interests. It would be impossible to have a piece of cyberpunk media detached from the underlying theme of a globalist world.
>What the hell are rednecks doing in cyberpunk? Trailer parks are the furthest I think of when it comes to futuristic slums.
Trailer parks are a type of slum that are present in certain social and geographic areas. Trailers are low-quality housing for low-income people. You could very easily make a cyberpunk story that's set in a trailer park. I'm not sure why this is an issue for you.
>Also, if you got rednecks I better see "urban youth" chimp-outs
Aren't there two gangs that are black-only? I agree with you though that I doubt the portrayal of nonwhites will be as accurate as it should be.
>>16628722
He used to be pretty good at recognizing trends and seeing how they would evolve and intermingle. He lost that sometime around 9/11, and I think he even says so in an interview or foreward somewhere. A lot of authors who were writing socially or politlcally speculative fiction lost their way at that point because, to them, the event was so far out of left field that they had trouble adapting to it. I also think the rate of technological progress outstripped Gibson's ability to predict it use, and that didn't really help him either.
68f338 No.16629070
>>16628860
The only problem I see with the Rednecks is that their style is cribbed from white trash instead of being a degeneration of the styles that Nomads in the tabletop were typically depicted in. I think it would be more true to the setting if they instead were dressed like folks from mad max that sold out: worn handmade leather and metal protective wear over factory made clothes bearing clashingly bright megacorp logos, half-finished body sculpts to fix scars and deformities. Imagine Mad Max dejectedly weighing a well-used sawn-off shotgun in one hand against a neon pink composite auto-pistol.
That being said I remember reading in one of the supplements that the nomads had been socially engineered into existence to provide the mobile labor parties necessary for rebuilding America after the crash, by this point they'd probably have already been wiped out and reintegrated since by around 2027 in the games timeline they mention America is mostly back on its feet, just got to find a way to stop the Euros from dropping rocks on them.
7e4ea0 No.16630490
>>16628273
Well most people don't think of rural China when they hear the name, more HK which afaik is 99% Han Chinese
5c35dd No.16639542
>>16628273
China floods the areas it conquers with Han Chinese, so that the demographics are tipped in China's favour and whiny conquered people stop complaining because they lost everything, ending up genocided because the area they lived in was filled to the brim with Han Chinese.
36f42f No.16642772
>>16628310
>It's not that it NEEDS to be rainy nights and neon signs, it's that it needs to carry that feeling to it.
No, it doesn't. Ghost in the Shell (the best cyberpunk franchise) generally did not have that feeling. It also went away from the retarded "corporations are the root of all evil" bullshit and was more about government corruption first and foremost, which made it feel more realistic.
003781 No.16642807
>>16628107
>Cyberpunk - a society that is slowly crumbling and giving way to chaos
No, most cyberpunk settings are the intentional result of transnat corporate greed run amok, crushing both the masses of humanity and the planet itself in an iron grip that would be impossible without powerful and omnipresent technology.
>>16642772
GiTS, while its technology and global setting is definitely cyberpunk, is IMHO too cheery in tone for its story and characters to qualify as cyberpunk, though I'd say this is more the result of narrative perspective than the worldbuilding itself.
GiTS' protagonists are basically what would be the antagonists in any other cyberpunk story, and the entire setting (Japan, which is explicitly described as having dodged most of the horrendous devastation that pummeled the rest of the globe in World Wars III & IV) is basically identical to current-day Japan beyond technology being more advanced, and the occasional refugee or foreign aid mission to the more typical cyberpunk hellscape beyond the ocean.