Welcome to deleted saves on this episode Cyber Drunk The Shadowrun Returns trilogy retrospective In 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was released with much anticipation and fanfare only to show up a broken mess that ignited the gaming sphere with its sorry state.

Then was quietly fixed by CD project in the background and re released with its Phantom Liberty DLC which seems to fix most of the major issues.

And everyone who dipped out on the game had the first time had the chance to go replay it, and many ended up loving it or first time players who'd who'd waited never knew how hilarious and frustrating the issues with it were.

By now, whether you played the game or not, we all know this story and it is part of the annals of gaming history as both warning and comeback story.

And of course, if you don't know, Cyberpunk 2077 was based on a tabletop RPG not unlike Dungeons and Dragons named Cyberpunk 2020 when it was first released in 1990, an updated version of an earlier 1988 edition retroactively known as Cyberpunk 2013.

The main campaign of Cyberpunk 2077 is even based on one of the most famous tabletop scenarios for that setting called Never Fade Away.

But what if I told you that is hardly the only Cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game that has been turned into a video game?

Some of you may know where this is going, but I'll give you a little history anyway.

In 1989 a competing cyberpunk setting was released called Shadowrun.

How did this game differ from its competitor?

Well, its main difference is that unlike social collapse and corporate greed in Shadowrun, the whole crux of the story and its social upheaval and turn to cybernetics was wildly the return of magic to the world.

Yep, honest to Christ, real D and DI shoot the darkness with magic missile sorcery.

This sudden return causes the various indigenous nations to rise up and try and retake all the continental United States, and they almost succeed in forcing everyone whose ancestors ever came to the United States, willingly or not, by means other than by birth thousands of years earlier in the concentration camps to be deported.

Sounds familiar but they get told by every other nation on earth in no uncertain terms that none of these non-native people don't have any home to go back to as they're all Americans now.

And the indigenous Americans are causing the world's largest humanitarian crisis during a time of tremendous global upheaval and they will trigger a retaliatory World War.

So instead of the SO instead the entire western half of the US barring a few outposts like Seattle, WA are seated back to the native people and the entire East Coast is kept for non natives which becomes a giant unified slum.

Is this likely some kind of racist trope in a world building setup?

Yeah, probably.

Look, this kind of shit is never going away.

Everyone hates everyone else and everyone is killing each other for their slice of the dwindling pie.

We can only look at things like this and point it out uselessly.

Oh, and here's the other thing.

This return of magic triggers something latent in the human genome that causes many humans to revert to their quote UN quote natural state and become elves, dwarves, trolls, and a few other traditional fantasy races.

Otherwise, pretty much everything else in the plot is the plot of Neuromancer.

Weird, huh?

There were a few games set in the Shadow Run universe before, most notably one for the SNES and one for the Sega Genesis, which were two separate titles in name and plot.

Otherwise very little for decades afterward, except for a 2007 shooter.

However, in 2012, developer Harebrained Schemes, at the behest of director John Jordan Wiseman, wanted to make a more authentic Shadowrun video game experience, so he launched A Kickstarter that was very successful.

So in 2013, Shadowrun Returns landed on all major platforms for the time as a traditional CRPG similar to Wasteland 2 or Pillars of Eternity, which had the same levels of success.

So that, if I may borrow the phrase from a friend of the show's over at Retro Hangover if they'll allow it, is your brief history.

So let's get into this.

As stated, 2013 would see this new CRPG set in Seattle, the most common setting for the tabletop game, and it would be called Shadow Run Returns.

This is an isometric title modeled on the look of the SNES Shadowrun title and features turn based combat and squad building from a few allies that are willing to join your main character.

One that you build like you would a character from any other CRPG since Balder's Gate.

The basic plot is this.

You play an old friend of a guy named Sam Watts who is dead and his death caused a dead man Switch trigger.

There is a 100,000 new yen, the currency of the setting reward to the person who can bring his killer to justice.

It turns out poor Sam was a victim of the Emerald City Ripper, a serial killer known for terrorizing Seattle by removing the organs of his or her or their victims.

You will briefly meet Jake Armitage, the protagonist of the SNES game, so a nice nod by Hairbrained Studios there and you will UN are unleashed upon Seattle to solve this crime and get a huge payday for it.

Sadly, the Ripper is just the first step in the quest which takes you all across Seattle, following the dots from a killer to a cult to a mega Corp, building chemical weapons intent on killing nature spirits and upsetting the world balance in favor of the old world.

I don't really want to spoil too much, not my usual thing I know, but this really is a game that needs to be experienced as a counterpoint to Cyberpunk 2077, which at times felt bloated and meandering, where Shadowrun Returns was a fairly tight experience and holy shit was this game a pastel and neon electrode fever dream.

I love genre blends in gaming, so the concept of high fantasy mixed with dystopian science fiction was a must play for me.

And you know what?

It was OK.

I've played a lot of CRPGS over the years, so Shadowrun Returns was not exactly mind blowing for me.

Plus I felt like I already knew what to do before I ever booted up the game.

From how to make a character to the story beats to anything else that I would expect along the way, but the visual flair and mechanical additions beyond the standard pause and think tactics of these type of games is what kept me going.

The soft hybrid cartoonish and realistic graphics, the necessity of having to cast magic along Ley lines in the tactical map as opposed to wherever you wanted added, the level of challenge to the game or needing to take cover were very welcome additions.

Such things help keep the game fresh and fun.

However, when it was released, it received the dreaded mostly positive reviews and sits at a 76 on Metacritic.

Many outlets at the time did give it sevens and eights out of 10, so it was hardly reviewed poorly, but it didn't really seem to resonate with the larger public outside the PC gaming fanatics, fans of the TTRPG, and those who already like computer RPGs.

Even 10 years on I don't hear a lot of people talking about this title, which is sad to me that it got overshadowed by some of the others in the CRPG renaissance we experienced in the mid twenty 10s.

I personally think it is a the superior cyberpunk role-playing game released almost a decade before the disaster that was its closest competitor, but this was hardly the last we would see of this setting.

Originally released as a DLC expansion for Shadowrun Returns in 2014, Shadowrun Dragonfall would later release an expansion pack that would make it a stand alone title later that same year.

The mechanics were exactly the same as the previous title and much of the first game.

You will start this game as an unknown and untested Shadowrunner mercenary that you will build out of character points and spare parts.

You arrive in the anarchic Free State of the city of Berlin and are added as a new recruit to an established shadow run and mercenary squad.

Your first mission, an attack on a military compound, goes terribly wrong as one would expect, and the squad leader, Monica is killed.

But before she dies she says that something called Firewing is dying.

Turns out Firewing is an actual God damn dragon, the kind out of myth and legend in a world of nu yen and cybernetic Internet jacking not seen since Johnny Mnemonic was in theaters.

And it quickly turns into a plot where you might have to rescue said dragon from whoever is holding a prisoner, or slay it once and for all and suffer a terrible consequence in the progress.

This game definitely turns one of the oldest and most worn through plots in fantasy fiction, that of slaying the dragon on its synthetic skin ear, and this one was a pretty good game in my opinion.

It fared better than the previous game, with many outlets citing the writing, pacing and gameplay which had been improved upon, and a save problem from the first game that had been fixed.

The Director's Cut version of Shadowrun Dragonfall sits in an 87 on Metacritic, and this game certainly plays more like a neon and glitz silk Balder's Gate, except with shotguns and high-powered rifles taking the place of swords and spells.

The best part is you don't really need to play the previous title to enjoy this one, so if you're looking for a real twist on the high fantasy myths we have all grown a bit weary of, even for die hard fans, then this title might just be for you.

Released in 2015 after a successful Kickstarter campaign by Harebrained Scheme Studios to make additional content for the Shadowrun series, Shadowrun Hong Kong arrived for the world to enjoy.

Set in the free enterprise zone of Hong Kong in the year 2056, so pre empting the more well known 2077 target date by a few years, this game is perhaps most like its competitor game as it takes place in a city directly controlled by various mega corporations who have carved the city up like a fat Thanksgiving Turkey.

Although the game mechanics are the same, unlike the previous two titles, your character is more connected to the actual game world rather than just being some character dropped into the situation last minute like a family in the proverbial ointment and you arrive with an actual back story.

You and your foster brother Duncan, both Seattle orphans, are called to Hong Kong by your foster father just after you got out of prison after an 8 year term.

Arriving on scene, you see what this mysterious message is about.

You, your brother, your brother's superior in the private police organization they work for, and a few other shadow runners are attacked by the Hong Kong police force.

And this leads to a tour around the sights of Hong Kong of the future, one of the backstabbing and alleyway battles among towers of glass and steel and ancient Chinese landmarks suffering from the grossly incandescent glamours of the world of twisted magic.

And computers run amuck.

This is also the game I failed to finish, and the one I connected with the least when it came out.

It still received the aforementioned generally positive reviews from any game outlets in 2015, and sits at an 81 on Metacritic.

It's not a bad game, but it didn't really land for me.

Reviewers seem to be tiring of the Shadowrun CRPG formula by this third installment of the series, as many complained that the gameplay did not showcase anything new, but more streamlined the formula that had already been established.

I guess if it isn't broke, don't fix it, but the Shadowrun games are meant more to be story games, not necessarily new and unusual play gameplay experiences each and every title.

But I can understand why reviewers were seeking novelty.

Yet many gamers themselves are content to play the exact same formulaic gameplay patterns over and over.

Familiarity is more important to us when we are playing far less games than those played by the average professional reviewer.

But perhaps none of that matters, for this would be the last of the return of the Shadowrun series up to this point, with Harebrained Schemes being acquired by Paradox Interactive after 2015 but failing to live up to whatever bullshit metrics Paradox demanded, and by 2024 Paradox decided to sever ties with Harebrained.

What happens to that studio from here?

We shall see.

Over the years of the show, I've talked a lot of video games based around tabletop role-playing game properties, and now I'm adding Shadowrun Tabletop to that list.

It really amazes me how many games of these hobbies have come to influence video games.

And now, conversely, younger and newer players have begun to treat tabletop games as some sort of video game.

So many Dungeons and Dragons titles I've reviewed White Wolf games for Vampire the Masquerade and Hunter the Reckoning, Cyberpunk itself, Call of Cathulu.

I'm sure I will eventually be adding Games Workshop cash cow Warhammer 40K to that mix as well.

I can see where it can be hard to keep up with all of these properties being made into various and variety of games that most players probably wouldn't normally stumble upon or touch with 1000 foot pole.

I can also see why a lesser known property like Shadowrun could slip through the cracks, especially when it caters to such a niche portion of the game hobby.

But I am glad to bring reviews like this to the larger public, and who knows, maybe something I talk about may make someone curious about the genre that the game covers can or can bring players to the table for games that aren't just hobbits and humans taking the ring to Mount Doom for the thousandth in one time in one way or another.

But I encourage you, dear listeners, go seek out this.

Shadowrun Trilogy, probably on sale would be best.

While there is a console compilation game that has all three titles in it, you really are better off playing this one on PC.

It offers the better overall experience and depth of story in play than consoles for all their modern power can really offer.

Sure, the Shadowrun Trilogy of games has no Planescape Torment, but they are definitely worth your time, even if I did struggle with the third game in the series.

As they say, get ready to Jack in Decker.

This ain't your daddy's cyberpunk story.

Thank you for listening.

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