RoboCop is best known for keeping criminals in line in a grimy, dystopian Detroit, but in a recent fan-edit, the mechanical man takes the fight for justice to the streets of Cyberpunk 2077's Night City.
A recent edit uploaded to YouTube by user eli_handle_b.wav blends footage from the RoboCop films with in-game recorded footage from CD Projekt Red's cyberpunk RPG to create a brand new take on an old classic, replacing Alex Murphy's background as a Detroit police officer with a new origin story as a Night City rocker.
Of course, some elements of Murphy's story can't be changed no matter what dystopian city overrun by corporations he's in. The poor guy still takes a reasonably fatal beating from some criminals in an alley, and he's still revived as a half-man, half-machine officer of the law and forced to contend with his own humanity and mortality. He also, of course, still says "Dead or alive, you're coming with me."
Cyberpunk 2077 and RoboCop actually share certain themes regarding identity and transhumanism, so eli_handle_b.wav is able to slip RoboCop into the game fairly naturally. When an NPC says "Unbelievable, that bastard's still somewhere in your head," it's all too easy to see the bridge between the two stories. The description of the video, a barely altered summary of RoboCop, reads "In a dystopic and crime-ridden Night City, a terminally wounded rocker returns to life as a powerful cyborg haunted by submerged memories."
RoboCop looks awfully at home in a first-person video game setting, and developer Teyon happens to agree. The studio recently released a gameplay trailer for its upcoming first-person shooter based on the original film, RoboCop: Rogue City. While Rogue City is unlikely to feature any cameos from Johnny Silverhand, it will feature the voice of original RoboCop actor Peter Weller. The Cyberpunk 2077 edit also prominently features Weller, since eli_handle_b.wav only lifted footage from the first two RoboCop films, before the role of Detroit's most brutal robot man fell into the hands of a rotating series of successors.
RoboCop: Rogue City will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows in June 2023. Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Microsoft Windows and Google Stadia. Night City residents who'd like to try making some Cyberpunk 2077 edits of their own can check the mods used in the video's description.
Source: YouTube