One of the biggest things about Maelstrom to keep in mind is that some of them were forcibly augmented and stolen from the streets. We see evidence of it in dealing with one of the Cyberpsychos in the game. They also communicate with wild daemons and actively abuse substances that kill others due to their cyberware. Most Maelstrommers likely have a highly altered form of Disassociative Identity Disorder, with their original personalities having become insane and feral while they survive as new identities created by the gang as they are inducted.
@@dbonechisthay are cabelbel of Organisation following orders and most important cohesive speech non of these trades are found on actual cyberspychose plus how do you explain the cyberpsycho demon ?
PLUS they also don't have extreme cyberware. none of it is very heavy like a sandy or something so they mostly have appearance ones it's a far greater risk when they have a sandy or something similar
@@dbonechis Like... V's Fury from Edgerunner perk is basically nerfed in duration highly functional Cyberpsychosis and all they feel when they are in that state is that they are kinda high on something, but they still see reality as it is and not some hallucinations
Is hinted that Cyberpsychosis doesn't work like how everyone thinks it works, specially in Edgerrunners; you won't get it by simply getting a lot of chrome but getting a lot of chrome normally means that you get into a lot of trouble and in Night City that means that getting shot is the least you're gonna go through. Basically, is PTSD made worse by how cybernetics are directly link to the brain of the user.
Yep. Even Adam is a counterpoint. He is a genuine psychopath, no cyber. In having never considered himself worthlessly human, he was able to work with any and all chrome, starting with his original Dragoon full body prosthetic.
@@amergingiles Adam Smasher, Lizzy Whizzy, Maelstrom members, hell even Takemora and the Bodyguards of the Arisakas as well as at the Hotel, did no one bother paying attention during the Regina Jones quest line, the whole point was to show it's a coverup created by the media, corporations, and local government officials, every and I mean every Cyberpsycho you faced against had a trigger where they had a mental breakdown of some kind, and it was because of Night City and the pressure of whatever situation they faced that they just mentally snapped, the chrome they have installed just makes them a pain the ass to deal with is all.
@@nocturnal101ravenous6 but we could argue that all maelstrom members and people like smasher and Lizzy DO have cyber psychosis. In fact it is said directly about Adam that he is a cyberpsycho. Lizzy kills someone and can't even recognize herself anymore after her transformation, and the others jobs is literally to kill people or be in a gang. It's probably just that they're already murderers or crazy to begin with so you don’t notice it. And there are many versions of psychotic disorders.
I'm not sure why everyone is making cyberpyschosis more than it is. It's just regular psychosis along with the reality you can begin to break down like bad tech over time and have to stay prepped and prepared. Maximum Mike says it on his podcast: he heard all the corps got together and implemented planned obsolescence into all cyberware code. Like cheap cellphones. Cyberpsychosis is just a meme so no one actually has to anything to help.
@@HelloThere.....I've seen people describe Adam as a "high-functioning cyberpsycho". I think that's a good way of looking at those people: they lost their empathy for humans, but are still in control of their actions
If you play through all the cyberpsycho missions and read their shards, they all have alternative reasons for their behaviour beyond just 'bad chrome'. I think the point was to hint that cyberpsychosis is a way for the NCPD and tech corps to dismiss cases of people lashing out after being treated horribly by just saying 'cyberpsycho'. That way they can cover themselves and avoid public outcry.
Nah, it's a phenomenon as old as the first versions of the Cyberpunk RPG. While it's certain many of those cases were indeed either cover ups or just explanations of "regular" bouts of violence in a very distressing environment, it's made clear that it's a real condition, though it's not researched to the fullest capacity, as keeping cyberpsychos in labs and stuff doesn't end well for anyone involved. In fact, Mike Pondsmith clearly wants it to be thought of as a "lost humanity Event", where the feral side of a person overtakes the rational mind. It doesn't just happen, but is a result of years of abuse, both internal and external, mental and physical.
@@KnightspaceORG The original phenomenon was that as you got more Chrome more of the Corps subvertory tech was in you until you were basically a owned puppet. Thats the actual reason it stripped you of your humanity. But that got toned down a bit in the newer editions for rather obvious reasons for someone selling a game. The videogame kind of runs back towards that original conception of it not being a innate thing but really just a symptom of broader stuff
Nearly every cyberpsycho we deal with in the game is suffering from immense physical/mental/psychological trauma. In some cases they aren't out-of-control crazy...they're taking revenge on their tormentors. But mind-control may enter into it as well.
It is both actually. While cyberpsychosis is an indepented product of PTSD + Stress + Chrome + All the things that come with Cyberpunk dystopian hellscape there is also a mission in thr game (sandra dorset plotline) where it is bacicly confirmed that a company developed a way to induce cyberpshchosis in people
@@jurekovacic1739seems simple enough. If it's (mostly) caused by a high amount of stress on their brains due to cyberware, then you can just make the software artificially add that same stress. It's like this: your computer will crash if you run too many programs at once. But if you only have one program open, it can still crash if that one program does something wrong and your computer trips itself up. That's likely a good canon explanation for the RAM limit and cyberware cooldowns in game, as well. Use it too often, it slows down the software and your brain freaks out. Of course, the difference is if they do it on purpose it's permanent not temporary.
Its not mentioned in Cyberpunk directly, but in other sci-fi, there's a theory that cyber psychosis and related illnesses are actually caused, or at least greatly exacerbated by the brain losing connection to the rest of the body. Our brains relieve constant input and feedback from our bodies, limbs, and organs. When large parts of those limbs or organs are removed, that feedback stops. The brain will try and adapt to account for the missing input, but it can cause issues like phantom limb syndrome. When you add in the fact the neural links between implants and the nervlus system are not perfect at the best of times, and you end up with a brain that is being assaulted with missing feedback, incorrect fedback, and signals its just not used to interpreting and you have a perfect recipe for mental illness, in the most literal sense. When you add in the stresses of budget implants, shoddy implant surgeries, gang life, drug use, and life in a dystopia cyber hellscape, it's no wonder people go cyberpsycho.
amazing comment. I was thinking of the same thing. It's because the additional links to the brain are not natural but artificial, so for our brain to adapt to something that it cannot even begin to comprehend because it is not part of what it's used to, then that is the cause and is the recipe for the disaster.
There’s a similar phenomenon in sci fi where our bodies and our brains reject cyber augmentation because the way our brains are designed like you said to receive stimuli and other information from natural limbs. Using Deue Ex as an example, most people require a drug to make our bodies accept augmentation but our brains and bodies develop resistances to those drugs. The potential dissociative effects our brains experience due to stress are also a factor when it comes to augmentation. Our bodies aren’t designed to be augmented with foreign machines placed in our bodies, especially permanent ones. The reaction times of an artificial nerve connection are also likely slower than a natural nerve connection. Even if nano machines can counter this and speed up our response times we’d develop a response to those machines in our system. In theory we can handle limited augmentation without too many side effects, but too much and our brains don’t know what to do and assume our bodies are under attack.
This would be a perfectly rational explanation. Another, equally compelling explanation is that every time a cyber psycho cracks and zeroes a crowd of unlucky chooms in the park, MaxTac gets a new super soldier. Biotech and Netwatch stocks skyrocket. Chrome peddling corpos drop a million creds on their new Rayfield Caliburn supercars. It's not a stretch to figure out cyberpsychosis is a feature, not a bug.
Mike Pondsmith also said cyberpsychosis is basically a violent ptsd outburst, when you do the cyberpsycho side gigs you'll notice most if not all of the people you're to knock out or kill are actually war veterans
there’s one cyber psycho veteran I remember where he was denied his medical prescriptions and he was discharged while he still had his combat implants in him. That’s if I remembered correctly it’s been a while
@@_.10.cents._ that's spot on, yes. he was discharged but kept his super high-end combat implants as well as a heavy dose of PTSD, coupled with running out of his stress medication he then went off the rails. while fighting him he also tells V to leave while they still can. poor guy!
@@_.10.cents._ that's spot on, yes. he was discharged but kept his super high-end combat implants as well as a heavy dose of PTSD, coupled with running out of his stress medication he then went off the rails. while fighting him he also tells V to leave while they still can. poor guy!
@@beeb5872I always feel bad for them. A lot of them aren't bad people, and they don't want to hurt anyone. Like the one in the big mech body out in the agricultural area. He was horrified at what he'd done, but he was forced into it because they had implanted him into a giant robot body while he was unconscious. He thought V was sent by the gang to finish him off after he killed other gangoons.😊
Maelstrom are affected by Cyberpsychosis. A shard and news report in game says at least 2/3 of the gang are at least affected by it and 1/3 are straight Cyberpsychos. The game doesn't describe cyberpsychosis that well but the information is well documented in the TTRPG.
I think that Arasaka giving Smasher specific treatments for his conditions could also be a factor in it. A rare asset being a highly irreplacable asset and thus worth giving a lot to keep up and working, makes sense? You will have a hard time finding a cyberpsycho so special and so lucid yet so psychotic.
@f.e.areproduce5298 As far as I know, Adam Smasher isn't given any treatments to manage his Chrome by Arasaka. He's just a straight up high functioning cyberpsycho with no chrome limit.
In the original tabletop game, all the way back to the 80-90s, cyberpsychosis was a game mechanic designed to avoid Player Characters getting too OP by getting their hands on all the cyberware they could get their hands on. The explanation were varied, from body dysmorphia to simply feeling “superior” to other meatbags. The lack of access to proper health support, both physical and mental, only makes it worse, but in any case, the whole point was that if you character relied too much on cyberware, they´d eventually have a bad roll on "Humanity" and then you´d have to handle the character sheet to the DM, whom now would use it as an maniacal enemy against the party
I always took the cyberpsychosis question as an indictment on the decline of mental health awareness in the world of Cyberpunk. Like most of the cyberpsychos you take down for Regina have some form of PTSD or extreme stress that gets swept under the rug as being the result of implants. In quite a few of these cases the cyberpsychos were abandoned or forgotten by the rest of society and their mental health declined as a result. Others are pure aggression on behalf of a family member of friend against gang members. That’s why Maelstromers aren’t all psychos despite being the most augmented/modified in all of Night City- the implants don’t have as much of an effect.
I also think its the fact that a regular person or someome with only basic Implants losing it isnt much of a sensation. The equivalent to our world would be If some regular person has a mental breakdown all they would do is injure themselves and maybe a couple other people and then the police takes them in. Tragic, yes but ultimately nothing you will hear about. But If a vet with a bunch of guns lying around goes postal? Now thats a nationwide news story.
All maelstromers actually are cyberpsycho to some extent. It’s more like a machine based form of sociopathy where you lose all empathy. It’s like real life sociopathy but caused by implants messing with your brain, and can be further triggered by traumatic outside stimuli.
Exactly. Every time I take down a cyberpsycho for the NCPD i go like "wait, they're not a cyberpsycho, just an average joe that actually needed therapy for like YEARS"
Maelstrom is made almost completely of functional cyberpsychos. It may bear resemblance to normal mental health issues, but it’s certainly brought on by implants. Outbursts are seemingly triggered by mental stress. Maelstrom is the definition of cyberpsycho, cause they lose all care for human life along with other symptoms, it’s just that theirs is constant and somewhat functional because they embraced it, while everyone else has it in outbursts.
There are two things to this, 1. In the rule books (which I have) it says that there are two different “phenotypes” of cyber-psychosis, the classic murdery insane kind, and a more subtle sociopathic type where you start to see standard humans as lesser than you, but don’t outright go on killing sprees, instead delighting in causing small amounts of mayhem or sadistic acts to one person at a time slowly. Most maelstrom seem to be closer to this type than the other. 2. On the classic rock channel on the radio, the announcer (who is mike pondsmith the creator of the universe, so his words kinda hold weight) says that some cyberware is built in a way to promote cyber-psychosis than standard, limiters turn down or removed, this wired just *slighty* wrong to have more people come down with the affliction so they can sell more to MaxTac and alike orgs (trauma team, solos, ect). Basically free advertising, in both ways.
@@SquaulDuNeant What? Mike created the universe, his word is law, CDPR has said that he can veto or add anything he likes… This is like saying that Tolkien isn’t Lord of the rings.
I think the thing with Maelstrom is that they have accepted how far they've fallen and embrace the madness in a sense. It's like observing psychos; some of them are crazy, and some KNOW that they are crazy
I think Adam smasher got to where he was because upon looking up his lore, he was a nutcase pre-chrome. Being chromed out and basically a cyborg w multiple bodies did not effect his brain at all.
@tayinabyss the writers of the original game said so: Smasher didn't go crazy because he was already a psycho, he simply has it perfectly directed towards his enemies. It's why he talks like everyone else is just "a cut of meat", he has zero Empathy both mechanically and literally.
In Cyberpunk there is this thing where augmenting yourself (say, replace your arms with mantis blades) would eat at your "humanity", the more metal you put on yourself, the harder it'll suffer... But there are also exceptions to that rule, and sorts of bypasses as well. Iirc... -In the case of Maelstrom, they are literally and metaphorically crazy about implants; if they could afford and survive going full borg, they would. Most if not all of them are Cyberpsychos whenever you meet them in 2077 (and in the ttrpg usually too, depends on whatever the GM wants ofc), yet you can not only try to dialogue with some, you can avoid combat by saving one of them; probably not as helpless crazy as everyone think. -There are cases of people that have unusual resistance (or maybe higher Humanity) than the rest of people; we kinda see this in the anime, as David can handle not only the experimental Sande but also Maine arms and probably a few other augments before he starts to show signs of cyberpsychosis; and he was pretty much over the edge by a mile by the end of the show; yet he could tell friend from foe in the middle of a speedware fight with Smasher. -Johnny Silverhand is one as well, ever since he got his... Well, silver hand. And if you played 2077, you already know he's kinda deranged, but not batshit insane. -And ofc Smasher; his case is a bit different in that he got himself in a huge accident and (like Johnny) had to have most of his body replaced by cyberware. This is important because losing a bodypart and then replacing it doesn't hit your Humanity as much as replacing a fine and nice working one by choice. That said, kinda like Johnny too, Adam wasn't one to have much Humanity to begin with, he was a regular psycho already. He's with Arasaka only because they kinda let him do whatever and kill as much as he wants. And well, you have the huge side story in 2077 about the "illness" not being as black and white as media say too.
Cyberpsychosis isn't some special condition, it's literally just regular psychosis brought on by cyberware, and psychosis looks different in everyone. Not all cyberpsycos are bloodthirsty, kill everything in sight psycho, but rather exhibit different traits of psychopathy
I heard several someones say in reference to Adam Smasher, "He never got cyber psychosis because he was already psychotic." Remember that madnesses are forms of trauma from the womb or the world and those expressions are ways to cope with it all
If I recall correctly one of the books from the cyberpunk universe addressed this as them being so high that it doesn’t affect them the same way I could be wrong. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it
Well, cyberpcychosis is not a sudden urge to murder everything that moves, not always at least. It's like combination between dissociative disorder, depression and sociopathy that comes from the fact that the more you change flesh to chrome the less you associate self with your body and subsequently with other people and then it can go different ways depending how you react to it.
That isn't it, Maelstrom members have no real pressure or instead get off on it, they are adrenaline junkies, one can say that is a mental instability in and of itself however, Cyberpsychos have a complete breakdown they have a trigger, the hardware they have installed unfortunately just enables them making them a pain in the ass to deal with, it's like a person on LSD, not everyone snaps and lifts a car or gets violent but mental stress and a complete mental breakdown will basically just trigger a rampage.
I think another thing that deals with cyberpsychos is that some are isolated and don't really have anyone to talk to or hangout with. At the end of the day Malstrom gang members do care for each other to an extent.
Hehe and now you are explaining the humanity stat from the rpg books. Basically if you loose your connection to other people and such, you start losing the part of yourself that makes you human and the end result is psybercycosis. Which is multiple factors that comes toghether, but the main thing is massive disassociation and the loss of self. But yeah you are getting some parts of it
@@luclin92 Oh sweet! I didn't know that, I was using my experience since foe awhile I was depressed because I didn't have any friends around and I might still be depressed.
It would be a stretch to say they care about one another, rather they are a secular community. Theyr'e all nuts, without questions, and most all of them are morally shot. But they DO have other like minded borgs around them that are equally deranged. It IS a technology cult.
The psycho with the sandy, near the coast destroyed my ass man, idk what you're talking about Yea some of them are pushovers but a few of them with better augmentations are lethal
@@Tacticaviator7 Oh shes fun to fight but gawdam is she scary. First time I fought her, I turned around and she "teleported" on me and I about shit myself.
The theory I like is that the less human you feel or think, or the less attached you are to your body, the easier it is to accept the implants and less likely you are to go cyberpsycho.
It's actually both way, either you not much of a human to begin with (adam smasher) or your humanity is at the top (martinez) that you can resist cyberpsychosis. Other way is that you have a relic with an engram that act like a wall holding psychosis back, hence why V can have basically a full borg body without ever going complete psycho. All that is thanks to johnny keeping V mental state safe through all that chrome.
@@deadrixhanon1776The chip also repairs damage to the host body until the program has run its course - so Johnny literally is keeping V alive the entire game. From Rick Ross putting a bullet in him, to holding of cyberpsychosis, to rebooting his brain after VD boys fry him, etc.
The quest hes speaking about requests the pc to capture various psychos alive and return them to service eventually either whole or scrapped. the blonde girl with mantis blades from the Og trailer was experiencing cyberpsychosis and can be found working for maxtac seemingly under mind control
@@beanieb0b sure, i understand that. This wasnt supposed to be an accusation or anything, i just found it to be hilariously abrupt and out of left field. xD
The TTRPG explains cyberpsychosis pretty in depth, and essentially, it actually has only very few ties to the cyberbetics themselves (thus why Adam Smasher doesnt suffer from it despite being 96% cybernetics) Cyberpsychosis is basic psychosis stacked with depersonalization disorder, a disorder in which you start to view you body as an object, not as yourself. Technically in the TTRPG you can actually get cyberpsychosis without ever getting cybernetics. Cybernetics cause a humanity loss in the game. Humanity maxes out at 80, at 29 or lower you start showing symptoms, at 9 or lower youre a full cyberpsycho, and at less than 0 you're in the DMs control. Traumatic events and even some drugs can cause humanity loss as well though, but almost all humanity loss can be a counteracted with therapy (each cybernetic implant decreases your maximum humanity by 2, except for heavy duty stuff which decreases it by 4). The number of cyberpsychos are more a symptom of lack of access to information and proper medical care than anything, as the materials required for these therapeutic treatments are completely monopolized by Biotechnica.
I think it's because of their initiation they experience tremendous loss before being augmented, making the augments a necessity (burning out eyes and replacing with implants) rather than just being put under anesthesia with the help of a ripperdoc and calling it a day. A friend of mine likened cyberpsychosis to consumerism and that the only way to cure yourself from it is chipping down, stop trying to get more advanced and complicated tech, but that means slowing down and ultimately reaching the other end in Night-city; fading away, rather than burning out.
Thats the thing people don't realise, We are seeing only the worst of Cyberpsychosis. In TTRPG terms a player whos humanities went into the negatives. You first actually show Cyberpsychosis when humanity drops below 3 and you need to apply traits that represent that decay in mind. Johnny silverhand is a Cyberpsycho not because he kills but because how he sees the world and his arm.
This seems like a terrible misinterpretation of both Maelstrom AND cyberpsychosis. Maelstrom is basically “what if we got a bunch of cyberpsychos and put them in a gang together?” Cyberpsychotics are also known to be able to function at times in lore. Adam Smasher is purported to be a functioning cyberpsycho.
I played ealry 6th game crash i just said "my character is a cyber-psycho. All these glitches are my brain breaking" Never played it since, because that's the end
If you pay attention to all the people who suffer cyberpychosis its not actually related to cybernetics. Many of them were just augmented peoplepushedto far by stress, drugs, and bad work environments. In the game you only meet 2 true cyber psychos
One could argue that V has cyberpsychosis from the implant. They are seeing Johnny, can talk to them and switch control. Kind of like artificial dissociative identity disorder.
Johnny is already a functional cyberpsycho, and the chip repairs damage to the host brain, so I think V is immune while he has Johnny in his head. He's not crazy - he's just hallucinating a very real computer program thats trying to kill him without either of their consent.
In the show when they are using their coms you can hear that everyone seems to stutter or stumble their words. But when actually talking face to face they dont stutter or stumble their words. Which i think is a nice little detail most people overlook
So, like, in lore cyberpsychosis is just cyberwear enduced psychopathy or sociopathy. So, the legitimate schizophrenia like symptoms we see in 2077 (and Edgerunners) could be something completely different.
more like a unnatural combination of physical disassociation. everything we do in our natural bodies we do for our survival and our brains literally go haywire in the absence of human frailty. all you have are thoughts visual and stimuli, eventually leading to schizophrenia-like symptoms
In the games it’s heavily alluded to that even tho cyber ware is a factor, mental well-being is the greater factor. So something that would cause a psychotic break would also trigger a cyberpsychotic break. And hallucination being a symptom of psychosis is can easily cause a wearer to spiral deeper into the psychopathy and hostility
No, it’s cyberPSYCHOSIS, not cyberPSYCHOPATHY. The first means they’re suffering from psychosis (essentially think of schizophrenia), while the latter would mean they’re turned into psychopaths. The term “cyberpsycho” leads to some misunderstandings around this as it pretty understandably makes people think they’re psychopathic, but that’s just, like I said, a misunderstanding.
There are functional Cyber-psychos who only harm in self defense. Psychopathy may be present but not as overtly destructive as is on display in the game's enemies or in Edgerunners. It usually manifests as lack of empathy and impulsive behavior. Basically that everyone in Night City.
After finishing the quest you are told that there is no cyberpsychosis but its simply the result of living in night city with rather more cyberimplants, something like that as far i remember,
Cyberpsychosis is not a single illness. Its a plethora of co-existing mind illnesses coupled with body issues of accepting implants. Johnny silverhand is described as a Cyberpsycho, but he has minimal implants compared to some other people. However Johnny also has PTSD from his army service, severe issues with social interactions, can not form any meaningful long lasting relationship, has issues with authority and paranoia. Basically he is a walking collection of problems with brain, further fueled by abuse of alcohol, narcotics, highly stressfull life etc.
I think cyberpsychosis is dependant on the induvidual, someone who suffered a lot will turn into a cyberpsycho if they augment themselves too much. Just look at the anime. So i think most maelstrom guys are just punks and metalheads with a bit of augmentation
Cyberpsychosis occurs when your empathy stat reaches 0. Youre no longer abke ti differentiate between where the chrome ends and the human begins. But none of that us explain in 2077 or edgerunners because its a game mechanic from the tabletop and wouldnt translate well to the video game or the anime
Cyberpsychosis is akin to being overstimulated. Some people have a higher tolerance than others. So when it comes to putting in cybernetics, what tends to happen is some people's threshold is higher than others and because of that it allows for them not to undergo cyber psychosis. If you want to think of it in terms of reality, it's like it's somebody were to trying to pull a splinter out of their finger. Some people would just rip it out because they have a higher threshold for pain. Some people wouldn't be able to even look at you pull it out. That's how cyber psychosis works.
Dayum turns out i would become cyberpsycho after installation of just one cybernetic, as i suffer from chronic pain hypersensitivity and being constantly in pain due to overstimulation because my stimuli processing is on overdrive. That makes sense why so much of these guys would be drug addicts, if i wouldn't start opioid treatment two years ago i would still be bedridden because everything hurt so much
I always thought the reason why Maelstrom wasn’t affected by cyberpsychosis it’s because they are already bat shit crazy except for the few that went above and beyond like really in the deep end of cyberpsychosis
I think a big part of the reason that David and Maine in their specific cases were succumbing to “Cyber”psychosis was because of the fear of it happening in the first place. There’s so much foreshadowing and dread placed on cyberpsychosis and how they think about it. Fear is your worst enemy……. And your best friend it’s weird.
I learned from Regina’s missions that most “cyberpsychos” were just people who snapped and just blinded by rage and desperation, most of them were unrelated to heavy augmentation In one, a girl got fcked over by her twin who got manipulated by this reality tv show company. On another, a guy’s small business got repossessed by a bigger corp who loaned him the very property just to take it away from him in the end (they both killed those corp people out of vengeance and desperation respectively) In it’s roots they’re just unfortunate people who fell victim to corporate bureaucracy, further solidifying that Johnny was right about the corps
iirc it was said in the TTRPG that the more chrome your character has, the more the character start seeing themselves as "superior" to other humans, causes them to start experiencing cyberpsychosis, and when you're under sensory overload from all the chrome your brain gets fried and you become a killing machine because everything is so overwhelming
While I think this theory is shakey there is a basis that theres more to cyberpsychosis. They are effectively a gang of psychotic weirdos but they retain almost all higher thought and reason. They're high functioning psychopaths. If you read a lot of the logs surrounding cyberpsycho gigs you'll find a good chunk of the perps went insane from external trauma related to cyberware. Like I don't think one guy went insane because too much chrome he went insane cause his daughter was r**ed and murdered. And I think the reason ONLY REGINA investigates solutions is because realistically it is far easier for corps and media to just label every psycho as crazy instead of drawing attention to any involvement they had.
During the entire Cyberpsycho sidequest and in Edgerunner, it gets more and more obvious that Chrome, on its own, doesn't cause Cyberpsychosis. It does make it more likely to become a Psycho, but the main cause for the neurological malfunction is stress. Something all Psychos in the game/series have in common, beside their high amount of Chrome, is that they snapped after a traumatic incident, massive drug use and/or a life of constant stress (fights, stressfull relationships, overworking, etc.)
Cyberpsychosis straddles the line between addiction and trauma, and while having a lot of chrome can make you more susceptible, it doesn't force you into cyberpsychosis. Adam Smasher, for instance, had cyberpsychotic tendencies, but never falls completely over the edge. David Martinez was resistant, but as he suffered more trauma, he became more cyberpsychotic.
I’ve always liked the idea that cyberpsychosis is a reaction of the mind trying to make sense of the machinery altering the mind’s identity. If the amount of machinery is low enough or the augmentation is slow enough, the mind can process this change. Too fast or too much at once and the mind begins to break or fragment. Quite literally, your mind is fighting for its sanity against the machine. Maelstrom forces augmentation, and I would imagine they would remove a portion of the individual’s identity as a matter of course. Barely human to start, not enough of a mind left to shatter.
They explain this in game. In a document pickup. People have different tolerances for implants (like how people have different tolerances for steroids before going into roidrage). That's what makes Adam and David so special they have super high tolerances. So it allows them to get more.
Cyberpsychosis in the TTRPG is directly caused by getting too much chrome too fast. Every piece of cyberware has a base cost in permanently lowering your humanity and a random cost in temporary humanity loss. Up through the latest release (based on Edgerunners) the only way to heal that temporary humanity loss was through brain dance therapy. That’s still the main mechanic in Edgerunners but they added losing/gaining humanity from events and also the immuno-blockers that are a Devil’s bargain at best. They can boot your humanity but it’s temporary. I’ve been playing the game for 30 years now or so and I can’t remember if it’s ever explicitly stated anywhere but it at least heavily implied that, in the Time of the Red and earlier, cyberpsychosis is seen as a reaction to your becoming less and less human. You slowly lose the ability to empathize with others because you aren’t like them anymore. In Edgerunners, the advent of the neuroport changed everything. It processes and handles the interface with not just all your cyberware but pretty much all the technology in existence. Almost everyone has one implanted at a young age and it has zero humanity cost because your brain and identity is allowed to adapt to it. Plus, if everyone has it, it doesn’t exactly make you different from everyone else. It is also subtly implied by all the 2076/7 media that the neuroport is where the other interesting changes in the mechanics come from. Now, all that said, there is no rule in any of the games that says that someone who succumbs to cyberpsychosis becomes a raging maniac. That’s the most common outcome, especially given that it’s usually Solos who do it and killing people is what they do best. The rules simply say that you lose control of your character to the GM and he can play it however he wants. Many, many times, even in Pondsmith’s games (reportedly) that is often *not* a violent maniac. A lot of the people who succumb to it become functional sociopaths who are able to blend in. Some of them might even be holding down jobs at Arasaka and Militech. One of them in particular, Adam Smasher, may seem immune to it because they were already sociopaths lacking any empathy at all long before they got chipped. I think that’s how Maelstroms seeming immunity works. They’re already violent maniacs. How could you even tell they went psycho. It’s also worth pointing out that, in spite of their strange appearances, the vast majority of their mods are nothing more than cosmetic fashionware. That all has very little humanity loss. Their main distinguishing characteristic is their usage of multi-optic face plates. They can really rack up some humanity loss but their purpose is to allow the user to slot more cyber-eye mods. Like *all* of them. The real tragedy, though, is that from a min/max perspective, the best way to chip in as much chrome as possible is by maxing out your empathy stat at character creation. Inevitably, every game I’ve ever been in winds up with this grim reality that the kinder and more empathetic you are, the more of a monster you can become. Think about that in the context of David’s arc. That’s the basis of my character now in Edgerunners. He was basically Militech’s Soldier Boy (like in The Boys). They used him as a demo platform for their latest and greatest ware and made him into an action movie star for 30 years until he finally started to succumb to cyberpsychosis. Then they just yanked it all and dumped him into a hospital where he spent the next 20 years rebuilding his mind and his body from cheap cloned replacement organs and medical grade cyberware (i.e. purely prosthetic. No special abilities. No humanity loss.) Now he’s trying to become the hero he pretended to be for all those years. His dark secret is that he *wants* to push his humanity down to as close to zero as possible because he can’t deal with the trauma and survivors guilt that of being the only person from his Basic Training class at Militech who’s still alive. A lot got killed in the 4th corporate war. A lot more died from suicide, drug overdose, and cyberpsychosis. Finally the last one who was his best friend got killed because he was in BARGHEST and didn’t want to go along with their plan.
In one of the phantom liberty gigs we get some lore than elaborates and it basically confirms those people were already crazy to begin with, the chrome just gave them a means to express their insanity. It’s like giving a gun in real life to a psychopath. Bad things are bound to happen
One of my favourite hypothesis proposed by someone else on TH-cam is that Cyberpsychosis happens when you dissociate. When there's nothing else keeping your attention like a sense of purpose. That's when the augmentations take over because these implants "know" their purpose. It's just common for Cyberpsychosis to be violent because these augments are so commonly weapons and their purpose is to kill. The downside to this hypothesis is that they only used peeps from Edgerunners as examples. David's turning point started when he began drifting away from Lucy and came back to his sanity when Lucy was finally there in front of him. I forgot what they said about Maine but something about longing for simpler times because the current gig started being too stressful that he started questioning "what's he doing this for?" Idk. As for Smasher, he always liked being a tool for violence. Having sponsors in Arasaka certainly help feed his ego and desires. He's always known his purpose and that's to be a killing machine. Becoming almost fully cybernetic just reinforced that identity for him.
Cyberpsychosis is not immediate havoc, characters like royce are likely cyberpsychotic and still function, and there is a mission in phantom liberty in wich a man who killed people turned out to be cyberpsycho. You can speak to him and while erratic he is still somewhat intelligable
There are many different triggers, as you hunt down psycho's, you'll encounter people who snapped from stress, who snapped from drugs, who snapped from trauma, and who snapped from over-augmentation. A military sniper snaps when his daughter is turned into a joytoy and he finds her dead, a construction worker snaps because he's made to wear an exo-suit and work long hours, a celebrity snaps because her cyberware malfunctioned, a maelstrom snaps when he's drugged up to the extreme and treated like a dog, another guy snaps because he's nabbed off the street and forcefully heavily augmented by maelstrom so they can watch his snap, and a dock worker snaps because he's exposed to the drugs his boss is moving and was working long hours, multiple causes each resulting in a snap.
Maelstrom is also a community with a shared brotherhood. That is a big factor. Cyber psychos are usually people who have a situational loss in their life too
I overheard some npcs yapping one time and since im kinda lame i was semi listening and they talked about one of their friends who only had 1 implant, yet was killed because they went insane with cyberpsychosis, other guy talking said basically luck of the draw. Even one implant can give u psychosis kinda nutty
It's seems to me like someone is pulling the strings of people. The thing is V is too distracted by their impending death to trying figure it out. Plus Dave was also a dead man and was already gone before he could even ask the question. Which if they were to make a sequel to this critical failure of a game it should be about a detective. Someone that's trying to find out why cyberpsychosis is happening. Someone that has a friend or family member that suffered and died from it.
In the original ttrpg cyberpsychosis isn't just going feral, but one of many symptoms, others include disassociation with others, a loss of humanity, increased tendency of violence behaviors, actions that come across as cold or unfeeling. With cyberpsychosis you're not just loosing your mind, but also slowly becoming less human. And as we see in 2077 cyberpsychosis is also triggered by extreme emotions and stress, some examples include; the veteran who succumbed to PTSD, the Valentino that was poked and prodded by maelstrom. The soldier who lost a child and snapped, the corporate soldier who was slated to die and had a paranoid episode, and so on.
There are shards that talk about how cyberpsychos aren’t always violent, that’s just the most documented and visible symptom but most apparently waste away in their homes.
cyberpsychosis is either getting so much chrome that you lose the plot and suddenly trick your gray matter into thinking it saves before going on a rampage in gta 69. or its getting so chromed that you touch the great firewall and the gibbering madness behind it follows you back.
its worth noting that cyber-psychosis isnt a result of too many implants, but rather a combination of too many implants too quickly, and psychological trauma or harm. For example, while David went through early stages of psychosis after losing his mum, going through a lot of fights and losing other friends, lucy was still able to bring him back, indicating that love and friendship are actually a “cure” for cyber psychosis, and in-game we see a few cyberpsychos went off the rails after a drug overdose. So, its a mixture of too much chrome too quickly, mental trauma and substance abuse.
I always assumed that cyber sychosis was basically people having mental breaks, but the cybernetics put you in a sort of feedback loop. This makes you less sad and crying, or punching randomly, and more in a hallucinated trip. This could possibly make psychos physiologically immune, or people who already have a broken mind have a resistance. Maelstrom members might already have broken minds, and most have found a way to cope with it (not stable ways, but enough to still be able to communicate and get work done).
Cyberpsychosis is basically PTSD in combination with having too much chrome. In Edgerunners we see figures like Maine and David succumb to cyberpsychosis not just due to the over use of chrome but also triggered through traumatic events. In the TTRPG its triggered by running out of "humanity" which gets depleted through a combination of augmentation and just by doing sketchy and evil stuff. Cyberpsychosis is a multifaceted issue in Cyberpunk with the use and abuse of chrome being just one of many factors
If you read the shards and do all the stuff in Psycho Killer, you pretty much learn that everyone who gets cyberpsychosis has been subject to something that would push a normal human being over the edge, and that they happen to have a lot of chrome on them. It is the story of any school shooter or any normal person lashing out against society, but amplified.
My understanding of cyberpsychosis is that alongside poisoning from all the heavy metals you pour unto your body (depending if they are high grade or cheap chrome) and the pressure you put into your nervous system there is also a mental threshold of how much you can endure mentally, V doesn't really go cyber psycho because he has Johnny to share the burden but characters like David, Lizzy and all the cyberpsychos we face for Regina went through some real bad stuff, experiences that pushed their mental fortitude to the limits and breakdown, there's no telling what's the average threshold since each person is different but some can gain stability even after going psycho like Hansen's subordinate we encounter on Dogtown who blackout and killed a bunch of people or David who was able to go back for a brief moment thanks to Lucy... that also explain why it is harder for veterans or Arasaka body guards to go Psycho, they gain some mental resilient after their training if we correlate this we can explain why Smasher despite being a cold killer never really went psycho. There's also the induced cyberpsychosis, this one is easier to explain, it can be done either by a netrunner or a demon/rogue AI but the baseline is the same, they put your brain under a lot of pressure until it breakdown
When doing the cyberpsycho missions for the NCPD i have developed the theory that cyberpsychosis is just a hardcore burnout that has been attributed to the chrome excess instead of that messed up world.
In the TTRPG during chacter creation one of the thing that can happen if you grew up in night city is that you lost a relative to a maelstorm cyberpsyco. Most gangmembers are just high-functioning junkies
Makes a lot of sense since some of the lore docs you can recover around the areas specifically talk about incorporate black projects and the likes referring to triggering cyberpsychosis.
I don’t know who it was, but if you read through all the shards in a side quest where one of your contractors ask you to check up on someone (she kills her sister because she’s having cyber psychosis), it’ll tell you something along the lines of “we all have cyber psychosis.” It is not a disease but the act of humanity leaning towards AI and tech. Cyber psychosis affects everyone differently. He finishes off his shard telling us that he shouldn’t even be saying this, but he worked for a huge corp that would kill him if he told everyone.
What makes cyberpsychosis was explained when david was losing it in Edgerunners. You can chrome up as much as you want, but if you dont switch to a different neural system then your nerves and brain will slowly get fried whenever you use your Chrome. (Edit: corrected a spelling error)
The ttrpg actually explains this very well. Cyberpsychosis is at least two parts at once, the alienation effect of pushing the body and mind through augmentation and replacement [the classic am i me question] and the psychotic part of pushing through hallucinations and delusion caused by body transformation [the classic know the bodies limit]. To get around the first, a good group of like-minded individuals with strong cultural unit cohesiveness can limit the alienation. Maelstrom, arasaka, and even a good crew can help with that. The second pushing the limit is interesting as mastering of the augmentation, careful implantation, mass cyberware implantation, and special facilities can all reduce the trauma and long-term stress of augmentation. So you don't need to be a cyberpsycho to be fully augmented. You do need a teather to keep you from riding off the edge in time.
So you’re partially right, the board game and the anime both said that along with large amounts of chrome you also have to witness mind breaking events. Maelstrom are mostly cray to begin with so perhaps they lack empathy and that prevents them from tipping
I theorize that cyberpsychosis, no matter how little chrome there is as long as it is plugged to the brain a person is bound to fall to its affliction because of the cruel world that is night city. So much crime, poverty, drugs, the idea of whether it will be your last day, ptsd, falling into hard times, and more. All that accumulated stress, depression, fear among other things affects your physiological state negatively, the chemicals in the brain take place, but the chrome connected to ones head get affected negatively since despite being an advanced imitation of the real thing, the human body still has many unknowns that cybernetics can't compensate. I mean, in the night city universe, those who control where the eddies flow place it all in getting the latest tech, creating the next big thing to keep it to themselves or sell it to the highest bid, create more advanced weapons, practically anything for self benefit than solving many of the world's problems along with many people's needs. Back to cyberpsychosis, glitches in the chrome happen due to the brain activities, and in turn, it affects the brain, one starts to lose control and eventually fall into cyberpsychosis.
I believe there was one case of a maelstrom cyberpsycho since veteran that after he lost his job with maelstrom, they shut off his PTSD suppression medication, so he went into a full cyber psychosis because all of his Cybernetics that were helping him stay stable. We’re turned off.
The game heavily implies that it's a combination of factors. Psychological trauma, too many/badly adjusted implants, sudden shocks, heavy addiction. It's basically not "too much chrome = cyberpsycho for sure" but a matter of "you can only take so much and your mental state and the quality of your chrome influences that". What's okay for one person might be too much for another. As for Maelstrom: many of them ARE cyberpsychos, just barely functional enough to still serve the gang.
the best way to put cyberpsychosis is as an augmentor, lets put David as an example, he had a military grade implant, had maine's arms and a shit ton of implants after the time skip, but, just started having the cyberpsychotic symptoms after already having them, to put it simply, when David was ALREADY having mental trouble, Lucy which he loved was getting distant from him, Maine, Dorio and Pillar died a few years back, from the whole gang he is only left with Rebecca and a few times with Kiwi, he was already going mental with or without the chrome, all it did was boost the reaction
One of the biggest things about Maelstrom to keep in mind is that some of them were forcibly augmented and stolen from the streets. We see evidence of it in dealing with one of the Cyberpsychos in the game. They also communicate with wild daemons and actively abuse substances that kill others due to their cyberware. Most Maelstrommers likely have a highly altered form of Disassociative Identity Disorder, with their original personalities having become insane and feral while they survive as new identities created by the gang as they are inducted.
They all do have cyberpsychosis, they just aren't hallucinating and shit.
@@dbonechisthay are cabelbel of Organisation following orders and most important cohesive speech non of these trades are found on actual cyberspychose plus how do you explain the cyberpsycho demon ?
@@linkjonge2836 THOSE TRAITS AREN'T A GIVEN FOR CYBERPSYCHOSIS
PLUS they also don't have extreme cyberware. none of it is very heavy like a sandy or something so they mostly have appearance ones it's a far greater risk when they have a sandy or something similar
@@dbonechis Like... V's Fury from Edgerunner perk is basically nerfed in duration highly functional Cyberpsychosis and all they feel when they are in that state is that they are kinda high on something, but they still see reality as it is and not some hallucinations
Is hinted that Cyberpsychosis doesn't work like how everyone thinks it works, specially in Edgerrunners; you won't get it by simply getting a lot of chrome but getting a lot of chrome normally means that you get into a lot of trouble and in Night City that means that getting shot is the least you're gonna go through.
Basically, is PTSD made worse by how cybernetics are directly link to the brain of the user.
Yep. Even Adam is a counterpoint. He is a genuine psychopath, no cyber. In having never considered himself worthlessly human, he was able to work with any and all chrome, starting with his original Dragoon full body prosthetic.
@@amergingiles Adam Smasher, Lizzy Whizzy, Maelstrom members, hell even Takemora and the Bodyguards of the Arisakas as well as at the Hotel, did no one bother paying attention during the Regina Jones quest line, the whole point was to show it's a coverup created by the media, corporations, and local government officials, every and I mean every Cyberpsycho you faced against had a trigger where they had a mental breakdown of some kind, and it was because of Night City and the pressure of whatever situation they faced that they just mentally snapped, the chrome they have installed just makes them a pain the ass to deal with is all.
@@nocturnal101ravenous6 but we could argue that all maelstrom members and people like smasher and Lizzy DO have cyber psychosis. In fact it is said directly about Adam that he is a cyberpsycho.
Lizzy kills someone and can't even recognize herself anymore after her transformation, and the others jobs is literally to kill people or be in a gang. It's probably just that they're already murderers or crazy to begin with so you don’t notice it. And there are many versions of psychotic disorders.
I'm not sure why everyone is making cyberpyschosis more than it is. It's just regular psychosis along with the reality you can begin to break down like bad tech over time and have to stay prepped and prepared. Maximum Mike says it on his podcast: he heard all the corps got together and implemented planned obsolescence into all cyberware code. Like cheap cellphones. Cyberpsychosis is just a meme so no one actually has to anything to help.
@@HelloThere.....I've seen people describe Adam as a "high-functioning cyberpsycho". I think that's a good way of looking at those people: they lost their empathy for humans, but are still in control of their actions
If you play through all the cyberpsycho missions and read their shards, they all have alternative reasons for their behaviour beyond just 'bad chrome'.
I think the point was to hint that cyberpsychosis is a way for the NCPD and tech corps to dismiss cases of people lashing out after being treated horribly by just saying 'cyberpsycho'. That way they can cover themselves and avoid public outcry.
You got it right on the nose
Nah, it's a phenomenon as old as the first versions of the Cyberpunk RPG.
While it's certain many of those cases were indeed either cover ups or just explanations of "regular" bouts of violence in a very distressing environment, it's made clear that it's a real condition, though it's not researched to the fullest capacity, as keeping cyberpsychos in labs and stuff doesn't end well for anyone involved. In fact, Mike Pondsmith clearly wants it to be thought of as a "lost humanity Event", where the feral side of a person overtakes the rational mind. It doesn't just happen, but is a result of years of abuse, both internal and external, mental and physical.
True but doesnt mean it's not a real things heck it can prove even more it's a real thing and that they corrupt it to serve their interest
Ah. Like the media blaming video games for shootings instead of blaming themselves for constantly trying to incite panic and division in the public.
@@KnightspaceORG The original phenomenon was that as you got more Chrome more of the Corps subvertory tech was in you until you were basically a owned puppet. Thats the actual reason it stripped you of your humanity.
But that got toned down a bit in the newer editions for rather obvious reasons for someone selling a game.
The videogame kind of runs back towards that original conception of it not being a innate thing but really just a symptom of broader stuff
Nearly every cyberpsycho we deal with in the game is suffering from immense physical/mental/psychological trauma. In some cases they aren't out-of-control crazy...they're taking revenge on their tormentors. But mind-control may enter into it as well.
It is both actually. While cyberpsychosis is an indepented product of PTSD + Stress + Chrome + All the things that come with Cyberpunk dystopian hellscape there is also a mission in thr game (sandra dorset plotline) where it is bacicly confirmed that a company developed a way to induce cyberpshchosis in people
Except for that one satanic psycho, theyre just insane from the start
@@jurekovacic1739seems simple enough. If it's (mostly) caused by a high amount of stress on their brains due to cyberware, then you can just make the software artificially add that same stress. It's like this: your computer will crash if you run too many programs at once. But if you only have one program open, it can still crash if that one program does something wrong and your computer trips itself up. That's likely a good canon explanation for the RAM limit and cyberware cooldowns in game, as well. Use it too often, it slows down the software and your brain freaks out. Of course, the difference is if they do it on purpose it's permanent not temporary.
@@jurekovacic1739 there’s actually a cyberpsychosis quick hack in the game
Its not mentioned in Cyberpunk directly, but in other sci-fi, there's a theory that cyber psychosis and related illnesses are actually caused, or at least greatly exacerbated by the brain losing connection to the rest of the body. Our brains relieve constant input and feedback from our bodies, limbs, and organs. When large parts of those limbs or organs are removed, that feedback stops. The brain will try and adapt to account for the missing input, but it can cause issues like phantom limb syndrome. When you add in the fact the neural links between implants and the nervlus system are not perfect at the best of times, and you end up with a brain that is being assaulted with missing feedback, incorrect fedback, and signals its just not used to interpreting and you have a perfect recipe for mental illness, in the most literal sense. When you add in the stresses of budget implants, shoddy implant surgeries, gang life, drug use, and life in a dystopia cyber hellscape, it's no wonder people go cyberpsycho.
That makes so much sense medically considering Cyberpsychosis is considered as a mental illness
amazing comment. I was thinking of the same thing. It's because the additional links to the brain are not natural but artificial, so for our brain to adapt to something that it cannot even begin to comprehend because it is not part of what it's used to, then that is the cause and is the recipe for the disaster.
There’s a similar phenomenon in sci fi where our bodies and our brains reject cyber augmentation because the way our brains are designed like you said to receive stimuli and other information from natural limbs. Using Deue Ex as an example, most people require a drug to make our bodies accept augmentation but our brains and bodies develop resistances to those drugs. The potential dissociative effects our brains experience due to stress are also a factor when it comes to augmentation. Our bodies aren’t designed to be augmented with foreign machines placed in our bodies, especially permanent ones. The reaction times of an artificial nerve connection are also likely slower than a natural nerve connection. Even if nano machines can counter this and speed up our response times we’d develop a response to those machines in our system. In theory we can handle limited augmentation without too many side effects, but too much and our brains don’t know what to do and assume our bodies are under attack.
It's like physiological schizophrenia, neato
I imagine those backalley immunoblockers probably don't help either
This would be a perfectly rational explanation.
Another, equally compelling explanation is that every time a cyber psycho cracks and zeroes a crowd of unlucky chooms in the park, MaxTac gets a new super soldier. Biotech and Netwatch stocks skyrocket. Chrome peddling corpos drop a million creds on their new Rayfield Caliburn supercars.
It's not a stretch to figure out cyberpsychosis is a feature, not a bug.
Mike Pondsmith also said cyberpsychosis is basically a violent ptsd outburst, when you do the cyberpsycho side gigs you'll notice most if not all of the people you're to knock out or kill are actually war veterans
there’s one cyber psycho veteran I remember where he was denied his medical prescriptions and he was discharged while he still had his combat implants in him. That’s if I remembered correctly it’s been a while
I literally just played that mission and you are correct@@_.10.cents._
@@_.10.cents._ that's spot on, yes. he was discharged but kept his super high-end combat implants as well as a heavy dose of PTSD, coupled with running out of his stress medication he then went off the rails. while fighting him he also tells V to leave while they still can. poor guy!
@@_.10.cents._ that's spot on, yes. he was discharged but kept his super high-end combat implants as well as a heavy dose of PTSD, coupled with running out of his stress medication he then went off the rails. while fighting him he also tells V to leave while they still can. poor guy!
@@beeb5872I always feel bad for them. A lot of them aren't bad people, and they don't want to hurt anyone. Like the one in the big mech body out in the agricultural area. He was horrified at what he'd done, but he was forced into it because they had implanted him into a giant robot body while he was unconscious. He thought V was sent by the gang to finish him off after he killed other gangoons.😊
Maelstrom are affected by Cyberpsychosis. A shard and news report in game says at least 2/3 of the gang are at least affected by it and 1/3 are straight Cyberpsychos. The game doesn't describe cyberpsychosis that well but the information is well documented in the TTRPG.
I think this video was just engagement bait.
Thank you for saying this. I get the game doesn’t spell everything out but this was made apparent if you read shards and listened to dialogue.
Also Adam Smasher can't get Cyberpsychosis because he is already insane before he was augmented.
I think that Arasaka giving Smasher specific treatments for his conditions could also be a factor in it.
A rare asset being a highly irreplacable asset and thus worth giving a lot to keep up and working, makes sense?
You will have a hard time finding a cyberpsycho so special and so lucid yet so psychotic.
@f.e.areproduce5298 As far as I know, Adam Smasher isn't given any treatments to manage his Chrome by Arasaka. He's just a straight up high functioning cyberpsycho with no chrome limit.
In the original tabletop game, all the way back to the 80-90s, cyberpsychosis was a game mechanic designed to avoid Player Characters getting too OP by getting their hands on all the cyberware they could get their hands on. The explanation were varied, from body dysmorphia to simply feeling “superior” to other meatbags. The lack of access to proper health support, both physical and mental, only makes it worse, but in any case, the whole point was that if you character relied too much on cyberware, they´d eventually have a bad roll on "Humanity" and then you´d have to handle the character sheet to the DM, whom now would use it as an maniacal enemy against the party
I always took the cyberpsychosis question as an indictment on the decline of mental health awareness in the world of Cyberpunk. Like most of the cyberpsychos you take down for Regina have some form of PTSD or extreme stress that gets swept under the rug as being the result of implants. In quite a few of these cases the cyberpsychos were abandoned or forgotten by the rest of society and their mental health declined as a result. Others are pure aggression on behalf of a family member of friend against gang members.
That’s why Maelstromers aren’t all psychos despite being the most augmented/modified in all of Night City- the implants don’t have as much of an effect.
I also think its the fact that a regular person or someome with only basic Implants losing it isnt much of a sensation.
The equivalent to our world would be If some regular person has a mental breakdown all they would do is injure themselves and maybe a couple other people and then the police takes them in. Tragic, yes but ultimately nothing you will hear about. But If a vet with a bunch of guns lying around goes postal? Now thats a nationwide news story.
I came to say the same thing. I think cyberpsychosis kind of an allegory for mental health but gone extreme in the cyberpunk universe.
All maelstromers actually are cyberpsycho to some extent. It’s more like a machine based form of sociopathy where you lose all empathy. It’s like real life sociopathy but caused by implants messing with your brain, and can be further triggered by traumatic outside stimuli.
Exactly. Every time I take down a cyberpsycho for the NCPD i go like "wait, they're not a cyberpsycho, just an average joe that actually needed therapy for like YEARS"
Maelstrom is made almost completely of functional cyberpsychos. It may bear resemblance to normal mental health issues, but it’s certainly brought on by implants. Outbursts are seemingly triggered by mental stress. Maelstrom is the definition of cyberpsycho, cause they lose all care for human life along with other symptoms, it’s just that theirs is constant and somewhat functional because they embraced it, while everyone else has it in outbursts.
There are two things to this,
1. In the rule books (which I have) it says that there are two different “phenotypes” of cyber-psychosis, the classic murdery insane kind, and a more subtle sociopathic type where you start to see standard humans as lesser than you, but don’t outright go on killing sprees, instead delighting in causing small amounts of mayhem or sadistic acts to one person at a time slowly. Most maelstrom seem to be closer to this type than the other.
2. On the classic rock channel on the radio, the announcer (who is mike pondsmith the creator of the universe, so his words kinda hold weight) says that some cyberware is built in a way to promote cyber-psychosis than standard, limiters turn down or removed, this wired just *slighty* wrong to have more people come down with the affliction so they can sell more to MaxTac and alike orgs (trauma team, solos, ect). Basically free advertising, in both ways.
Maybe and yes , but the canon of the creator isn't more canon or better than the one of fans ,p
@@SquaulDuNeant What? Mike created the universe, his word is law, CDPR has said that he can veto or add anything he likes… This is like saying that Tolkien isn’t Lord of the rings.
@@SquaulDuNeantYou obviously don't know what the word canon means, or you're trolling. I hope you're trolling.
There's also the fact that one of the hacks you can get in the videogame allow you to turn an enemy into a cyberpsycho soo yeah it's premeditated
Thank you for mentioning the rulebook. Its pretty clear that at least 60% of Night City in 2077 is definitely on that edge of 3 or less Empathy stat.
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. "
I want to hear Adam Smasher do that whole monolog
Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell. Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it.
Man, the voice actors, sound designers and musicians of Mechanicus went harder than they had any right to for a little indie title
It's a little scary how much I've found I relate to those words.
But come on we can do better than steel.
*starts throwing magnets*
I think the thing with Maelstrom is that they have accepted how far they've fallen and embrace the madness in a sense. It's like observing psychos; some of them are crazy, and some KNOW that they are crazy
I think Adam smasher got to where he was because upon looking up his lore, he was a nutcase pre-chrome. Being chromed out and basically a cyborg w multiple bodies did not effect his brain at all.
So basically what you're saying is Adam smasher has always been f***** in the head so cyber psychosis didn't do anything to him?@@tayinabyss
@tayinabyss the writers of the original game said so: Smasher didn't go crazy because he was already a psycho, he simply has it perfectly directed towards his enemies. It's why he talks like everyone else is just "a cut of meat", he has zero Empathy both mechanically and literally.
Maine is the example of accepting his fate.
Even when Dorio was warning him he told her"there's no turning back now".
@@tayinabyss pretty much, Smasher isn’t a cyberpsycho, he is a psycho cyborg
In Cyberpunk there is this thing where augmenting yourself (say, replace your arms with mantis blades) would eat at your "humanity", the more metal you put on yourself, the harder it'll suffer...
But there are also exceptions to that rule, and sorts of bypasses as well.
Iirc...
-In the case of Maelstrom, they are literally and metaphorically crazy about implants; if they could afford and survive going full borg, they would. Most if not all of them are Cyberpsychos whenever you meet them in 2077 (and in the ttrpg usually too, depends on whatever the GM wants ofc), yet you can not only try to dialogue with some, you can avoid combat by saving one of them; probably not as helpless crazy as everyone think.
-There are cases of people that have unusual resistance (or maybe higher Humanity) than the rest of people; we kinda see this in the anime, as David can handle not only the experimental Sande but also Maine arms and probably a few other augments before he starts to show signs of cyberpsychosis; and he was pretty much over the edge by a mile by the end of the show; yet he could tell friend from foe in the middle of a speedware fight with Smasher.
-Johnny Silverhand is one as well, ever since he got his... Well, silver hand. And if you played 2077, you already know he's kinda deranged, but not batshit insane.
-And ofc Smasher; his case is a bit different in that he got himself in a huge accident and (like Johnny) had to have most of his body replaced by cyberware. This is important because losing a bodypart and then replacing it doesn't hit your Humanity as much as replacing a fine and nice working one by choice. That said, kinda like Johnny too, Adam wasn't one to have much Humanity to begin with, he was a regular psycho already. He's with Arasaka only because they kinda let him do whatever and kill as much as he wants.
And well, you have the huge side story in 2077 about the "illness" not being as black and white as media say too.
shit cyberpunk literally has eldritch AI so
Cyberpsychosis isn't some special condition, it's literally just regular psychosis brought on by cyberware, and psychosis looks different in everyone. Not all cyberpsycos are bloodthirsty, kill everything in sight psycho, but rather exhibit different traits of psychopathy
Yes
Sorry for being this guy but... Psychosis and psychopathy aren't exactly the same.... THOUGH one can lead to another.
Also 🤓
@@Malpais-Legate beat me to it
Ty
Makes sense and I think the ones that lash out are basically just school shooters with like, Cybernetics.
I heard several someones say in reference to Adam Smasher, "He never got cyber psychosis because he was already psychotic." Remember that madnesses are forms of trauma from the womb or the world and those expressions are ways to cope with it all
If I recall correctly one of the books from the cyberpunk universe addressed this as them being so high that it doesn’t affect them the same way I could be wrong. It’s been awhile since I’ve read it
Well, cyberpcychosis is not a sudden urge to murder everything that moves, not always at least. It's like combination between dissociative disorder, depression and sociopathy that comes from the fact that the more you change flesh to chrome the less you associate self with your body and subsequently with other people and then it can go different ways depending how you react to it.
That isn't it, Maelstrom members have no real pressure or instead get off on it, they are adrenaline junkies, one can say that is a mental instability in and of itself however, Cyberpsychos have a complete breakdown they have a trigger, the hardware they have installed unfortunately just enables them making them a pain in the ass to deal with, it's like a person on LSD, not everyone snaps and lifts a car or gets violent but mental stress and a complete mental breakdown will basically just trigger a rampage.
I think another thing that deals with cyberpsychos is that some are isolated and don't really have anyone to talk to or hangout with. At the end of the day Malstrom gang members do care for each other to an extent.
Hehe and now you are explaining the humanity stat from the rpg books. Basically if you loose your connection to other people and such, you start losing the part of yourself that makes you human and the end result is psybercycosis. Which is multiple factors that comes toghether, but the main thing is massive disassociation and the loss of self. But yeah you are getting some parts of it
@@luclin92 Oh sweet! I didn't know that, I was using my experience since foe awhile I was depressed because I didn't have any friends around and I might still be depressed.
It would be a stretch to say they care about one another, rather they are a secular community. Theyr'e all nuts, without questions, and most all of them are morally shot. But they DO have other like minded borgs around them that are equally deranged. It IS a technology cult.
Cyberpsycho in Edgerunners: **Casually destroying multiple battalions**
Cyberpsycho in Cyberpunk: "Owww...you punched me too hard :
The psycho with the sandy, near the coast destroyed my ass man, idk what you're talking about
Yea some of them are pushovers but a few of them with better augmentations are lethal
@@hex5096 That one from the Maelstrom ritual site was freaking busted man.
@@Tacticaviator7 Oh yeah, bruh she was my first cyberpsycho I took on...I pissed myself everytime I got the notif about one nearby :
@@Tacticaviator7 Oh shes fun to fight but gawdam is she scary. First time I fought her, I turned around and she "teleported" on me and I about shit myself.
The theory I like is that the less human you feel or think, or the less attached you are to your body, the easier it is to accept the implants and less likely you are to go cyberpsycho.
It's actually both way, either you not much of a human to begin with (adam smasher) or your humanity is at the top (martinez) that you can resist cyberpsychosis.
Other way is that you have a relic with an engram that act like a wall holding psychosis back, hence why V can have basically a full borg body without ever going complete psycho. All that is thanks to johnny keeping V mental state safe through all that chrome.
@@deadrixhanon1776The chip also repairs damage to the host body until the program has run its course - so Johnny literally is keeping V alive the entire game. From Rick Ross putting a bullet in him, to holding of cyberpsychosis, to rebooting his brain after VD boys fry him, etc.
There's also the hack you can get that forces cyber psychosis so this theory holds up :)
"Its mind control"
...
Refuses to elaborate.
...
Leaves.
It’s pretty hard to elaborate with the 5 remaining seconds TH-cam shorts gives him
The quest hes speaking about requests the pc to capture various psychos alive and return them to service eventually either whole or scrapped. the blonde girl with mantis blades from the Og trailer was experiencing cyberpsychosis and can be found working for maxtac seemingly under mind control
@@beanieb0b sure, i understand that. This wasnt supposed to be an accusation or anything, i just found it to be hilariously abrupt and out of left field. xD
@@johncrowley3322 thanks for the elaboration 👍
The TTRPG explains cyberpsychosis pretty in depth, and essentially, it actually has only very few ties to the cyberbetics themselves (thus why Adam Smasher doesnt suffer from it despite being 96% cybernetics)
Cyberpsychosis is basic psychosis stacked with depersonalization disorder, a disorder in which you start to view you body as an object, not as yourself. Technically in the TTRPG you can actually get cyberpsychosis without ever getting cybernetics.
Cybernetics cause a humanity loss in the game. Humanity maxes out at 80, at 29 or lower you start showing symptoms, at 9 or lower youre a full cyberpsycho, and at less than 0 you're in the DMs control. Traumatic events and even some drugs can cause humanity loss as well though, but almost all humanity loss can be a counteracted with therapy (each cybernetic implant decreases your maximum humanity by 2, except for heavy duty stuff which decreases it by 4).
The number of cyberpsychos are more a symptom of lack of access to information and proper medical care than anything, as the materials required for these therapeutic treatments are completely monopolized by Biotechnica.
I think edgerunners did a really good depiction of cyberphychosis you watch in real time it go down with David.
I think it's because of their initiation they experience tremendous loss before being augmented, making the augments a necessity (burning out eyes and replacing with implants) rather than just being put under anesthesia with the help of a ripperdoc and calling it a day.
A friend of mine likened cyberpsychosis to consumerism and that the only way to cure yourself from it is chipping down, stop trying to get more advanced and complicated tech, but that means slowing down and ultimately reaching the other end in Night-city; fading away, rather than burning out.
Cybercycosis is a sliding scale not a you have it or you don’t. Almost every Maelstrom member has it to some degree.
Thats the thing people don't realise, We are seeing only the worst of Cyberpsychosis. In TTRPG terms a player whos humanities went into the negatives.
You first actually show Cyberpsychosis when humanity drops below 3 and you need to apply traits that represent that decay in mind.
Johnny silverhand is a Cyberpsycho not because he kills but because how he sees the world and his arm.
@@wheatleythemoron2999 I play V like she’s in cyberpsychosis.
This seems like a terrible misinterpretation of both Maelstrom AND cyberpsychosis. Maelstrom is basically “what if we got a bunch of cyberpsychos and put them in a gang together?”
Cyberpsychotics are also known to be able to function at times in lore. Adam Smasher is purported to be a functioning cyberpsycho.
I played ealry
6th game crash i just said "my character is a cyber-psycho. All these glitches are my brain breaking"
Never played it since, because that's the end
That’s pretty funny but you should pick it up again the game runs a hell lot smoother now.
If you pay attention to all the people who suffer cyberpychosis its not actually related to cybernetics. Many of them were just augmented peoplepushedto far by stress, drugs, and bad work environments. In the game you only meet 2 true cyber psychos
I thought maelstrom had the highest percentage of cyberpsychosis? I heard that just today on a gang lore video.
One could argue that V has cyberpsychosis from the implant. They are seeing Johnny, can talk to them and switch control. Kind of like artificial dissociative identity disorder.
Johnny is already a functional cyberpsycho, and the chip repairs damage to the host brain, so I think V is immune while he has Johnny in his head.
He's not crazy - he's just hallucinating a very real computer program thats trying to kill him without either of their consent.
In the show when they are using their coms you can hear that everyone seems to stutter or stumble their words. But when actually talking face to face they dont stutter or stumble their words. Which i think is a nice little detail most people overlook
"The thing about chaos is that there's always somebody behind the wheel"
So, like, in lore cyberpsychosis is just cyberwear enduced psychopathy or sociopathy. So, the legitimate schizophrenia like symptoms we see in 2077 (and Edgerunners) could be something completely different.
No it's cyberwear induced psychosis, it's literally in the name.
more like a unnatural combination of physical disassociation. everything we do in our natural bodies we do for our survival and our brains literally go haywire in the absence of human frailty. all you have are thoughts visual and stimuli, eventually leading to schizophrenia-like symptoms
In the games it’s heavily alluded to that even tho cyber ware is a factor, mental well-being is the greater factor. So something that would cause a psychotic break would also trigger a cyberpsychotic break. And hallucination being a symptom of psychosis is can easily cause a wearer to spiral deeper into the psychopathy and hostility
No, it’s cyberPSYCHOSIS, not cyberPSYCHOPATHY. The first means they’re suffering from psychosis (essentially think of schizophrenia), while the latter would mean they’re turned into psychopaths. The term “cyberpsycho” leads to some misunderstandings around this as it pretty understandably makes people think they’re psychopathic, but that’s just, like I said, a misunderstanding.
No it's cyberware induced psychosis, not psychopathy. I thought it literally being in the name cyberpsycho made that clear.
There are functional Cyber-psychos who only harm in self defense. Psychopathy may be present but not as overtly destructive as is on display in the game's enemies or in Edgerunners. It usually manifests as lack of empathy and impulsive behavior. Basically that everyone in Night City.
After finishing the quest you are told that there is no cyberpsychosis but its simply the result of living in night city with rather more cyberimplants, something like that as far i remember,
Cyberpsychosis is not a single illness. Its a plethora of co-existing mind illnesses coupled with body issues of accepting implants. Johnny silverhand is described as a Cyberpsycho, but he has minimal implants compared to some other people.
However Johnny also has PTSD from his army service, severe issues with social interactions, can not form any meaningful long lasting relationship, has issues with authority and paranoia.
Basically he is a walking collection of problems with brain, further fueled by abuse of alcohol, narcotics, highly stressfull life etc.
I think cyberpsychosis is dependant on the induvidual, someone who suffered a lot will turn into a cyberpsycho if they augment themselves too much. Just look at the anime. So i think most maelstrom guys are just punks and metalheads with a bit of augmentation
I love that ALL cyberpunk 77 videos (even loving ones!) always feature endless footage of broken driving lol
The one thing they never bothered fixing: the monkey in the trunk that lubes our back tires when we're not looking
Cyberpsychosis occurs when your empathy stat reaches 0. Youre no longer abke ti differentiate between where the chrome ends and the human begins. But none of that us explain in 2077 or edgerunners because its a game mechanic from the tabletop and wouldnt translate well to the video game or the anime
I mean, if a guy with PTSD has a fully automatic rifle linked directly into his cranium you would expect him to "misfire" from time to time.
I like that it's never flat out explained more like a growing medical concern. Makes for good world building
Cyberpsychosis is akin to being overstimulated. Some people have a higher tolerance than others. So when it comes to putting in cybernetics, what tends to happen is some people's threshold is higher than others and because of that it allows for them not to undergo cyber psychosis. If you want to think of it in terms of reality, it's like it's somebody were to trying to pull a splinter out of their finger. Some people would just rip it out because they have a higher threshold for pain. Some people wouldn't be able to even look at you pull it out. That's how cyber psychosis works.
Dayum turns out i would become cyberpsycho after installation of just one cybernetic, as i suffer from chronic pain hypersensitivity and being constantly in pain due to overstimulation because my stimuli processing is on overdrive. That makes sense why so much of these guys would be drug addicts, if i wouldn't start opioid treatment two years ago i would still be bedridden because everything hurt so much
@@maya_void3923 sorry to hear that but ya that's why David started taking so much drugs at the end due to him being placed in overdrive.
I always thought the reason why Maelstrom wasn’t affected by cyberpsychosis it’s because they are already bat shit crazy except for the few that went above and beyond like really in the deep end of cyberpsychosis
I think a big part of the reason that David and Maine in their specific cases were succumbing to “Cyber”psychosis was because of the fear of it happening in the first place. There’s so much foreshadowing and dread placed on cyberpsychosis and how they think about it. Fear is your worst enemy……. And your best friend it’s weird.
Just chrome up beyond the psychosis, choom.
Maelstrom purposely skate the edge of Cyberpsychosis and Mike Pondsmith describes it as a spectrum disorder.
*looks at Malstorm* "ya, he's pretty stable." 😆
I learned from Regina’s missions that most “cyberpsychos” were just people who snapped and just blinded by rage and desperation, most of them were unrelated to heavy augmentation
In one, a girl got fcked over by her twin who got manipulated by this reality tv show company. On another, a guy’s small business got repossessed by a bigger corp who loaned him the very property just to take it away from him in the end (they both killed those corp people out of vengeance and desperation respectively)
In it’s roots they’re just unfortunate people who fell victim to corporate bureaucracy, further solidifying that Johnny was right about the corps
iirc it was said in the TTRPG that the more chrome your character has, the more the character start seeing themselves as "superior" to other humans, causes them to start experiencing cyberpsychosis, and when you're under sensory overload from all the chrome your brain gets fried and you become a killing machine because everything is so overwhelming
Aren't they basically a cyberpsycho gang? Your theory seems pretty far fetched
While I think this theory is shakey there is a basis that theres more to cyberpsychosis.
They are effectively a gang of psychotic weirdos but they retain almost all higher thought and reason. They're high functioning psychopaths.
If you read a lot of the logs surrounding cyberpsycho gigs you'll find a good chunk of the perps went insane from external trauma related to cyberware. Like I don't think one guy went insane because too much chrome he went insane cause his daughter was r**ed and murdered. And I think the reason ONLY REGINA investigates solutions is because realistically it is far easier for corps and media to just label every psycho as crazy instead of drawing attention to any involvement they had.
There are malestorm cyberpsychos. You literally fight one from every gang
During the entire Cyberpsycho sidequest and in Edgerunner, it gets more and more obvious that Chrome, on its own, doesn't cause Cyberpsychosis. It does make it more likely to become a Psycho, but the main cause for the neurological malfunction is stress. Something all Psychos in the game/series have in common, beside their high amount of Chrome, is that they snapped after a traumatic incident, massive drug use and/or a life of constant stress (fights, stressfull relationships, overworking, etc.)
Cyberpsychosis straddles the line between addiction and trauma, and while having a lot of chrome can make you more susceptible, it doesn't force you into cyberpsychosis.
Adam Smasher, for instance, had cyberpsychotic tendencies, but never falls completely over the edge. David Martinez was resistant, but as he suffered more trauma, he became more cyberpsychotic.
Adeptus mechanicus: skill issue
Praise the Omnissiah!
I’ve always liked the idea that cyberpsychosis is a reaction of the mind trying to make sense of the machinery altering the mind’s identity. If the amount of machinery is low enough or the augmentation is slow enough, the mind can process this change. Too fast or too much at once and the mind begins to break or fragment. Quite literally, your mind is fighting for its sanity against the machine.
Maelstrom forces augmentation, and I would imagine they would remove a portion of the individual’s identity as a matter of course. Barely human to start, not enough of a mind left to shatter.
They explain this in game. In a document pickup. People have different tolerances for implants (like how people have different tolerances for steroids before going into roidrage). That's what makes Adam and David so special they have super high tolerances. So it allows them to get more.
Cyberpsychosis in the TTRPG is directly caused by getting too much chrome too fast. Every piece of cyberware has a base cost in permanently lowering your humanity and a random cost in temporary humanity loss. Up through the latest release (based on Edgerunners) the only way to heal that temporary humanity loss was through brain dance therapy. That’s still the main mechanic in Edgerunners but they added losing/gaining humanity from events and also the immuno-blockers that are a Devil’s bargain at best. They can boot your humanity but it’s temporary.
I’ve been playing the game for 30 years now or so and I can’t remember if it’s ever explicitly stated anywhere but it at least heavily implied that, in the Time of the Red and earlier, cyberpsychosis is seen as a reaction to your becoming less and less human. You slowly lose the ability to empathize with others because you aren’t like them anymore. In Edgerunners, the advent of the neuroport changed everything. It processes and handles the interface with not just all your cyberware but pretty much all the technology in existence. Almost everyone has one implanted at a young age and it has zero humanity cost because your brain and identity is allowed to adapt to it. Plus, if everyone has it, it doesn’t exactly make you different from everyone else. It is also subtly implied by all the 2076/7 media that the neuroport is where the other interesting changes in the mechanics come from.
Now, all that said, there is no rule in any of the games that says that someone who succumbs to cyberpsychosis becomes a raging maniac. That’s the most common outcome, especially given that it’s usually Solos who do it and killing people is what they do best. The rules simply say that you lose control of your character to the GM and he can play it however he wants. Many, many times, even in Pondsmith’s games (reportedly) that is often *not* a violent maniac. A lot of the people who succumb to it become functional sociopaths who are able to blend in. Some of them might even be holding down jobs at Arasaka and Militech. One of them in particular, Adam Smasher, may seem immune to it because they were already sociopaths lacking any empathy at all long before they got chipped. I think that’s how Maelstroms seeming immunity works. They’re already violent maniacs. How could you even tell they went psycho.
It’s also worth pointing out that, in spite of their strange appearances, the vast majority of their mods are nothing more than cosmetic fashionware. That all has very little humanity loss. Their main distinguishing characteristic is their usage of multi-optic face plates. They can really rack up some humanity loss but their purpose is to allow the user to slot more cyber-eye mods. Like *all* of them.
The real tragedy, though, is that from a min/max perspective, the best way to chip in as much chrome as possible is by maxing out your empathy stat at character creation. Inevitably, every game I’ve ever been in winds up with this grim reality that the kinder and more empathetic you are, the more of a monster you can become. Think about that in the context of David’s arc.
That’s the basis of my character now in Edgerunners. He was basically Militech’s Soldier Boy (like in The Boys). They used him as a demo platform for their latest and greatest ware and made him into an action movie star for 30 years until he finally started to succumb to cyberpsychosis. Then they just yanked it all and dumped him into a hospital where he spent the next 20 years rebuilding his mind and his body from cheap cloned replacement organs and medical grade cyberware (i.e. purely prosthetic. No special abilities. No humanity loss.) Now he’s trying to become the hero he pretended to be for all those years. His dark secret is that he *wants* to push his humanity down to as close to zero as possible because he can’t deal with the trauma and survivors guilt that of being the only person from his Basic Training class at Militech who’s still alive. A lot got killed in the 4th corporate war. A lot more died from suicide, drug overdose, and cyberpsychosis. Finally the last one who was his best friend got killed because he was in BARGHEST and didn’t want to go along with their plan.
In one of the phantom liberty gigs we get some lore than elaborates and it basically confirms those people were already crazy to begin with, the chrome just gave them a means to express their insanity. It’s like giving a gun in real life to a psychopath. Bad things are bound to happen
"From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh... it disgusted me."
No, it was already explained my the creator. Everyone has a different tolerance, its like a sanitary threshold.
One of my favourite hypothesis proposed by someone else on TH-cam is that Cyberpsychosis happens when you dissociate. When there's nothing else keeping your attention like a sense of purpose. That's when the augmentations take over because these implants "know" their purpose. It's just common for Cyberpsychosis to be violent because these augments are so commonly weapons and their purpose is to kill.
The downside to this hypothesis is that they only used peeps from Edgerunners as examples. David's turning point started when he began drifting away from Lucy and came back to his sanity when Lucy was finally there in front of him. I forgot what they said about Maine but something about longing for simpler times because the current gig started being too stressful that he started questioning "what's he doing this for?" Idk. As for Smasher, he always liked being a tool for violence. Having sponsors in Arasaka certainly help feed his ego and desires. He's always known his purpose and that's to be a killing machine. Becoming almost fully cybernetic just reinforced that identity for him.
Maybe they just don't care they're losing their humanity, or it's just the "when I realize the weakness of My flesh, it sickened me" type mindset
Cyberpsychosis is not immediate havoc, characters like royce are likely cyberpsychotic and still function, and there is a mission in phantom liberty in wich a man who killed people turned out to be cyberpsycho. You can speak to him and while erratic he is still somewhat intelligable
Maelstrom is actually just a gang of cyberpsychos that formed in defense against the red chrome legion and the inquisitors
I think Todo can still use his technic by clapping his own cheeks, no Diddy.
There are many different triggers, as you hunt down psycho's, you'll encounter people who snapped from stress, who snapped from drugs, who snapped from trauma, and who snapped from over-augmentation.
A military sniper snaps when his daughter is turned into a joytoy and he finds her dead,
a construction worker snaps because he's made to wear an exo-suit and work long hours,
a celebrity snaps because her cyberware malfunctioned,
a maelstrom snaps when he's drugged up to the extreme and treated like a dog,
another guy snaps because he's nabbed off the street and forcefully heavily augmented by maelstrom so they can watch his snap,
and a dock worker snaps because he's exposed to the drugs his boss is moving and was working long hours,
multiple causes each resulting in a snap.
Maelstrom is also a community with a shared brotherhood. That is a big factor. Cyber psychos are usually people who have a situational loss in their life too
You can't be a cyber psycho if your already a psycho before the augments XD.
I overheard some npcs yapping one time and since im kinda lame i was semi listening and they talked about one of their friends who only had 1 implant, yet was killed because they went insane with cyberpsychosis, other guy talking said basically luck of the draw. Even one implant can give u psychosis kinda nutty
It's seems to me like someone is pulling the strings of people. The thing is V is too distracted by their impending death to trying figure it out. Plus Dave was also a dead man and was already gone before he could even ask the question. Which if they were to make a sequel to this critical failure of a game it should be about a detective. Someone that's trying to find out why cyberpsychosis is happening. Someone that has a friend or family member that suffered and died from it.
Its mostly with people who have dealt with extreme stress or trauma and then augmented themselves so much they go insane and lose control
In the original ttrpg cyberpsychosis isn't just going feral, but one of many symptoms, others include disassociation with others, a loss of humanity, increased tendency of violence behaviors, actions that come across as cold or unfeeling. With cyberpsychosis you're not just loosing your mind, but also slowly becoming less human. And as we see in 2077 cyberpsychosis is also triggered by extreme emotions and stress, some examples include; the veteran who succumbed to PTSD, the Valentino that was poked and prodded by maelstrom. The soldier who lost a child and snapped, the corporate soldier who was slated to die and had a paranoid episode, and so on.
Cyberpsychosis causes you driving your motorcycle standing on the seat in T-pose without pants.
There are shards that talk about how cyberpsychos aren’t always violent, that’s just the most documented and visible symptom but most apparently waste away in their homes.
cyberpsychosis is either getting so much chrome that you lose the plot and suddenly trick your gray matter into thinking it saves before going on a rampage in gta 69. or its getting so chromed that you touch the great firewall and the gibbering madness behind it follows you back.
its worth noting that cyber-psychosis isnt a result of too many implants, but rather a combination of too many implants too quickly, and psychological trauma or harm.
For example, while David went through early stages of psychosis after losing his mum, going through a lot of fights and losing other friends, lucy was still able to bring him back, indicating that love and friendship are actually a “cure” for cyber psychosis,
and in-game we see a few cyberpsychos went off the rails after a drug overdose.
So, its a mixture of too much chrome too quickly, mental trauma and substance abuse.
I always assumed that cyber sychosis was basically people having mental breaks, but the cybernetics put you in a sort of feedback loop. This makes you less sad and crying, or punching randomly, and more in a hallucinated trip.
This could possibly make psychos physiologically immune, or people who already have a broken mind have a resistance. Maelstrom members might already have broken minds, and most have found a way to cope with it (not stable ways, but enough to still be able to communicate and get work done).
Cyberpsychosis is basically PTSD in combination with having too much chrome. In Edgerunners we see figures like Maine and David succumb to cyberpsychosis not just due to the over use of chrome but also triggered through traumatic events. In the TTRPG its triggered by running out of "humanity" which gets depleted through a combination of augmentation and just by doing sketchy and evil stuff. Cyberpsychosis is a multifaceted issue in Cyberpunk with the use and abuse of chrome being just one of many factors
If you read the shards and do all the stuff in Psycho Killer, you pretty much learn that everyone who gets cyberpsychosis has been subject to something that would push a normal human being over the edge, and that they happen to have a lot of chrome on them. It is the story of any school shooter or any normal person lashing out against society, but amplified.
My understanding of cyberpsychosis is that alongside poisoning from all the heavy metals you pour unto your body (depending if they are high grade or cheap chrome) and the pressure you put into your nervous system there is also a mental threshold of how much you can endure mentally, V doesn't really go cyber psycho because he has Johnny to share the burden but characters like David, Lizzy and all the cyberpsychos we face for Regina went through some real bad stuff, experiences that pushed their mental fortitude to the limits and breakdown, there's no telling what's the average threshold since each person is different but some can gain stability even after going psycho like Hansen's subordinate we encounter on Dogtown who blackout and killed a bunch of people or David who was able to go back for a brief moment thanks to Lucy... that also explain why it is harder for veterans or Arasaka body guards to go Psycho, they gain some mental resilient after their training if we correlate this we can explain why Smasher despite being a cold killer never really went psycho.
There's also the induced cyberpsychosis, this one is easier to explain, it can be done either by a netrunner or a demon/rogue AI but the baseline is the same, they put your brain under a lot of pressure until it breakdown
I wouldn't be surprised if the cyberspychois is actually a countermeasure against people turning themselves into borderline superheroes.
When doing the cyberpsycho missions for the NCPD i have developed the theory that cyberpsychosis is just a hardcore burnout that has been attributed to the chrome excess instead of that messed up world.
This will be interesting for a prehistoric thriller. Imagine having to scavenge but also being wary of neanderthals and other humans.
A big part of it is how well someone as an individual can handle stress.
In the TTRPG during chacter creation one of the thing that can happen if you grew up in night city is that you lost a relative to a maelstorm cyberpsyco. Most gangmembers are just high-functioning junkies
Makes a lot of sense since some of the lore docs you can recover around the areas specifically talk about incorporate black projects and the likes referring to triggering cyberpsychosis.
Remember, Johny Silverhand himself is a high functioning Cyberpsycho
It's not just about the chrome, but almost every cyberpsycho Vi has dealt with was going through tough times
I don’t know who it was, but if you read through all the shards in a side quest where one of your contractors ask you to check up on someone (she kills her sister because she’s having cyber psychosis), it’ll tell you something along the lines of “we all have cyber psychosis.” It is not a disease but the act of humanity leaning towards AI and tech. Cyber psychosis affects everyone differently. He finishes off his shard telling us that he shouldn’t even be saying this, but he worked for a huge corp that would kill him if he told everyone.
If you read the archives after taking down psychos it hints at loneliness being the biggest trigger since people with minor augments also go crazy.
In reality, they just have a legion of therapists on staff.
What makes cyberpsychosis was explained when david was losing it in Edgerunners. You can chrome up as much as you want, but if you dont switch to a different neural system then your nerves and brain will slowly get fried whenever you use your Chrome.
(Edit: corrected a spelling error)
The ttrpg actually explains this very well. Cyberpsychosis is at least two parts at once, the alienation effect of pushing the body and mind through augmentation and replacement [the classic am i me question] and the psychotic part of pushing through hallucinations and delusion caused by body transformation [the classic know the bodies limit]. To get around the first, a good group of like-minded individuals with strong cultural unit cohesiveness can limit the alienation. Maelstrom, arasaka, and even a good crew can help with that.
The second pushing the limit is interesting as mastering of the augmentation, careful implantation, mass cyberware implantation, and special facilities can all reduce the trauma and long-term stress of augmentation.
So you don't need to be a cyberpsycho to be fully augmented. You do need a teather to keep you from riding off the edge in time.
So you’re partially right, the board game and the anime both said that along with large amounts of chrome you also have to witness mind breaking events.
Maelstrom are mostly cray to begin with so perhaps they lack empathy and that prevents them from tipping
The fact that your given a quickhack to give someone cyber psychosis pretty much shows that its targeted attacks.
Saying Malestrom isn’t full of cyberspychos is like saying I’m not addicted to cocaine
I theorize that cyberpsychosis, no matter how little chrome there is as long as it is plugged to the brain a person is bound to fall to its affliction because of the cruel world that is night city. So much crime, poverty, drugs, the idea of whether it will be your last day, ptsd, falling into hard times, and more. All that accumulated stress, depression, fear among other things affects your physiological state negatively, the chemicals in the brain take place, but the chrome connected to ones head get affected negatively since despite being an advanced imitation of the real thing, the human body still has many unknowns that cybernetics can't compensate. I mean, in the night city universe, those who control where the eddies flow place it all in getting the latest tech, creating the next big thing to keep it to themselves or sell it to the highest bid, create more advanced weapons, practically anything for self benefit than solving many of the world's problems along with many people's needs. Back to cyberpsychosis, glitches in the chrome happen due to the brain activities, and in turn, it affects the brain, one starts to lose control and eventually fall into cyberpsychosis.
Maelstrom actually helps with the psychosis by working together, its the loners who go crazy fastest
I believe there was one case of a maelstrom cyberpsycho since veteran that after he lost his job with maelstrom, they shut off his PTSD suppression medication, so he went into a full cyber psychosis because all of his Cybernetics that were helping him stay stable. We’re turned off.
The game heavily implies that it's a combination of factors. Psychological trauma, too many/badly adjusted implants, sudden shocks, heavy addiction.
It's basically not "too much chrome = cyberpsycho for sure" but a matter of "you can only take so much and your mental state and the quality of your chrome influences that".
What's okay for one person might be too much for another.
As for Maelstrom: many of them ARE cyberpsychos, just barely functional enough to still serve the gang.
the best way to put cyberpsychosis is as an augmentor, lets put David as an example, he had a military grade implant, had maine's arms and a shit ton of implants after the time skip, but, just started having the cyberpsychotic symptoms after already having them, to put it simply, when David was ALREADY having mental trouble, Lucy which he loved was getting distant from him, Maine, Dorio and Pillar died a few years back, from the whole gang he is only left with Rebecca and a few times with Kiwi, he was already going mental with or without the chrome, all it did was boost the reaction