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SPOILERS AHEADGame of Thrones is hardly the first property out there to disregard plot armor, but it's by far the most popular. Many expect certain characters and heroes to live to see the end of the tale, but the anticipation of who would survive, who would be killed and how, and how every plot element would unfold without these driving characters, like Ned Stark following Game of Thrones Season 1, elevated the novel and its HBO adaptation. It's no surprise given the dystopian nature of a Cyberpunk world that both Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners drop plot armor too, but the two diverge in how well it is done.
If Game of Thrones is the gold standard in dropping plot armor to build anticipation and a story, Cyberpunk 2077's lack of plot armor couldn't hit the same strides in this sense. Cyberpunk 2077 made players realize anyone could die at any time, with there being a full laundry list of characters who will die, who could die, and not to mention V's uncertain fate depending on certain Cyberpunk 2077 endings. It's something like 18 characters who could die, even in the best of playthroughs, but instead of building anticipation, players simply expected deaths. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners follows a similar motif, but comes closer to Game of Thrones' gold standard that the video game does.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Drops Plot Armor Better Than Cyberpunk 2077, More Like Game of Thrones
David Martinez's mom dies, and he falls in love with Lucy. It's the type of up and down romance that fans will immediately ship and hope they survive to the end with. David found his community with the Cyberpunks and was welcomed into them like a second home. But one by one they all start dying. That's how the world of Night City works - Cyberpunks are remembered for their deaths, not their lives. And so one by one characters die, and the show does a good job of building up anticipation of who's going to die, how they're going to die, and at what moment they will.
Many hoped to see Lucy and David make it to the moon, but David was all-in. He did everything to make Lucy's dream a reality, and that results in its bittersweet ending. Well before that, Maine shaped the Cyberpunk David was, but he fell to cyberpsychosis in the worst of ways. David lived it out to the best. And every single member save Falco and Lucy die. Pilar gets killed by a cyberpsycho. Dorio, Kiwi, and Faraday all die. And while her friends are falling around her, many no doubt were excited to see the fan-favorite Rebecca of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners live to the final episode...just to die by Adam Smasher. That made him more popular in the game, but only because of her popularity in the show.
And seeing them fall one by one led to a lot of anticipation on who would survive and who would die next. It hit the gold standard of Game of Thrones perfectly. Perhaps this is something more easily achieved in an episodic format like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners than a video game one like Cyberpunk 2077, but either way, it's something that truly helps tell a story if done right.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is streaming now.