As a follow-up to CD Projekt Red's Witcher series and the pen-and-paper Cyberpunk games, Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot of things going for it. The game is a huge project that has attracted big talent from Grimes to Keanu Reeves.
Keanu Reeves’ character, Johnny Silverhand, is a well-established figure in the Cyberpunk lore. Players unfamiliar with Johnny are sure to learn more about him in Cyberpunk 2077, but he isn’t the most bizarre character they might encounter. Johnny Silverhand’s ex-girlfriend, Alt Cunningham, is just as essential to the world of Cyberpunk, and her story may be the strangest of all.
The Events of Cyberpunk 2013
Alteria Cunningham’s early life is a mystery, but she was first introduced in the Cyberpunk 2013 RPG. Despite Cyberpunk 2077 taking place in the future, it still continues from the diverged Cyberpunk timeline which already establishes some clear events which have taken place in Cyberpunk before the year 2020. Alt was born in the late 20th century and became a netrunner, a cybernetically augmented hacker who can interface with computers using implants in their brain.
Like Johnny, she also has a cybernetic arm, having had her body augmented to make her more beautiful as well as to enhance her hacking abilities. While Johnny’s arm is unsurprisingly silver, Alt Cunningham’s was gold in color. Alt met Rockerboy Johnny Silverhand and the two began a relationship, but they would not live happily ever after. Alt was developing software which would allow any netrunner to upload their minds into the net and explore it independently from their physical bodies. The Never Fade Away mini adventure revealed that Alt was working for a company named ITS at the time, which turned her work into a weapon called Soulkiller that imprisoned netrunners' minds in the net.
In 2013, a group of Arasaka thugs hired from the gangs of Night City on direct orders from the mega-corporation’s local head of operations, Toshiro Arakasa, struck. They injured Johnny Silverhand and kidnapped Alt, leaving Johnny to die in the street. The plan was to have Alt develop the same software for Arasaka that she had developed for ITS, but Arasaka’s plan quickly went awry. While Alt was rebuilding the software for her kidnappers, she left a failsafe in the software which would allow those it was used on to escape the prison they would be uploaded to. Alt was worried that her Arasaka Corporation captors would use the new Soulkiller software on her as soon as she was no longer needed, and her foresight would prove vital.
Johnny survived the attack and used his fans to start a riot in Night City. They led an attack on the Arasaka building, killing Toshiro Arasaka, but when Johnny finally emerged with Alt’s lifeless body, it seemed it was already too late and the worst had transpired. However, in the chaos, Toshiro had tried to use the Soulkiller software on Alt, leaving her lifeless body behind but not fully imprisoning her as intended thanks to her own failsafe. This would allow for her return in a new AI form.
Escape from Arasaka
Using the failsafe she had put into the Arasaka software, Alt Cunningham’s digitized mind escaped to the Net, but by 2020, Arasaka had discovered her survival and caught her once again during the height of the Fourth Corporate War. Johnny Silverhand realized that Alt was still alive and that her mind was imprisoned in Arasaka Tower, and led another attack. Johnny and his team of netrunners were able to distract the Arasaka forces for long enough that Alt was able to escape back to the Net.
Alt then set up Ghost Town in the net, a safe place for other AI escapees from the Soulkiller prison she had helped create back at ITS in 2013. Ghost Town was rumored to be hidden on a server kept somewhere within Night City itself. The rest of Alt Cunningham’s story, however, takes place all the way across the Pacific, in the ruins of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong in Cyberpunk
Hong Kong has had a tough time by 2077 in the world of Cyberpunk. In the Cyberpunk timeline, Hong Kong is fully returned to Chinese control in 1997, but suffers greatly during the Second Corporate War, which takes place primarily in the South China Sea. From the frying pan to the fire, a biological weapons attack creates a plague in 2023 which almost wipes out the city’s population.
In 2025, the AI Alt Cunningham is somehow able to get into a server in the now devastated Hong Kong, which is said to have no remaining biological life by this point in the timeline. There, she establishes a new haven for AI who escape the Soulkiller, as well as other stray AI and netrunners. By 2045, a 100-foot wall has been erected around Hong Kong to stop the disease spreading to the rest of China. Little is known about what has happened since then, but it seems Alt Cunningham went from hacker girlfriend to a Rockstar to a powerful AI in charge of a virtual city state, and possibly far more.
The final fate of the couple remains to be seen, and that's if Silverhand has any way of communicating with her. It’s very possible that the Alt Cunningham that runs Hong Kong is now a very different beast to the one Johnny knew back in Night City. Either way, Alt Cunningham is certainly one of the most interesting characters in the Cyberpunk lore and one many fans of the pen-and-paper RPGs will be hoping to see return in CD Projekt Red’s upcoming game.
Cyberpunk 2077 will release on November 19th, for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.