Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 Creators Talk New Child Lead and Gory Influences | IGN Fall Fan Fest 2026

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is back with a new season on Netflix on October 20th, and today IGN's Fall Fan Festival brought you a new teaser to remind you why you'll want to make time for some serious Netflix bingeing once it ends.

The first season focused on David Martinez, a student with a talent for enduring cyber-enhancements, and netrunner Lucyna "Lucy" Kushinada as they try to survive Night City as part of its criminal underworld. Season 2 introduces a new story from the Edgerunners universe with Roman Carax, a kid with a taste for old movies, and Talia Young, who is part of a minor cyber crime gang called Maelstrom.

Following the special fan screening of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 at IGN's Anime Expo, we asked CD Projekt Red VP of Franchise Bartosz Sztybor and Executive Producer - Anime Saya Elder about how the new French extremity game has influenced the horror scene following David and Lucy. cinema

Was the success of Season 1 encouraging or terrifying?

Bartosz Sztybo: Both. I am a person who is never 100% satisfied with what I write. So the success of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was encouraging on the one hand – that the stories I write can resonate with so many people. But on the other hand: "Oh, shit. I'll never write anything this good again." It was the same on other levels. From CD PROJEKT RED's point of view and for Cyberpunk 2077 as an IP, it gave us a lot of confidence that people want such things and we have the power to do them. But also - how can we top it?!

Big Saya: It certainly motivated us! and confidence to fight for more animation projects.

With David gone, what was the biggest challenge in writing an entirely new group of mercenaries for an audience that had become so attached to the first group?

Bartosz Sztybo: The biggest challenge was to stop thinking about David and Lucy and not fall into the trap of artificially repeating things that the fans had fallen in love with - or trying to create something too contrasting. Of course, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 touches on similar things. Also rhymes with Edgerunners. There is some dialogue between the two, but only to stay true to the core principles of the Edgerunners franchise. The good thing was that I already had a few ideas while writing Edgerunners, so I just had to split my writing brain into two parts - one half to analyze Edgerunners and be able to stay true to it with Edgerunners 2, and the other half to stay neutral, go back to old ideas, and come up with new ideas that would be something fresh.

Were there any areas that you knew, in order to plan Season 2, that you had to explore in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 that you didn't have the chance to in Season 1?

Bartosz Sztybo: I rarely think about places when I write stories or plan. I think more about themes and characters, so the "uncharted territories" for me were not buildings, streets or neighborhoods, but brain dances. And the people who work in that industry, the backstories and private lives of corporate workers, or again the lifestyle of pioneers, but from a different perspective. Sometimes I get glimpses of scenes when I start thinking about the story and I look for visual metaphors when I'm talking or writing a scene, so some places pop up, but I don't want to spoil anything.

The incredible head kneading scene in the very first episode. When it comes to grunts, is there anything that lets you know when you've seen a scene, and when you've gone "oooh too much", they're spot on.

Bartosz Sztybo: I am a big fan of David Cronenberg, Takashi Mieke and Julia Ducournau. In the early 2000s, I was very influenced by the new wave of French horror, aka New French Extremity - Martyrs, Haute Tension, Trouble Every Day, À l'interrieur, and Frontier(s). Evil Dead is one of my favorite horror series of all time, so when you ask me about gore - I always say more is better and I'm so glad Kai Ikarashi digs it too. We understood each other perfectly, sometimes going for exaggerated growls and sometimes showing the violence in a very cold and emotionless way with Cormac McCarthy and Michael Haneke as references. In fact, in Edgerunners 2, you've never seen violence like this in the world of Cyberpunk 2077!

Saya Elder: Gore and sex are areas where we usually give TRIGGER room to explore the scene organically at the storyboard stage. I've seen Sztybor try to convey the ideal level of violence in screenplays through onomatopoeia, such as "his head explodes" or "the building booms", and maybe throwing out some odd ideas for inspiration here or there. TRIGGER usually takes that and amplifies it in a way that only they can.

Roman must be protected at all costs - how did his obsession with filmmaking shape the story of Season 2?

Bartosz Sztybo - Everything was very organic. There was this old idea to include braindance in Edgerunners 2, and we started conversations with TRIGGER and Kai Ikarashi that led to certain narrative and visual choices. So Roman shaped Edgerunners 2, but Edgerunners 2 also made and shaped Roman. The film is inspired by the 90s, when cinema was different than it is today, which led to the idea of ​​a child who thought there was value in the past, in a cinematic experience versus being attached to a brain dance. That led to many of the interesting visual ideas you'll see in the show.

Saya Elder: I actually fought really hard at first with having a protagonist - I knew the second something happened to this kid, the audience would be thumbing us! But Night City isn't easy for anyone, not even a real kid. Roman is motivated to capture stories through his camera, and this motivation is the reason why he ends up where no child should be.

I loved the line about why stories matter, was that something you explored early on? To the very honest CD of the red project.

Bartosz Sztybo: Good moral stories are CD PROJEKT RED, that's right. And Roman is kind of a self-referential character—he's my, Kai Ikarashi and Masahiko Otsuka's love letter to cinema. There are also some of our experiences there, when we dreamed of being filmmakers. And finally, this is a metaphor for the condition of cinema.

Big Saya: Thank you! One of the themes we wanted to explore throughout the series was the loss of a generation of storytelling methods and technology. I remember talking to my younger cousins ​​and realizing they didn't know what a VHS tape was. As someone who grew up on Disney and DreamWorks tapes, it was shocking and a little disturbing. Similarly, old film and cinema represent a form of storytelling that is disappearing from the night city. We wanted to explore that in Edgerunners 2.

Speaking of themes, did the darker theme of Revenge Season have an impact on the way you wanted the art style or animation to reflect that?

Bartosz Sztybo: Art style and animation are related to several things. They definitely relate to the 90s inspiration. But some of the visual ideas, and the way the violence is shown in some places, are sometimes awkward. It is not about revenge, but about a more realistic approach. And finally, Roman's character gave us the opportunity to play with different perspectives and different ways of visual storytelling.

Saya Elder: Dee is a character haunted by her past, and it appears through nightmare sequences and moments of trauma. TRIGGER captures this in a very special way. I won't talk too much about the art style because that's TRIGGER's area, but one of the details I like about Edgerunners 2 is how animated the sweat is. It is very wet and heavy and unpleasant to look at. There's something deeply uncomfortable about watching characters pass out in a cold seat.

Fall Fan Fest features 90 exclusive shows across games, movies, TV, comics and collectibles. Stream it on IGN for game announcements, trailers, exclusive clips, celebrity interviews and more, or catch up on everything you missed from Fall Fan Fest right here on IGN.

Rachel Weber is the Head of Editorial Development at IGN and a huge millennial. He's been a professional nerd since 2006 when he started working for Official PlayStation Magazine in the UK, and has since worked for GamesIndustry.Biz, Rolling Stone and GamesRadar. He loves horror movies, horror movies, horror games, Red Dead Redemption 2, and boyfriend Love and Deepspace.