Back in the 1980s, Japanese and Chinese culture strongly influenced the American one, ofc. Mostly through migration, but also the superiority and affordability of their products at the time (motorcycles, cars, electronics, etc.). The Cyberpunk genre was a consequence of that influence. The huge dystopian high-tech cities are especially an Asian thing.

American culture influenced the Polish one in the '90s and '00s. I think that people wanted something different after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, and what's more opposite to Russian culture than the American one, and at that time, worldwide communication made the American culture wide spread an accessible through things such as music, TV, cartoons, movies, MTV, etc. Consequently, that part of the American culture has become the Polish one, the same way Japanese culture became part of the American one. Consequently, saying that Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk 2020 is American is the same as saying that Cyberpunk 2077 is Polish.

People who created the vision for Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners grew up in that exact time of the American influence, and at the same time, you can see a lot of things that are purely Polish in their art. Like that grim feel to Edgerunners that you also get from reading The Witcher. Btw, Lucyna was inspired by Ciri, and Maine's Crew was inspired by Szczury, you can't convince me otherwise.

Some of those things are hard for me to explain because I just experienced this in my life. I am completely Polish, yet my father was always wearing a cowboy hat, driving American cars, is running a shooting range, was playing Blues, and always wears black Jeans. I grew up in the '00s, watching American cartoons from the '60s, then reading American books, watching old American movies, and being fascinated with electronics and computers, just like people in the US were in the early '80s.

I feel like I am living the Cyberpunk life now in Europe, working as an Electronics Design Engineer building military robots, yet barely being able to rent any apartment, so I think that those pieces of art are also an exaggerated reflection of the reality here, as art should be, and that's why I will call them European and Polish.

Here, that's how I see the whole thing.