Two thoughts:
On megacorps replacing governments - This is a cyberpunk staple, but it's always vaguely annoyed me. Most fiction in the genre doesn't adequately acknowledge the fact that governments and corporations are already in bed, in many countries. Especially Asia, where a lot of the big firms literally are state-owned, or otherwise government-linked in some way. It's not a very nuanced treatment. Granted, some cyberpunk stories do somewhat acknowledge this, generally with reference to China and Japan. Shadowrun had a sort of neo-Imperial corporate Japanese thing going down.
On cyberpunk and Mobile Suits - I've personally always felt giant humanoid mecha actually make a lot more sense in a cyberpunk setting. Mostly because...aside from rule of cool, a giant mech that has hand-held weaponry doesn't make an awful lot of sense. But in a cyberpunk world, there's presumably a great deal of neural interface going on. The pilot's probably jacked into the mech, with interface technology based on that developed for hackers/deckers diving into cyberspace, or cyborgs controlling their mechanical limbs.
So in that context, having the mech basically be a giant soldier with handguns, rifles and swords makes sense. It's maximum familiarity for the pilot, and they can do all their training in 'meatspace' before translating that to the giant robot...
-- Acyl
On megacorps replacing governments - This is a cyberpunk staple, but it's always vaguely annoyed me. Most fiction in the genre doesn't adequately acknowledge the fact that governments and corporations are already in bed, in many countries. Especially Asia, where a lot of the big firms literally are state-owned, or otherwise government-linked in some way. It's not a very nuanced treatment. Granted, some cyberpunk stories do somewhat acknowledge this, generally with reference to China and Japan. Shadowrun had a sort of neo-Imperial corporate Japanese thing going down.
On cyberpunk and Mobile Suits - I've personally always felt giant humanoid mecha actually make a lot more sense in a cyberpunk setting. Mostly because...aside from rule of cool, a giant mech that has hand-held weaponry doesn't make an awful lot of sense. But in a cyberpunk world, there's presumably a great deal of neural interface going on. The pilot's probably jacked into the mech, with interface technology based on that developed for hackers/deckers diving into cyberspace, or cyborgs controlling their mechanical limbs.
So in that context, having the mech basically be a giant soldier with handguns, rifles and swords makes sense. It's maximum familiarity for the pilot, and they can do all their training in 'meatspace' before translating that to the giant robot...
-- Acyl