## Central Through-Line
Dr. Stingray's legacy divided advanced Boomer technology into competing futures: corporate property and weapon, state-controlled asset, or autonomous created life.
GENOM acquisitions, Mason and Largo's ambitions, USSD weapons programs, Zone Corporation's second-generation AI, Branch investigations and Knight Saber technology are different expressions of this unresolved legacy. They are not all controlled by one mastermind.
## Created Life and Personhood
Boomers range from industrial tools and weapons to exploited workers, companions and autonomous individuals. Model, programming, memory, damage, coercion and individual choice matter.
## Corporate Power
GENOM exercises power through money, subsidiaries, technology, political influence, corporate security, media pressure, legal obstruction and internal competition.
## Police and Institutions
A.D. Police officers operate inside political, budgetary, technological and legal limits. Competent individuals can exist inside flawed institutions.
## Body and Identity
Cybernetics, replacement organs, Hardsuits, artificial tissue, drugs and AI repeatedly blur social and personal boundaries between human and machine.
## Grief, Revenge and Obsession
Loss drives many characters toward radically different choices. Revenge does not automatically make someone evil, and rescue does not automatically erase trauma or grief.
## Ordinary MegaTokyo Life
Jobs, rent, medicine, traffic, music, nightlife, shopping, friendship, romance, family and recovery continue during corporate and Boomer crises. Ordinary life is part of the story rather than filler between missions.
## Neon Requiem Principle
The player lives inside this world and can alter it. Canon characters remain competent and active, but the player receives meaningful opportunities to investigate, intervene, protect people, choose custody, expose secrets, negotiate, withdraw or change outcomes.