CD Projekt Red has revealed Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the first expansion for the game that will add an all-new district to Night City when it comes out in 2023 across PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Stadia.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty sees V taking an oath of allegiance to the new US government, with the trailer also revealing that Johnny Silverhands (voiced once more by Keanu Reeves) is still stuck in your head. There’s certainly some spectacular imagery within the trailer, and we’re looking forward to seeing how it comes together.
Another twist is that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be ditching the last generation PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles which, let’s face it, simply aren’t powerful enough to handle this ambitious open world RPG. CD Projekt Red spent pretty much a whole year after Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch optimising and fixing the game on all platforms, but the PS4 and Xbox One versions required particular attention to get even close to the level of performance that they should have had at launch.
The last gen consoles will receive one final major update for the game, overhauling the cop systems, vehicular combat, adding new melee combat gameplay, new cyberware and more. Smaller updates might follow, but that’s the end of the feature updates.
And even closer to the present, today sees the release of the Edgerunners update that will tie in with the upcoming Netflix anime series with things like the jacket of lead character David Martinez, a weapon inspired by the anime and some other little tidbits. A new transmog system will let you style your character however you want, while receiving the perks of a random hodgepodge of items.
CDPR’s ambitions for releasing expansions shortly after release went right out the window shortly after the original December 2020 release. They only released the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S upgrades back in February 2022, which brought with it some major overhauls to core gameplay elements. This also meant that they had to extend the development of expansions to the game, confirming a couple months later that the DLC will not launch until next year.
Looking back on the original release, we didn’t have particularly positive thoughts about the game.
“As someone with a lifelong soft spot for the medium-specific charm of video game glitches, Cyberpunk 2077’s botched launch just ain’t it,” sad Alexis in out 6/10 review when the game launched. “Even overlooking the rushed rollout, after an eternity of being bludgeoned in the face with hyperbole, running through 2077 feels like five different games stitched together into an entertaining, passably decent, generic behemoth.”
Source: CDPR