Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty what is it about? Everything we know

In a move of infinite brilliance, CD Project Red has announced Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty, and if you’re wondering what it’s all about, here’s everything we know so far. The announcement came with a teaser video, which looks pretty cool and you can watch it in full below.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an all too easily overlooked title due to the controversy around it’s launch, but when the game all hooks up it’s pretty special. The problems came when it was released back in 2020, but didn’t really work all that well on the standard PlayStation console.

It’s such a huge game in terms of the size of the city and number of unique NPCs that it just didn’t have the power to support it. As a result it was bogged down with glitches and frame drops.

These got so bad that Sony went on to remove the game from the PlayStation Store until it was fully fixed. The problems weren’t as much of an issue on the PS4 Pro or PS5, but the damage was done and reputations are hard to fix.

Having played Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4 Pro, we had a great experience with the game, so the announcement is a big one for us. With talk of it being a “sequel” from other gaming websites, we wanted to explain exactly what it is and why it’s so exciting.

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What is Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty about?

It sounds like the story for Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty is going to be an add-on to the main campaign, a bit like The Frozen Wilds in Horizon Zero Dawn. It’s essentially an expansion of the core game, so it’ll be the first major DLC since it came out back in December 2020.

It’s going to be cool to get a new excuse to jump back into the wonders and vice of Night City. The fact that it got ported for PS5 and Xbox Series consoles in February 2022 also means that we get to play it with the kind of graphical power it needs to really make it shine.

The DLC expansion has been earmarked for 2023 without any indication of what month or quarter the developers are aiming for. It gives CD Project Red a lot of scope to complete the Phantom Liberty expansion without the crunch of a specific deadline, which should hopefully mean that there won’t be the level of the bugs that affected the main game release.

As mentioned above, Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty is a sequel to the story for the campaign, which saw V going up against the might of the Araska Corporation. He also had to contend with the ticking time bomb addition of Johnny Silverhand in his head, and it all came to a conclusion with a series of choices to decide how the story ends.

Phantom Liberty picks things up with both V and Johnny, so the question is how this fits into the various ending options. It’s possible that the expansion will take place before the ultimate ending to Cyberpunk 2077, but either way V and Johnny will be back in action.

They appear to get recruited to serve the New United States of America, which Johnny believes is a bad idea. You can also see in the trailer a dead body in the middle of an insignia for the President of the New United States of America, so it could well be an assassination attempt plot of some kind.

The expansion is called Phantom Liberty, which also hints at the being more to the story around the idea of freedom, or the lack thereof. Clearly, V takes the oath, for whatever reason, and gets mixed up in something that turns out to be a societal nightmare.

It’s billed as a spy-thriller, so it sounds like it’s going to be Mission: Impossible Cyberpunk-style. The teaser trailer showcases a lot of sneaking around, investigating crime scenes and all out assaults, so maybe James Bond is a better comparison.

The add-on DLC also introduces a brand new district of Night City to explore, which adds to the comparisons with The Frozen Wilds. This means that you won’t just be retreading old ground, although, hopefully it impacts the whole metropolis, because there’s a lot of cool places to re-explore.

It looks like V is going to be recruited by the official-looking lady around the 29 second mark. Having played a lot of Cyberpunk 2077, she’s probably got a few secrets, so there are bound to be a fair few twists and turns to the Phantom Liberty plot.

The only downside for old console gamers is that it’s only going to be available on PS5 and Xbox Series consoles. This means if you played it on Xbox ONE, PS4 or even PS4 Pro you won’t be able to add on the expansion. However, that does mean that there’s even less chance that we’ll see the bugs to affected the initial launch.

You can check out our computer games section to keep tabs on the games world, or visit www.cyberpunk.net for more details on the DLC.