In Cybperunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, the game’s much anticipated first DLC, everyone and everything is disposable. That includes everyone from the ex-CEO of a private military firm who is currently serving her third term as president to the renegade colonel straight out of Heart of Darkness who won’t relinquish command of a portion of Night City, as well as the mercenary V who is caught in the middle and is only trying to survive. People are merely tools that will be dumped into the street-side trash when they are no longer useful to the person one rung up the sociopolitical ladder. In the New United States (NUSA), nobody is free, but the façade must be maintained.
Cyberpunk
Since the plot of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty takes place before the game’s conclusion, we know that V will never achieve the goal that the game is trying to make you feel like a pawn being lead around by a carrot on a stick. Normally, that conceit would lessen the stakes or any tension, but in this instance, it strengthens the DLC’s overall theme. Your promised freedom is really a mirage. You continue to participate because the stakes, world, and characters all seem genuine.
Lords of Dogtown
By design, Dogtown, where Phantom Liberty is set, must make certain structural changes to explain why this portion of Night City wasn’t previously accessible. The game’s narrative resolution goes beyond a few basic pieces of lore. Actually, the game’s creator CD Projekt Red elaborates on a background that connects to the main battle. During the Unification War, Colonel Kurt Hansen effectively annexed Dogtown, a walled-off, extremely restricted area of Night City, because the military ruler would not relinquish it. The government no longer saw the need to do anything more than keep him confined inside his own gated “utopia” once he established it as a successful illicit market.
When the NUSA president, who was also in charge of the same Unification War, gets stuck in Dogtown, that tense peace is put in jeopardy. As events play out, a volatile mix of interpersonal, corporate, and political issues poses a risk of having a domino effect that might affect everything from V’s will to survive to the future of the whole nation. This narrative does not contain any standalone components. Each character has some sort of connection to the others, something to earn or hide, or a motivation to pit you against someone else. You decide who to trust, and the choices you make don’t seem weightless. By maintaining a healthy balance between the risks involved in locating the enigmatic Songbird and the potential rewards,
As dark, filthy, and hopeless as its residents, Dogtown is also vibrant and full of life. The crowded streets and mountains of trash lining the graffiti-covered buildings give this area of dystopia a sense of realism and history. The more tight and restricted locations produce much more complex levels that give you a great deal of leeway in how you approach each challenge. Every single person you come across in this dilapidated hole looks just as real and believable as they act. Songbird, President Myers, Reed, and the rest of the supporting cast pull off the incredible trick of presenting their reasons and personalities while also providing you with interesting strands to follow.
The 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty are the results of CD Projekt Red’s efforts to repair the game’s problematic launch. Coming into this expansion felt like the game had finally attained the state it was originally meant to, even if I hadn’t played since those early months without any fixes. I had minimal technical problems during my playthrough, with the exception of one incident where the game saved as I was dying, locking me in a never-ending death loop until I loaded a previous save. Finally, everything feels stable, including the frame rate, the physics, and the AI. Cyberpunk 2077 is finally the game that it should have been all along, even though it took over three years to get there.
A fresh foundation
Phantom Liberty’s gameplay is obviously based on the fundamentals of the original release, yet it shines here. In terms of the changes or the structure of the missions, it is nothing groundbreaking, but everything has been adjusted and tightened in a way that finally makes sense. Particularly with regard to responsiveness and model-specific input, guns provide a more gratifying overall feel. Instead than just having a variable rate of fire and seeing damage numbers show above an enemy’s head, switching weapons seems more like changing personalities. When given the option, this fact alone makes picking your strategy for each mission much more enjoyable because you know that every option will be just as intriguing as the others. This isn’t a reinvention of or full sequel to what Cyberpunk 2077 was, but more of a remaster of the mechanics to fully achieve the team’s vision.
The mission structure is somewhat affected by the constant “hurry up and wait.” The sometimes drawn-out chats that precede many missions may get boring if you’re not immersed in the plot and characters. The overall pacing of the entire task series appears to be well thought out from a high level perspective. You will experience a roller coaster of brief contacts, have quiet moments with characters, be free to move around freely, and be given a great punctuation of a cinematic action sequence. Similar to how a good TV show makes me go for the remote to watch the next episode, the major missions by themselves automatically lead me from one to the next.
After releasing The Witcher 3’s first two expansions, CD Projekt Red set a high bar for itself, but Phantom Liberty surpasses it. With the 13 main missions, 17 side jobs, and various optional material to explore, this zone has a lot of substance despite being rather small.
Play or get played
Phantom Liberty describes itself as an exciting tale of intrigue and espionage. That description is accurate in terms of the storyline, characters, and mission-theming. In actual play, players alternate between the most spectacular set pieces fights and suspenseful noir meetings in seedy pubs where they devise strategies for executing traditional spy fiction plots. Many missions may leave things open-ended – utilise stealth, technology, slick talking, or shoot anyone with a health metre — but this is far more of a Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy than a Mission Impossible. Whether it was acceptable or not, I never felt like I was more than 30 minutes away from a gunfight, explosion, or set piece.
Phantom Liberty can be started directly from the title screen by players without having to enter the main Cyberpunk 2077 experience. By doing so, they will automatically reach level V, receive skill points, and be equipped with a variety of equipment and weapons. I entered this expansion effectively as a fresh player because I hadn’t played the game since its release and my save file had vanished. Phantom Liberty should not be experienced in this manner. There are no gameplay lessons or review sessions, let alone ones for the narrative or characters. When I received a call using half-remembered jargon to recruit me into the storyline with the ghost of Keanu Reeves cracking wise in the background, I was abruptly dropped into Night City at an unknown time. Although not the expected outcome,
Once acclimated, Phantom Liberty does, in addition to the extensive reworking of the current ones as part of the 2.0 release, add in one significant new skill tree to explore with. Although the powers in that ability tree are enormous, they would be useless if the in-game shooting hadn’t undergone such a significant improvement.
The setting of Cyberpunk 2077 seems ideal for this kind of spy thriller. A story of deceit and intrigue flows effortlessly into the background and lore of a dystopian future in which humanity have virtually reached the singularity with technology, much as spectacular firefights and explosions do. The character of Dogtown itself, along with every other performance, is superb. Its tendrils extend out to every corner of the planet in a plausible fashion while being blocked off from the rest of Night City, giving you the impression that you are still in the same location rather than being transported to DLC land where nothing significant is permitted to enter or exit.
The most striking aspect about Phantom Liberty is that. Although I am largely constrained by the confines of Dogtown, CD Projekt uses those confines as a foundation to further involve me in the characters and events rather than disregarding or attempting to cover them up.
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