When the Going Gets Gonk
I was an early supporter of Cyberpunk 2077 during its less than stellar launch in December of 2020. Even though I had an experience unfortunately filled with bugs that didn't run the best on a recently upgraded system, I loved the world and story that CD Projekt Red had crafted. I felt like Night City was one of, if not the most, enriching metropolitan locations of any game that I've played in my two-plus decades of PC Gaming. I think the criticism of the game's launch for last gen consoles and PC issues was warranted, but I also strongly believe a majority of healthy discourse for the game was lost in the internet anger and hid what made Cyberpunk special. For all intents and purposes, this review will not cover changes made in the 2.0 patch.
Now with the good faith of the anime and CDPR's commitment to pulling a No Man's Sky on Cyberpunk with the announcement of DLC to come, I got excited once more. I pledged that I would jump into Phantom Liberty with a new mind, no longer excusing any performance/mechanical issues and not blindly hoping for a remarkable experience. What I got in loading in and playing through the probably twenty hours of expansion was a reminder of how incredible CDPR is at constructing worlds that tell the narrative in their ambience, and at authoring characters whose relationships with the protagonist stretch far beyond the scope and expectation of your average video game.
Phantom Liberty felt like a part of the main game, and in a perfect world probably could be. Not only does the physical location of the DLC in Pacifica's Dogtown lie in the middle of the map of Night City, but tonally the degree of heinousity, treachery, and general scumbaggery of the characters within felt very true to the narrative already in place.
The narrative here is fantastic once more. As I usually do, I will evade embarking on narrative spoilers, but the amount of suspicious nuance in character motivation in Phantom Liberty leads to some incredible hard decisions that have monumental consequences on newly added endings to Cyberpunk 2077. I found myself frequently paused at decisions between helping two equally morally grey parties because I wanted to plan for any eventual fallback from supporting their campaigns. Am I going to assist in this person who has dragged me into deeper into a mess far beyond my comprehension under the guise that they will be able to help me? Or will I side with the party who is looking for the best interest of the State? It gets rough and it gets tough, and in true Cyberpunk fashion... there is no real winner. What decisions you make, what ending you come across will leave you feeling like dust in the wind. I felt equally crushed finishing Phantom Liberty as I did watching the anime, they really know how to take the emotional wind out of you.
There were so many special things that remind you how impressive the staging and environmental design of 2077 are within this DLC. Moments like where your conversations begin and end with Idris Elba's character Solomon Reed: a basketball court overlooking the dilapidated and defunded skyscrapers that stand tall over the downtrodden community. Another being the beginning sequence in which you are evading inquisitive opposition forces with the President of the NUSA, frequently peering over balconies engulfed in flames that feature paradiddles of rain collapsing through the concrete. It's the staging of these events within the DLC that are located all throughout that are easy reminds about how phenomenal the direction, writing, and choreography of this game and CDPR truly are. The ability to utilize environmental scale to aide in the telling of a story is something that propelled the Witcher from a standard low fantasy fare to one of the greatest works of the genre is present once more in Cyberpunk. Even if the distance travelled in the DLC feels a little small, because in truth it is, you are constantly reminded about how tiny of a cog you're V is in the machine that is Night City.
The experience was not without its frustrations though, but that's PC gaming in a nutshell in 2023 apparently (after playing Starfield to boot.) There were a few times within the main questline that missions would either not load, I would bug out of objectives, or I would be softlocked and couldn't move. These were nowhere near as egregious as they were in the base game closer to launch, but they did rub me the wrong way. The ultimate mission in the DLC (not counting the added missions to new endings) was beyond bugged for me, and the important enemy that is supposed to be your last match was completely non aggressive to me. This just felt... not great. I felt like the DLC story was heading to a climax that was manifesting into a monumental implosion of the interrelationships of its characters and then pop, the big bad that was sent after me wouldn't attack. My immersion wasn't completely ruined but it was tarnished in a way that is hard to ignore, and I didn't want to re-load the entire questline.
I strongly recommend Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone with a knack for science fiction and open worlds (and fans of Bladerunner,) and I'd say that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a must play for fans of the base game.
I was an early supporter of Cyberpunk 2077 during its less than stellar launch in December of 2020. Even though I had an experience unfortunately filled with bugs that didn't run the best on a recently upgraded system, I loved the world and story that CD Projekt Red had crafted. I felt like Night City was one of, if not the most, enriching metropolitan locations of any game that I've played in my two-plus decades of PC Gaming. I think the criticism of the game's launch for last gen consoles and PC issues was warranted, but I also strongly believe a majority of healthy discourse for the game was lost in the internet anger and hid what made Cyberpunk special. For all intents and purposes, this review will not cover changes made in the 2.0 patch.
Now with the good faith of the anime and CDPR's commitment to pulling a No Man's Sky on Cyberpunk with the announcement of DLC to come, I got excited once more. I pledged that I would jump into Phantom Liberty with a new mind, no longer excusing any performance/mechanical issues and not blindly hoping for a remarkable experience. What I got in loading in and playing through the probably twenty hours of expansion was a reminder of how incredible CDPR is at constructing worlds that tell the narrative in their ambience, and at authoring characters whose relationships with the protagonist stretch far beyond the scope and expectation of your average video game.
Phantom Liberty felt like a part of the main game, and in a perfect world probably could be. Not only does the physical location of the DLC in Pacifica's Dogtown lie in the middle of the map of Night City, but tonally the degree of heinousity, treachery, and general scumbaggery of the characters within felt very true to the narrative already in place.
The narrative here is fantastic once more. As I usually do, I will evade embarking on narrative spoilers, but the amount of suspicious nuance in character motivation in Phantom Liberty leads to some incredible hard decisions that have monumental consequences on newly added endings to Cyberpunk 2077. I found myself frequently paused at decisions between helping two equally morally grey parties because I wanted to plan for any eventual fallback from supporting their campaigns. Am I going to assist in this person who has dragged me into deeper into a mess far beyond my comprehension under the guise that they will be able to help me? Or will I side with the party who is looking for the best interest of the State? It gets rough and it gets tough, and in true Cyberpunk fashion... there is no real winner. What decisions you make, what ending you come across will leave you feeling like dust in the wind. I felt equally crushed finishing Phantom Liberty as I did watching the anime, they really know how to take the emotional wind out of you.
There were so many special things that remind you how impressive the staging and environmental design of 2077 are within this DLC. Moments like where your conversations begin and end with Idris Elba's character Solomon Reed: a basketball court overlooking the dilapidated and defunded skyscrapers that stand tall over the downtrodden community. Another being the beginning sequence in which you are evading inquisitive opposition forces with the President of the NUSA, frequently peering over balconies engulfed in flames that feature paradiddles of rain collapsing through the concrete. It's the staging of these events within the DLC that are located all throughout that are easy reminds about how phenomenal the direction, writing, and choreography of this game and CDPR truly are. The ability to utilize environmental scale to aide in the telling of a story is something that propelled the Witcher from a standard low fantasy fare to one of the greatest works of the genre is present once more in Cyberpunk. Even if the distance travelled in the DLC feels a little small, because in truth it is, you are constantly reminded about how tiny of a cog you're V is in the machine that is Night City.
The experience was not without its frustrations though, but that's PC gaming in a nutshell in 2023 apparently (after playing Starfield to boot.) There were a few times within the main questline that missions would either not load, I would bug out of objectives, or I would be softlocked and couldn't move. These were nowhere near as egregious as they were in the base game closer to launch, but they did rub me the wrong way. The ultimate mission in the DLC (not counting the added missions to new endings) was beyond bugged for me, and the important enemy that is supposed to be your last match was completely non aggressive to me. This just felt... not great. I felt like the DLC story was heading to a climax that was manifesting into a monumental implosion of the interrelationships of its characters and then pop, the big bad that was sent after me wouldn't attack. My immersion wasn't completely ruined but it was tarnished in a way that is hard to ignore, and I didn't want to re-load the entire questline.
I strongly recommend Cyberpunk 2077 to anyone with a knack for science fiction and open worlds (and fans of Bladerunner,) and I'd say that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a must play for fans of the base game.
Tbag2332
7 months ago