The original game was, if nothing else, a game swimming in uncertainty and conspiracy.
It’s riddled with spies and corporate espionage, duplicitous side characters with agendas of their own.
Its first act ends in a dramatic heist.
And in many ways, you don’t know what consequences your choices might create.
Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty preview
Our impressions?
It’s based down in the Pacifica corner of the map.
“It’s big.
It’s a big expansion.
It’s a healthy expansion.
Others included the added depth to handlers and how they play into the story.
Enter Mr. Idris Elba, in the role of Solomon Reed, master spy.
“We kept the narrative in the heart of the story and the complexity of the characters intact.
And these are characters with complexity, and they’re human.
“It’s a spy thriller, after all.
So you might’t trust anyone.”
As I said, it all sounds quite low-key doesn’t it?
The upside here is, really, this was always where Cyberpunk 2077 actually excelled.
Its little moments and quiet rooftop chats, human struggles in an inhuman world.
A lot of twists, a lot of consequences.
Consequences in particular are heavily emphasised here.
The UI, and the systems at work behind it, remain a little opaque at times.
But still: options!
And so we tried to set it up in that way.
And then we highlight it in things like bold text or something, right?
The more significant changes come to Phantom Liberty’s combat.
“We trimmed out the fact,” Amatangelo said.
it’s possible for you to jump up in the air and dash in the air.
Some of this, Amatangelo explained, comes back to consequences.
Amatangelo used this as a chance to joke with a less-than-subtle hint.
The spirit of it was all the fantasy fulfilment of: what is it like to have Cyberware?”
Is this about bringing more texture to Cyberpunk’s world?
“It was already there,” Amatangelo said.
“We’re now kind of embellishing and filling it out more, is one way to put it.
But the story is not about Cyberware itself.”
Is CDPR confident this one will land properly?
“Cyberpunk was a huge learning curve for us,” Kacper Niepokolczycki, lead environment artist said.
We also improved a lot our tech and our pipeline of those things.
