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In a new Night City Wire tonight, CD Project Red played the strongest card they have in their Cyberpunk 2077 deck, that being Keanu “Nicest Guy In Hollywood” Reeves. America’s bad-ass actor dad played semi-imaginary rock anarchist (I know I’m being reductive, don’t leave comments) Johnny Silverhand in the main game, and he popped up to confirm he’s back for 2023’s expansion – which we now know is officially called Phantom Liberty.
There’s also the Edgerunner update dropping today, a tie-in for the Netflix anime Edgrunners (more info on that was also revealed tonight), and free-to-play mini game featuring Roach the horse, because we all like Roach the horse.
Phantom Liberty, which sounds like a joke name I’d make up if I were inventing a fake Kojima game, seems to involve V making some kind of deal with the President. At least I think it’s the President, and I think that’s her in the header image. Anyway, V takes an oath that ol’ Silverhand isn’t on board with. It sounds, in fact, like V becomes some kind of cop. Keanu certainly sounded excited, although he, too, wasn’t really giving much away. I can’t tell, though, from the trailer, if this confirms any of the alleged leaks from earlier this year. The best I can figure is a “maybe??”.
New(ish) game director Gabriel Amatangelo dished a few more details on the Edgerunner update, which is out today. It’s a tie-in to the upcoming Netflix anime, and is mostly cosmetics. There are, according to Amatangelo, Easter eggs and a quest that seeds the show in there, but the headline features were a new jacket that is the same as the yellow jacket of the main character in the Edgerunner anime, and a gun also inspired by the show.
The update also adds a wardrobe with piece-by-piece transmogrification for your clothes, i.e. you can change the visual on a piece of clothing so your V looks like a cool person rather than a hurricaine in a thrift shop. Further cosmetic updates include some new bits and pieces like new hair, and the ability to change your face at the ripperdocs around town. Also: you can put a cat in your photo mode pictures now. Amatangelo says the next biggest updates will be “a complete overhaul to the cop system as well as vehicle-to-vehicle combat.”
In other “hey, remember we make stuff you’re not angry about?” news, there’s an in-game arcade game, which is, confusingly, also now an out-of-game free-to-play mobile game. It’s a side-scrolling endless runner featuring your favourite CDPR affiliated horse from The Witcher series. You can download it now. I mean, it’s cute and all, but you’d have thought they had other priorities.
Following a bunch of patches to get Cyberpunk 2077 actually working, it’s at least nice to see that game is now in a state where it’s getting new stuff. How transformative Phantom Liberty will be does, of course, remain to be seen.