This year’s Game Awards brought us gonks a brand new trailer for the upcoming, and only, DLC expected for CD Projekt Red’s adaptation of the classic Cyberpunk tabletop roleplaying game. The first trailer for Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion arrived three months ago with a giant dose of mystery and, well, three months on there are still many questions. But at least we now know a little bit more about what awaits us as we team up with Johnny Silverhand and Solomon Reed, a brand new character portrayed by none other than Idris Elba.
Phantom Liberty, the upcoming DLC for Cyberpunk 2077, was teased back in September with a brief trailer that left us with many questions about the political state of the game’s fictional world, and a message from Keanu that was…suitably Keanu. Since then, fans eager for DLC details have been developing theories that certain sidequests in the main game may hold a clue as to where Phantom Liberty will take us. It’s been messy, and there are still questions to be answered, and no theory could’ve predicted the appearance of Idris Elba.
Though Cyberpunk 2077 is in a much better position than where it was at launch, it’s still taken a long time for us to get anything besides patches to the many leaking holes of buggy code, quality of life updates, and a few nice additions like the ability to purchase apartments. The embarrassing state of the game on launch was rough enough for CDPR to completely end its multiplayer ambitions for the game, stating a need to focus on its strengths as a producer of single-player, narrative RPGs. CDPR is expected to deliver more Witcher and Cyberpunk in the near future, thankfully with a different engine.
Fan speculation around Phantom Liberty has lately circled around a politically charged side quest titled “Dream On,” where players were introduced to Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez. There’s a ton of stuff to unpack in that new trailer, but we’ll clearly be getting into trouble with the New United States Of America, based on the crashed jet plane in the opening and Johnny Silverhand’s monologue scolding us for, once again, getting involved with folks he thinks we shouldn’t.
And while it’s not clear where in Night City the DLC will take place, the trailer does show off some new places. Based on the new trailer, we can expect Phantom Liberty to drop next year.