One of the most ambitious and controversial games of recent years, cyberpunk 2077seeks to redeem himself with his first update before the great community of gamers around the world. The Polish studio CD Projekt, creator of The Witcher saga, presented and even dated Phantom Liberty that will reach the consoles PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X / S and PC.
The official presentation of this new adventure that is incorporated into the original game took place during the last broadcast of the digital event Xbox Games Showcasewhere images of how this will be played were seen for the first time spy thriller.
In the video, Phantom Liberty Narrative Director Igor Sarzyński along with Senior Communications Manager Paweł Burza walked through key scenes, analyzing the events, characters and locations that promises to renew the image of the controversial video game released in 2020.
Phantom Liberty: we played the update of Cyberpunk 2077
A few days earlier at CD Projekt’s headquarters in Warsaw, Clarion was present at an exclusive session of Phantom Liberty to have a real game test, in first person, beyond the incredible kinematics that dazzle in this class of releases.
In Phantom Liberty, players once again take on the role of V, a cyberpunk for hire, as they embark on a mission to save the president of the new united states of america after their orbital shuttle is shot down over Night City’s deadliest district: dogtown.
The session, which lasted 50 minutes, took place in a studio with the aesthetics of a futuristic cafe. There each player managed to enter the new map dogtownan unexplored and hostile redoubt controlled by a criminal regime.
Without too many clues from the Polish developers, exploration was a main part of the experience: Phantom Liberty reinforces the foundations of Cyberpunk 2077mainly, regarding the interaction with the environment.
The inhabitants of Dogtown who roam the streets have a story to tell and, for the most part, a mission to accomplish, similar to what The Witcher made popular. Added to this is the freedom to follow the story arc as the player pleases, which can be summarized as a deep immersion experience.
For the development and visual improvement of this chaotic city, Wiktoria Stachowska, Senior Environment Artist - City Coordinator, acknowledged that the studio appealed to characteristic elements of Latin American societieswhere economic crises, political conflicts and violence predominate.
“We are inspired by Managua, capital of Nicaragua, somewhere in the 70s. Like in the second half of the 20th century there was an earthquake and then the regime came that took power. This we relate to the Unification War that happens in the game. After that social breakdown, how did people behave, what did they do, how did they adapt? That led us to create Dogtown“, he acknowledged.
Next to Keanu Reeves, who plays the role of Johnny Silverhand, another movie star promises to accompany the player during this new adventure. The British Idris Elbewho plays the role of the secret agent Salomon Reed, will guide us in a completely hostile environment and, at the same time, will help to save the president of the New United States of America.
Anyone who plays Cyberpunk 2077 will meet Phantom Liberty at a certain point in the game. However, those who prefer to delve into this new experience can go directly to this new content without the need to play certain amounts of hours until you complete the base game. This is how the expansions for The Witcher 3 worked too.
From Cyberbug to Phantom Liberty: the reconstruction of Cyberpunk 2077
After several years of generating expectation and with an unbeatable track record thanks to the success of its franchises, CD Projekt Red launched Cyberpunk 2077 in December 2020 with an overwhelming marketing campaign that involved the very same Keanu Reeves. The furor it generated was such that it quickly managed to position itself as one of the most anticipated games of the decade.
Driven by the narrative set in the most vibrant and dangerous metropolis of the future, a fictional city called Night Citythe players live together in this adventure in a “live” environment in which they will constantly have to face difficult decisions that will affect the development of the story.
However, the game was embroiled in a series of controversies and criticisms due to several major technical issues. The main one, considerably affected the state of the game on consoles PlayStation 4 and Xbox One .
Despite promises of optimal performance, players encountered numerous bugs, glitches, and lower-than-expected visual quality.
Cyberpunk 2077 suffered from frame drops, low-resolution textures, rendering issues, and poorly polished AI. All this conspired with the gaming experience and generated great frustration among players, so much so that the gamer community on social networks renamed the game Cyberbug 2077.
In addition to the technical issues, there were allegations that CD Projekt Red had misled players by showing demos and trailers that did not reflect the final version of the game.
Even the rumors pointed to a deliberate concealment of technical problems that existed on the previous generation consoles, so the Polish studio had focused more on the PC version and the next-gen consoles Xbox Series X / S and PlayStation 5, which had better overall performance.
CD Projekt Red’s response was also criticized. Instead of delaying the launch to deeply fix the technical part, the studio opted to launch the game in its current statewhich generated more controversy.
To somehow make up for the mistake and face the criticism, the study issued refunds to dissatisfied players and promised improvements and updates to fix the issues, but these patches also faced criticism for not being enough to fully fix the game’s bugs.
The controversy generated by the release of Cyberpunk 2077 led to lawsuits against CD Projekt Red, a decline in the value of the company’s shares, and the removal of the game from the PlayStation Store for a time.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty launches on September 26, 2023 for Xbox Series XS, PlayStation 5, and PC (GOG, Steam, Epic Games Store), and is available to pre-order right now.
