Dogtown. Night is falling. Only the neon-colored OLED walls remind us that this was once a district of Pacifica, the Dubai Night City, a luxury oasis that ran out of money in the corporate war.

We stand on high scaffolding that was supposed to be a sports stadium. We look up – rockets scream towards a plane, it goes down, literally whizzing over our heads before crashing with a thunderous explosion. But this isn’t just any plane, it’s Space Force One, the government plane of President Myers of the New United States of America in Cyberpunk 2077‘s hotly anticipated Phantom Liberty expansion.

This article was translated from German to English, and originally appeared on pcwelt.de.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty looks gorgeous

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We’re sitting in a cyberpunk bar sparkling with neon at CD Projekt RED’s super stylish headquarters in beautiful Warsaw, playing on a GeForce RTX 4090, all graphics settings turned up to maximum and in the eye-meltingly beautiful overdrive mode with full real-time pathtracing. It’s the next-generation evolution ray tracing, in which every ray of light is physically correctly reflected, refracted or absorbed when it hits a surface. And this is the Crysis moment that PC gamers have been waiting for for decades.

“Can It Run Crysis?” may now be replaced by “Can It Run Cyberpunk with Path Tracing?” Crysis was a game several graphics generations ahead of its competition in 2008.

And Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is now at least one graphics generation ahead of everyone else. It’s a completely new experience, taking games to a whole other, much more cinematic level. Where we are used to having almost a cone of light pointed at protagonists when we talk to them, here the soft glow of neon lights in a market can only outline their faces, so that we only really see them at close range. It’s much more realistic, and gorgeous.

And it works fantastically in this whimsical high-tech world of Cyberpunk 2077, where people have bionic eyes or we don’t see their exoskeleton on their back until they stand up. What makes Cyberpunk 2077 so incredibly strong is that every shop assistant in a market has a story to tell that transports the fantasy of Night City. There are those who have lost their legs in the war. And others who get augmented for fun and because it’s in vogue.

Path tracing is a hugely exciting technology because it’s often quite subtle. Throwing smoke grenades into a room flooded with red light feels very authentic – the smoke looks dense, like smoke, and not artificial, partly because the color values of this reddish smoke affect the reflections. Flames look like real flames, creating an interplay of soot, smoke clouds, and particles flickering in the air. This smoky color world also now casts its own shadows and spreads over the scenery. It feels a bit like walking through a Christopher Nolan film, or experiencing John Wick 4 in a cyberpunk universe.

Dogtown is a fantastic open-world

CD Projekt RED is incredibly good at defining a setting through its people and architecture. Dogtown is this wild mix of “shoulda been Night City’s Las Vegas”, with posh hotel complexes and lavish architecture punctuated by curved OLED walls. And then elsewhere it seems so improvised and self-cobbled together again, like in Mad Max: Fury Road. Those areas where corporations don’t matter are ruled with a stern hand by a former military man named Colonel Hanson, and yet it’s not one of those apocalyptic places like downtown LA in Blade Runner 2049.

When the futuristic Space Force One crashes into a market, it kills numerous people, sends vehicles in the area careening, triggers explosions in an apartment building, and—because no one can count on fire brigade or trauma units here (which only fly in if you have the right insurance)—the people help themselves.

That’s exactly the beauty of an open world: we can sit on one of the motorbikes here, such as the Brennan Apollo on the side of the road, race through the cordon of Colonel Hansen’s troops and engage in the first wild firefight of Phantom Liberty.

Or we can watch as the people of Dogtown pull others from the rubble, support drones with searchlights, and enjoy some of this exciting architecture.

Phantom Liberty‘s Dogtown is big. This first section oozes that Las Vegas vibe, driven home by an LED pyramid that’s directly reminiscent of the Luxor Hotel on the Strip. Above it are cranes that don’t seem to have been used for ages and half the district is a construction site, including a huge amount of rubbish – Hansen doesn’t seem to have a rubbish collection service.

The bar chain Haven, which also exists in Night City, probably also wanted to set up a location here – we cruise past an LED sign. The sign is still there, but the bar was never built, instead there is now a multiple rocket launcher. I guess they don’t like guests here. Wait a minute, isn’t that where the missiles on the US president came from?

Completely new gameplay and AI

All right, we’ll be honest: we could have bypassed Hansen’s special commandos entirely Solid Snake-style. Phantom Liberty always gives us multiple play options, but the path to the crashed Space Force One is absolutely swarming with his troops.

Of course, we can also take them out from a distance with the Nekomata sniper with thermal sight, but as soon as we get closer to them, the useful skills of the brand new Relic skill tree become apparent: as Fast Solo, we can activate a kind of bullet-time from the air and riddle the enemy in slow motion – either sneaky, with the Apparition in combination with a silencer.

Or the good old Warden strum rifle, which we charge up beforehand for maximum firepower (with a particularly opulent muzzle flash shadow thanks to path tracing). With new reflex builds, we now block bullets in mid-air with the Mantis Blades and, with a little skill, bounce them off so that they send their senders to the graveyard of Dogtown.

Or accelerate on a motorbike with our katana and slash Hansen’s boys’ tyres in a car chase.

Or hack cars while driving via cyberware, initiate an emergency stop or make them spontaneously explode.

The now-much-more-aggressive (and smarter) police AI of Dogtown tries to surround our vehicle with T-bone maneuvers, ram us off the road, and set up their armored trucks and Humvees for roadblocks…which we immediately blow up with heat-seeking missiles mounted permanently in the car. Yippee-ki-yay pork chops. These new James Bond-style vehicles, armored and armed to the teeth, are one of the highlights of Phantom Liberty. Gatling guns on the bonnet? Guided missiles on the gullwing door? Dogtown has something for everyone.

Depending on the heat level, we can change our appearance via cyberware, the cops and Dogtown mercenaries then no longer recognize us directly.

Even better? These many AI optimizations for mercenaries, security, and the Night City Police Department are also coming to the main game, even if you don’t buy the Phantom Liberty expansion. At maximum heat level, we even have to face five new Max Tech Special Forces bosses.

Phantom Liberty’s story and characters

First, the most important news first: Phantom Liberty still features a lot of Keanu Reeves. Johnny Silverhand is still the ex-rockstar, ex-military dynamo cyber ghost who is deeply jaded in his fury about the world, but puts his cynicism into the best one-liners we’ve seen in videogames in recent years. “The politician bitch will ram her fist a meter up your ass and never pull it out again,” he opines at one point, but that’s just Johnny as he lives and breathes.

He’s referring to President Myers, who also plays up great. The whole cast of Phantom Liberty just screams HBO quality and that’s a rating not many games earn. The lady is pretty badass too, totally reminding us of Harrison Ford in Air Force One and his legendary one liner “Get. Off. My. Plane.” When her snow-white Secret Service robots (which look like Apple could’ve created them) are ambushed, Miss President herself loads up the M221 Saratoga and riddles a few mercenaries.

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Speaking of HBO quality, Hollywood superstar Idris Elba plays Solomon Reed, Myer’s best agent and a man who was betrayed by the Agency and thus became a sleeper agent. He’s a classic CIA guy, good at bringing down governments without you realizing the US is behind it. Phantom Liberty oozes spy thriller vibesl we have no idea who we can trust and who is just playing games with us. Think somewhere between 24 and Clear & Present Danger.

In general, all the characters are very well written, with many shades of gray. There are no classic good guys and bad guys in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, only go-getters who push through their goals.

Songbird wants to help V with her illness, gives us the job, then just disappears after Space Force One crash lands. She seems unconcerned about the President, but nevertheless keen to get final confirmation that Meyers is indeed dead – as if someone paid her to do it. Or is she just unable to show emotion because she’s a holographic AI?

President Myers seems to have only limited faith in her country’s political elite and seems discreetly cunning – a power politician who would certainly have no problem sacrificing her agents to remain president. In certain moments she also comes across as very human, almost friendly, but she was CEO of Militech and arms suppliers are rarely the Good Guys.

The president offers V, your player character, to become the NSU agent. Whether or not you refuse the offer is up to you but there’s sure to be appropriate consequences either way. With gangs, an NSU agent is more likely to face a bullet, but with certain corporations, it’s likely to open doors

Solomon Reed: Idris Elba is a character actor and his character oozes, well, Idris Elba in Phantom Liberty. In Cyberpunk 2077 he’s a Jack Bauer type: a tough dog and old wolf who has seen a lot. His rather reserved manner tends to be a good choice, because Johnny Silverhand is and remains a blabbermouth. There is no harm in a cool, methodical tactician, who can also play the gentleman in the club. But he rarely plays the first violin as Keanu Reeves remains Cyberpunk’s biggest star. And that’s a good thing

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released on September 26, 2023 for PC, Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5.