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It seems incredible that almost three years have passed since cyberpunk 2077 hit the stores. We all know his story:the game came to last generation consoles with strong technical problems and what seemed like a strong candidate for game of the year in 2020 ended up being one of the most stumbled launches we can remember in recent yearssomething that tarnished CD Projekt Red’s reputation as one of the best studios in the industry.

Here we are in 2023. The game has already released its versions for current generation consoles and has regained the trust of many players. He The Polish studio’s commitment to its game does not stop there and in a few months we will have the best version of cyberpunk 2077that has been released to date. In preparation for the launch of the ambitious expansion Phantom LibertyCD Projekt Red gave us an extensive demo of more than an hour in which the director Pawel Sasko and the mission designer Despoina Anetaki They sat down with us to play and talk about everything new that is in cyberpunk 2077.

Pawel Sasko made it very clear: “Cybepunk 2077 had a total redesign of the experience that has taken into account the feedback from fans”. Virtually every major game system has been redesigned from the ground up to give us the best version of cyberpunk 2077 that has existed, one that does a total rebalancing of its contents and abundant quality of life improvements. The good news is that all this does not remain only in the contents of Phantom Libertybut it is a total redesign that also impacts the base gameso that those who play it for the first time at the end of this year will have all the improvements that have been worked on since the beginning.

General rebalancing of the base game: skill trees redesigned from the ground up

Our demo started by taking a look at the skill trees in the game menu. Everything has been redesigned, from the interface to the way progression works and the way upgrades are distributed. that affect your character’s stats and your builds.

Among all these skill trees we have a new one. He Relic Three is a novelty of Phantom Liberty which, according to Pawel Sasko, responds to feedback they received from players who couldn’t find a true reward for exploring Night City. Sasko told us that through exploration you will find Relic Points that you can spend to improve the tree and receive many interesting improvements for your character.

All major game systems were rebalanced and many of them redesigned from scratch

He cyberware also had a total redesign. Now you have a bar that shows you the ability to install cyberware on your character and, as we saw in the series edgerunnersyou can install powerful components and upgrades that exceed your capacity, but at the cost of a heavy penalty to your health, just as the cyberpsychosis. All of your character’s stats have been moved to cyberwareso clothing is now a cosmetic accessory that you can make your character look just fine, without having to worry about how everything you wear impacts your stats.

“I think the biggest thing we did was we changed all the core game systems. There was a general rebalancing” Sasko pointed out at the end of our demo. He gave the difficulty modes as an example, adding that the easy mode will be for those who just want to enjoy the story of the game and the hard mode will not be easy to break with much. grindbut it will be really difficult for all those who are looking for a real challenge.

Improvements to driving, police and vehicle combat

Surely at CD Projekt Red they also realized that there were deficient systems in the way the city works. Starting with a topic as simple as the way the police work, during the demo we were invited to get into some trouble to see how there was a total change in the way security works in Night City. Similar to how things work in any game in the series gtawe have a wanted level system, although Sasko confirmed that depending on the crimes you commit, the strategies Night City security will use to hunt you down and the units they will send to stop you will be different.

The above goes hand in hand with combat in vehicles, which is presented as one of the approaches that will have Phantom Liberty. We have vehicles equipped with weapons with which you can attack your pursuers or rivals on the move in many of the missions of the expansion and activities that you will find in the new district that you can explore.

In general “more effort has been made to make Night City feel full of life and to have better reactions from NPC’sto what happens around you“commented Despoina Anetaki during the demo. The mission designer repeatedly made us notice what was happening around us depending on the time of day and the places we were passing through.

An exciting campaign with multiple choices and lots to do

The test of Phantom LibertyAs such, it let us experience a main campaign mission that happens a bit after the first hour of gameplay of this new content. We are not going to give you much of the story so you can discover it when you play it, but we can tell you that in this spy adventure we got to the point where we met the new character played by actor Idris Elba.

Vehicle combat will be important in Phantom Liberty

As in the main campaign of cyberpunk 2077, all your choices have a palpable weight in the way the situations unfold and the way you relate to the main and minor characters. It was confirmed to us that we will even know much more about Jhonny Silverhand, as the history of the character played by Keanu Reeves will be delved deeper. Pawl Sasko pointed out that in the studio they want a focus to explore a new district of Night City, which is designed as a large branch integrated into the same main story of cyberpunk 2077.

How long will this campaign last? Of course we took the opportunity to ask the developers this question, but designer Despoina Anetaki told us that it was very difficult to know, because it is a very variable number of hours for those looking to speedrun the main missions or those who take the time to explore all the new content that is integrated with the expansion. It was pointed out that there are new activities in Phantom LibertyLike the ‘airdrops’, which are missions in which you will have to get close to trying to recover supplies. Sasko also told us that there will be other missions focused on recovering specific vehicles that will take great advantage of the new weaponized vehicle combat mechanics.

cyberpunk 2077 in his prime

What we saw and played from this new expansion of cyberpunk 2077 left us pleasantly surprised. We tried the build of PC that is the only one that takes advantage of the path tracingan advanced lighting simulation technique that goes far beyond the ray tracing. As you can imagine the game looks amazing in graphics, especially when night fell on Night City and we saw it shine with its neon lights that highlighted its brilliant art direction.

The new update of cyberpunk 2077 seems to demonstrate the commitment that CD Projekt Red has with a project that shows the affection they have for it, so even if you don’t plan to buy the new expansion, you can be sure that by the end of this year you will be playing the most balanced and functional version of the game ever.…something very close to what was promised with the strong campaign of marketing that the game had before its release and that was not reached three years ago when we first saw it in stores.

For his part, Phantom Liberty It reminds us how good the studio is at making expansions, as was well demonstrated at the time with those added to The Witcher 3. Regarding the development of the expansions, Pawel Sasko made the following reflection as part of his final comments in our demo:

“Working on expansions is better than working on the base game. You have the whole team trained and the technology and the tools. Everything is working fine now, so you can do better things.”

We remind you that Phantom Liberty It will arrive on Xbox Series, PS5 and PC on September 26 at a price of 30 dollars.