Spoiler Warning: Minor spoilers are present for Cyberpunk 2077.
Although the game was blighted by an appalling launch and received plenty of thoroughly-deserved criticism – including from yours truly – Cyberpunk 2077 managed to pull off a somewhat decent recovery. The bugs and glitches have largely been fixed, and at time of writing, the game is in a playable state. Finally.
In fact, development on Cyberpunk 2077 has been going so well that CD Projekt Red is now ready to show off the game’s first major expansion: Phantom Liberty. The DLC will add a new area of the map, a new questline, new characters, and more. Fans of the game are already getting excited, and pre-orders for Phantom Liberty are now available. On Steam, the expansion has quickly become one of the platform’s top sellers – and that’s probably going to be the case on other platforms and storefronts, too.
But let’s cool our jets, shall we?
Pre-ordering practically any game isn’t a good idea, especially if it’s a digital download with absolutely no danger of scarcity. The tactics corporations have resorted to in order to encourage pre-orders – like exclusive in-game content or even early access – are pretty shady, too. Pre-ordering made sense back when games were sold on cartridges or discs in brick-and-mortar shops on the high street, but it doesn’t any more.
And let’s not forget which game Phantom Liberty is an add-on for. Cyberpunk 2077 was broken to the point of being unplayable at launch, especially on last-gen consoles, and it took a long time for developers CD Projekt Red to get it running properly. Or, to put it another way: they released the game before they’d actually finished making it, and it took months of additional development time to actually do the job that should have been done before the game’s catastrophic launch in December 2020.
I’m disappointed to see that Phantom Liberty is beginning to attract the same level of hype as Cyberpunk 2077 did. Have players learned nothing from what happened? Perhaps we’re all just gluttons for punishment, because if Phantom Liberty starts racking up pre-orders… then I don’t even know what to say. Players will deserve any and all future broken-at-launch, “release now, fix later” games.
I don’t hate Cyberpunk 2077. By the time I got around to playing it in full, the majority of its most egregious bugs and glitches had been fixed, and while the gameplay itself was nothing to write home about – and was actually outdated in more ways than one – it was a visually attractive title, its open world was densely-packed and fun to explore, and it had a solid, engaging story that I was happy to follow to its conclusion. While I wouldn’t ever rate it in my “top games of all-time,” it was decent. An above-average title for sure.
And if you want to know more about my own hands-on experience with Cyberpunk 2077, you can read my thoughts on the game by clicking or tapping here.
Additionally, when CD Projekt suffered a cyber attack in 2021, I even defended the company, saying that the hack it had fallen victim to was nothing to celebrate. So I hope you understand that I’m not approaching this topic as some kind of dyed-in-the-wool “hater” of either Cyberpunk 2077 or the corporation that developed and published it.
Instead, I’m trying to be the voice of reason! Outside of a very small number of cases, pre-ordering just isn’t a good idea any more. And when looking at the absolute abomination that was Cyberpunk 2077 when it launched, how anyone could think pre-ordering Phantom Liberty is a good idea is beyond me. If there was ever a release that warranted a “wait for the reviews” approach, it’s this one.
I absolutely want Phantom Liberty to be good. The trailer was genuinely interesting, and while a “save the President” story isn’t exactly original, I’d be up for a return to the dystopian world that Cyberpunk 2077 built. Expanding the game’s map is a neat idea, too, and the trailer even seemed to tease some kind of tie-in with the main story. All of these things seem like they have potential.
But I won’t be pre-ordering Phantom Liberty. I won’t be picking it up on release day, either. Instead, I’m going to take the “wait and see” approach that CD Projekt Red has done so much to earn. If reviews look promising, and if the game launches in a bug-free state, I’ll absolutely consider picking it up this autumn. For £25 here in the UK (and I assume $30 or so in the US), it feels like a good buy – and one I can almost certainly find room for in my budget.
But that’s only if Phantom Liberty arrives without the problems that plagued Cyberpunk 2077. I’d hope that CD Projekt Red would have learned the lessons of that disaster – especially as it saw the company’s share price take a big hit. But companies are manipulative, and CD Projekt Red has a track record of lying and dishonesty that must be taken into account. The expansion was recently shown off at Summer Game Fest – but its trailer was carefully edited, and journalists and influencers who got their hands on the game only got to spend about an hour with it… and were only allowed to show off pre-made footage that CD Projekt Red gave them.
None of these points need to be problems on their own. But in the context of Cyberpunk 2077′s launch, I confess a degree of scepticism. I hope it’s entirely unwarranted – truly, I do. I want Phantom Liberty to be fun, exciting… and fully-playable. But I also wanted that of the base game, and the truth is that it took well over a year before it was in that position.
Before Cyberpunk 2077 had even released, I warned here on the website about the dangers of hype. I said then that I was certain that excitement for the game was out-of-control, and that CD Projekt Red’s marketing was failing to handle the situation appropriately. As we gear up for Phantom Liberty, let’s try not to repeat those mistakes.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series consoles in September, and the base game is out now. Cyberpunk 2077 is the copyright of CD Projekt Red. Some promotional screenshots and artwork courtesy of CD Projekt and/or IGDB. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 