Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty "New Ways to Play" Trailer Breakdown

CD Projekt Red released a trailer showcasing the new features coming to Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 alongside Phantom Liberty, much of which will be coming to the base game and not require the DLC to access.

Vehicle combat appears to be getting a major overhaul. It seems to be something you can actually do when appropriate, rather than just being a small scripted part of a select few missions where you struggle to aim out the window at enemies in other cars with whatever gun you happened to have equipped before starting.

The trailer showed V firing off car-mounted rocket artillery in order to break through an NCPD blockade. It isn’t clear whether your vehicles will have equipment slots that you can customize or if each vehicle will have a set loadout.

While in the driver’s seat, we saw them use some new anti-vehicle Quickhacks including Self-Destruct, Floor it, and Emergency Break. It’s unclear how these will be treated on the Cyberdeck.

They might be built-in like other device hacks, but the Cyberware screen showed off a green rarity Cyberdeck with 5 Quickhack slots, so we’ll probably see higher rarities with enough slots for both types, forcing you to balance your own capabilities.

I’m skeptical of CDPR’s ability to deliver on this vision, especially for what is ultimately a DLC. The existing system regularly causes summoned vehicles to appear on an overpass several stories above you and magically prevents bikes from tipping over due to excess momentum.

Meanwhile, the trailer depicts V jumping off of their bike and into a melee attack in a way that feels completely dynamic. That’s a gargantuan step forward, especially for a DLC. After what they did with the Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine expansion, I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to pull this kind of a change/upgrade here as well.

Even if these dynamic transitions don’t pan out, treating the vehicles as weapons platforms should still help immensely with overall vehicle balance. The extra physical space available on a car should enable it to be armed more heavily, and that should compensate for the existing vastly superior maneuverability of bikes. Who needs to weave through traffic when you can just blow it out of your way?

Even within cars, it’s clear how the 6-wheeler Chevillon boats could trade speed for tankiness and capacity while the sporty Quadras lean in the opposite direction and the modded nomad cars occupy a middle ground. It’s less clear where the ultimate luxury Rayfield brand would fit into something like this. Do they essentially become Batmobiles? Are they the opposite of the Chevillon with all Quadras in the middle?

CD Projekt Red seems to have brought Mr. Nimbus on as a consultant because the combat AI, particularly that which controls the police, is getting an overhaul. The trailer showed NCPD actually using vehicles for weaponized transport, cover, and street blockade.

It’s unclear to what extent these formations and tactics will just be part of scripted events or if CDPR is going the extra mile and making them dynamic responses to player actions. Given that “Endless Dynamic Events and Missions” is one of the pieces of Cyberpunk 2.0, it could definitely be the latter.

We also saw MaxTac descending to the scene from an AV followed by V voicing their decision to flee rather than fight the NCPD’s most elite forces. This may not sound like much, but it’s a huge improvement over individual officers just popping in from around you. It sounds like MaxTac will actually be threatening too.

It’s unclear exactly how far these changes will go in actually improving the liveliness and sensibility of combat, but the potential seems there and it’s clear that CDPR is aware of the issues with the existing system.

The Police Overhaul is one of the most anticipated changes coming with 2.0. It was one of the worst and weakest systems when the game launched.

The Cyberware modification interface in the trailer seemed like a pretty rough draft, but there’s a ton of information there, assuming it isn’t just some marketing mumbo-jumbo that they expect people to forget.

Aside from what looks like new Cyberware, the most notable changes include a couple of new meters on the sides of the screen as well as the removal of the Immune System category and subsequent dispersal of its Cyberware slots to other parts of the body; namely, Skeleton, Hands, and the Nervous System.

I suspect the Immune System was removed to condense the existing duplicate survivability buffs that exist in Cyberware and Perks. The current good Immune System implants require Cool (and can only be obtained from Fingers if he still likes you) and are mirrored by Perks in the Athletics tree for Body while other survivability Perks for Cool mirror the additional lives you can get from Circulatory System implants.

Eliminating these redundancies should prevent survivability from getting more out of control than it already is. The newly increased level cap would otherwise make it more practical to upgrade both Body and Cool in the same build, which would result in effective immortality. It’s unclear what will happen to the existing Immune System Cyberware, but I think most of it will probably just get deleted along with the overlapping Perks.

Cyberpsychosis took a bit of a back seat in the game, despite being featured prominently in the anime. It could be handwaved away for V because of Johnny and the Relic, but the game doesn’t do a good job addressing it even as you fight Adam Smasher whose whole deal is being immune to Cyberpsychosis.

Given that the meter depicts a red region that ends with a hard red line, and the need for Cyberpsychosis to be relevant, I think the meter on the left depicts the risk for Cyberpsychosis with the red range being where you start to get symptoms the red line being a hard barrier that increases with your level.

Incorporating Cyberpsychosis would make even more sense if CDPR is, in fact, moving away from having sometimes arbitrary-feeling Attribute requirements for different Cyberware. They need some way to balance it after all.

While we see the Cyberware interface, a voice says “Gettin’ a ripper to overclock your chrome before the fight?” It’s possible that the meter on the left has something to do with overclocking instead, though it’s unclear how or why CDPR would go that route.

The blue meter on the right side utilizes the icon for armor, so CDPR may be reworking how armor works by moving it away from clothing. While they say that in Night City, appearance is everything, they could end up making clothing provide other types of possibly set bonus-style buffs and relegate armor to being a stat provided by your Cyberware as another check on overall survivability.

We’ll finally be getting a skill tree associated with the Relic, though it’s unclear how it will work beyond being connected to Johnny. Given you get to decide how warm and inviting you want to be to him, it would be odd to get buffs that rely on unity.

We don’t have a whole lot of info about them yet, but the overall structure and appearance are different from that of the other trees. The Relic Perks look more like a web, reminiscent of the current system.

There seem to be fewer overall buffs and the color of the interface is different. Perhaps different Perks will be unlocked depending on your story choices rather than by spending Perk Points or in some other way that is outside the existing leveling process.

It’s also worth noting that all of the Perks shown had something to do with one of the Arms Cyberware (Gorilla Arms, Mantis Blades, Projectile Launch System, and Monowire)

The rest of the Perk trees appear to be getting restructured. It seems that rather than having 2 Perk “webs” for each Attribute, there may just be 1 “tree” for each, with separate branches to enhance what was previously handled by different trees, which is a far more straightforward and familiar approach.

The trailer also featured some rapid-fire shots of new weapons and vehicles.

Notably, we’ll soon have less-blocky SUVs (along with a 6-wheeler) and in general more vehicles that have forms that are more reminiscent of modern vehicles.

The weapons shown looked to be of the legendary/iconic rarities. Among them was the Hercules, which was categorized as special and labeled a prototype. Given the skull and crossbones label on a special barrel, I think it might spray poison gas.

Stay tuned for future Cyberpunk 2077 coverage, like the upcoming live stream on 8/24, or if you’re itching to replay it before the DLC comes out next month, check out our Netrunner build guide!

Endonae