Showing posts with label phantom liberty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label phantom liberty. Show all posts

Thursday, 5 October 2023

CYBERPUNK 2077 live-action project in the planning stages

CD Projekt Red will collaborate with production company Anonymous Content to create a live-action project set in the world of their video game, Cyberpunk 2077. It is unclear if this is a direct adaptation of the game or an adjacent project in the same world, similar to 2022 anime spin-off series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which was a hit for Netflix.


Anonymous Content worked on True Detective, Mr. Robot, The Revenant and Spotlight, and are known for serious, intense genre works, which would be a good fit for the Cyberpunk world.

Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the Cyberpunk role-playing game franchise created by Mike Pondsmith in the late 1980s (which had its heyday with the Cyberpunk 2020 product line, released through the 1990s). The video game, released in late 2020, sees the player taking on the role of V, a scrappy mercenary in Night City, California, who inadvertently ends up with a chip which could bring down entire global powers. To stop the chip's destruction, they install it into their cyberware, resulting in them being joined in their adventures by the apparent cyber-ghost of legendary rebel and rock star Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves). The chip allows them to use more cyberware and powerful weapons than anybody else, but also will inevitably kill them, forcing them to make a hard choice on how to save Johnny, or themselves.

Despite a buggy and controversial launch, the game has undergone a redemption arc thanks to a steady bug-fixing schedule. The game has sold 25 million copies and recently launched its well-received Phantom Liberty expansion (starring Idris Elba as New United States secret agent Solomon Reed), which has sold 3 million copies in its first two weeks on sale.

Video game adaptations used to be seen as a poisoned chalice, but recent successes like The Last of Us and Arcane have seen the idea become more popular.

With this idea only just getting off the ground and Hollywood still wrapping up the issues surrounding its recent strike, it'll likely be a good few years before we see this project hit the screen. Meanwhile, CD Projekt Red have already started development on Cyberpunk 2077's sequel.

Sunday, 11 June 2023

CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY gets release date and expanded trailer

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released on 26 September this year.


Cyberpunk 2077's first (and possibly only) story expansion sees protagonist V given an impossible mission: to go into Dogtown, a sealed-off area of Pacifica, Night City's most lawless district, and rescue the President of the New United States. The expansion seems inspired by John Carpenter's Escape from New York, which is a great model to base things from, and sees the game's high-profile casting expanded from a returning Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand, with Idris Elba joining the fray as NUS Agent Solomon Reed. Unsurprisingly, complications abound.

The expansion will be available for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X.

Saturday, 10 December 2022

Idris Elba joins CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY

CD Projekt Red have unveiled some more information on Phantom Liberty, their expansion to Cyberpunk 2077. The main headline is that Idris Elba is joining the game, providing the voice and performance for new character Solomon Reed.


The new trailer also hints at a bit more of the storyline: the President of the New United States is visiting Night City (which is independent of NUSA control) but shenanigans ensue and they get in over their heads. V is recruited to go into Dogtown, possibly the old Combat Zone, a chaotic area of Pacific where anything goes (this area was sealed off in the main game), where they liaise with Reed on a mission that is said to be influenced by spy thrillers (with more than a whiff of Escape from New York to it).

New content in the expansion appears reasonably generous, with a new storyline extending across multiple main missions and side-missions, along with new characters and weapons and a new district of Night City to explore. The expansion will also apparently open up existing areas of the city for you to visit, including the large stadium visible from across the city which was also unreachable in the main game.

As well as Elba joining the cast, Keanu Reeves is back, having recorded new dialogue as Johnny Silverhand, V's reluctant cybernetic head-guest. It looks like the expansion will make use of a save set before the end of the main game, rather than following on from the end of it.

CDPR have indicated that the expansion will be generous in size, larger than The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone but not quite as big as the massive Blood and Wine expansion for that game. At the moment they are only planning one expansion for the game, having scaled back their plans for multiple big expansions due to the original game's troubled release and the need to extensively patch it. However, the game has enjoyed a significant critical renaissance in recent months and a boom in sales that have passed it over 20 million copies sold.

Phantom Liberty does not have a firm release date yet, other than some time in 2023.

Tuesday, 6 September 2022

CYBERPUNK 2077: PHANTOM LIBERTY announced

The first major expansion for Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty, has been announced for release in 2023. The new expansion sees V, the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2077, joining forces with the government of the New United States for a new mission, to the distress of their head-companion Johnny Silverhand.

CD Projekt Red has revealed little else about the expansion, save it takes place in an "all-new district" of Night City and is a "spy thriller." The presence of Johnny and V in the trailer suggests this expansion is set before the end of Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in 2012 and released in late 2020, with critical acclaim for its story, characterisation, visuals, soundtrack and atmosphere, but serious criticism of its bugs, especially on last-generation consoles. The release turned into a major fiasco, with console sales of the game suspended. A lengthy programme of bugfixes and patches eventually stabilised the game and the 1.5 patch in February this year finally resolved the bulk of the game's problems. These issues have delayed work on the game's expansions. A new 1.6 patch released today addresses further issues, adds new features and ties in with the release of the Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners animated series on Netflix next week.

CDPR originally planned two expansions for the game, the first being set in a new area of the Pacifica district and adding new quests and storylines. The second would have taken V to the orbiting space station known as the Crystal Palace and resolved the remaining dangling storyline issues from the original release. It's unclear if Phantom Liberty is the first expansion, or replaces both.

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