Phantom Liberty, the new expansion for Cyberpunk: 2077, seemed simple enough to begin with, our little band of misfit underdogs against the nasty warlord-type running Dogtown. Sneaking around, infiltrating swanky parties, swapping faces with amoral hackers, all very Mission Impossible. Towards the end things fell apart; betrayal, lies, treason, death… and that was just the teachers, ah!!1! And then I got off the bus!
Having reached an unsatisfactory conclusion the first time I played through the base game I tried to do a little reading around the possible endings of the expansion without completely spoiling them. Melmoth helpfully provided some spoiler-free nudges so I had a bit of an idea of some of the choices I’d have to made, though that didn’t make it any easier to decide who to side with. Everyone had their reasons for behaving as they did and there was no compromise to keep everyone happy. Or indeed alive.
The result was a bittersweet finish, heavy on the bitter with a faint dash of sweet. I wasn’t expecting everyone to tap-dance off into the sunset singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” while fountains of rainbows sprayed hither and yon, but even by Cyberpunk standards it was a bleak, bleak time of my life. Afterwards I did some more detailed reading and it looks like I got the worst ending – except for all the others. A couple of paths even lead to a completely different finish to the main game, an interesting take on things, but not really what I envisage for my V.
I was feeling a little melancholy as the credits rolled, but the game serves up a treat at that point – the titular theme tune, performed by Dawid Podsiadło. It’s an absolute banger, as I believe the kids say, that would fit a Bond film extremely well. I think it might be the first end credit song I’ve sat and listened through since Still Alive and I’ve added it to a couple of playlists since. It was a nice way to carry me back to the main game with a renewed purpose, to wrap things up for V more suitably than my first time around.
That is an awesome song. One thing that has surprised me about beginning to geez is how much new music I still like. Certainly wasn’t what seemed to be going on with my parents at this age.
A bit more on topic, one of the main reasons I bought a PS5 was so I could play 2077 in my living room. So far it’s amazing, but my spare time this year has not been up to the task of real progress. I did make time to watch the amazingly good Netflix prequal series. It was pretty much the same thing, an awesome experience with a bleak ending.
The setting of PnP game it’s rooted in is also a very cynical take on a genre that’s already fairly bleak. For example, No-one would mistake the world of the Gibson novels (probably the biggest influence I am aware of) for a place a sane person would like for us to end up in.
I’m the opposite, my post-2000 music knowledge falls exponentially, though games have introduced me to a few new acts (some nice tracks on the Cyberpunk radio stations, even if I mostly end up sticking jazz on; mmm, nice.)