Cyberpunk 2077’s Update 2.0 – which adds new skill trees and perks, vehicle combat, and revamped police responses to the FPS-RPG – will launch on September 21st. That’s a little before the release of the paid expansion, Phantom Liberty, on September 26th.
The release date was announced today as part of a developer stream, which also included a new cinematic trailer for the expansion featuring a little of Idris Elba’s character before the events of the game.
Earlier this month, CDPR detailed exactly what was included in 2.0. It’s a sizeable list of new features – big enough that if you boot up an old save in the update, you’ll have a chance to entirely respec your character under the new skills system.
During the stream, CDPR gave some examples of the different character builds you can create under that new skill and perks system, with three new trailers: the Savage Slugger Solo, the Hack & Slash Netrunner, and the Bullet-Time Ninja. It seems there’s a greater focus on skills which add new abilities, rather than the abundance of small percentage increases that seemed to plague the original game at launch.
The full developer stream is around 40 minutes long and also includes some behind the scenes footage with Idris Elba, who plays new character Solomon Reed in Phantom Liberty, as well as an interview with its composers about the Phantom Liberty score, which is out on music streaming services now.
I’m looking forward to Phantom Liberty. I intend to play it like I did the base game: by avoiding as much of the combat as possible and pretending it’s a visual novel with an exceptionally large budget.
