Developer CD Projekt Red released one of the most eagerly anticipated games of all time back in 2020: Cyberpunk 2077. And despite the game being something of a disaster at launch, it still managed to sell millions of copies before the year was out.
However, after years of patches Cyberpunk 2077’s issues have been mostly fixed now – even if some of the glitches plaguing the game have been pretty hilarious to say the least.
Nonetheless, the game has enjoyed a surge in popularity recently, and this might have to do with the fact that CD Projekt Red recently announced that the game will be getting a big expansion in 2023 titled “Phantom Liberty”.
And CD Projekt has taken advantage of the Game Awards show this year to show off the upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion, releasing a new trailer for this paid add-on to the game, which as stated earlier, is slated to arrive next year.
The expansion takes place in Dogtown, a sub-district of Night City. The game’s Night City is a neon-lit cyberpunk metropolis, and surely is one of the most interesting video game settings in quite some time.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’s teaser trailer below showcases one of the new characters players will encounter in the expansion: Solomon Reed. According to CD Projekt’s description, he “is a veteran New United States of America agent, and apparently the only person players can trust to help them fulfill an impossible mission of espionage and survival”. The New United States of America being Cyberpunk 2077’s futuristic version of the present-day USA, of course.
More interestingly, Solomon Reed is played by none other than Idris Elba, the British actor you most certainly know from movies like Pacific Rim and The Suicide Squad. Not all of the films Elba’s starred in have been great though – he’s also been in turkeys like The Gunman and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance. And there’s no telling what kind of performance he’ll deliver in his first AAA video game, but he does look committed and seems to fit right into the role of Solomon Reed in the brief moments he’s seen in the trailer.
Idris Elba will be joining superstar Keanu Reeves, who also plays a role in the game. His Johnny Silverhand character in Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t just a marketing ploy by Polish company CD Projekt, but he does play a significant an interesting role in the main game, and likely too will in the expansion.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’s teaser trailer also shows some gameplay – it looks like there could be quite a bit of shooting in this upcoming expansion, so here’s hoping developer CD Projekt Red delivers some great action set pieces and further improves this side of Cyberpunk 2077 for the expansion.
All in all, this will surely be an add-on for Cyberpunk 2077 that both fans of the game and newcomers will be looking forward to next year, so maybe CD Projekt Red won’t take too long to reveal an exact release date for Phantom Liberty, then.