Last year CD Projekt Red finally unveiled the first major expansion to Cyberpunk 2077, Phantom Liberty. The trailers for the new DLC didn't tell fans much about what they would be doing but did contain a few eye-opening bits. Perhaps the biggest is that Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand is back for the new Cyberpunk 2077 DLC, which in itself carries a lot of weight and tells players when the game will take place.
Cyberpunk 2077's main plot revolves around a character known as V. After a heist goes horribly wrong, the main character ends up with the consciousness of a long-dead terrorist known as Johnny Silverhand embedded in their brain. V's doctor tells them that they have roughly a month to live before Silverhand's consciousness fully takes over their mind, possibly killing V in the process. The main story missions involve V trying to find a way to get the chip out of their head safely while slowly becoming better acquainted with Silverhand in the process. Unfortunately, things do not go as planned.
What Johnny Silverhand Means For Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty
Cyberpunk 2077 is not a game with a happy ending and the only thing the player has control over is how sad it will be. At the end of the game, it's revealed that despite everything the player went through, V is still going to die. The damage that the chip did to their body was irreversible, and the game gives the player a few choices. They can choose to live for whatever uncertain amount of time they have left or use the Soulkiller technology to transfer their consciousness to another body and completely destroy Silverhand. Alternatively, the player can allow the Keanu Reeves character to permanently take over V's body, who then leaves Night City to start a new life.
With such definitive endings, it wasn't originally clear when any DLC would take place until recently. Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty was originally revealed in September 2022, with the dialog indicating that V would be involved with a new version of the United States government. The trailer ended with Johnny Silverhand telling V that taking an oath to this government was a bad idea.
A second trailer was released during the 2022 Game Awards which introduced Idris Elba's Solomon Reed. Throughout the trailer, Silverhand contained to berate V for trusting people. Neither of the trailers gave players a solid idea as to what the DLC is about, but Johnny's inclusion indicates that the DLC would take place sometime before the game's climax. The addition of the character, however, raises several questions.
While playing Cyberpunk 2077, players are constantly being pushed along in the main plot, and there is a sense of urgency in the main narrative that is often absent in open-world games. While this sense of urgency is something of a lie in the game itself, it nonetheless gives players the impression that V is on a tight clock. Specifically, it gives the player the idea V needs to make every action count, with every main mission serving the goal of getting Johnny Silverhand out of their head. It begs the question as to why V is going on this extensive side quest while they're at death's door and why Johnny going along with it. The Cyberpunk 2077 DLC has yet to address V's imminent death, but there are a couple of ways the game might handle it.
How Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Can Address The Story's Sense of Urgency
The first and most obvious answer is that the game just may choose to ignore it. There are plenty of open-world games whose main narratives have a sense of urgency about them but don't actually punish the player for ignoring it. The Witcher 3, Skyrim, and Mass Effect 2 & 3 all have DLC that the player can indulge in while a pressing narrative plays out in the background.
It wouldn't at all be out of character for CD Projekt Red to go this route. After all, players can technically live out well over a month in Night City in-game without any consequences, even though V has been told that they only have a few weeks. It's not unreasonable to assume that the DLC will simply take this route and make it an extended side quest.
Another possibility is that the New United States of America will offer V another solution. The various Cyberpunk mega-corporations are generally the most powerful entities in the fictional universe, but the government may have access to the kind of technology that could get Johnny out of V's head. The story behind The New United States of America in Cyberpunk 2077 is a bit dense but is generally implied to be one of the more powerful governments in North America. This could very well explain why V is willing to cozy up to these government agencies and why Johnny is grudgingly going along with it. Whether the DLC will actually affect the game's world on the whole or the game's endings, however, remains to be seen.
Ultimately, it's still too soon to say what CD Projekt Red has in store for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. The only thing that can likely be said for certain is that it takes place before the game's end, which raises many questions about its narrative. CD Projekt Red has confirmed that Phantom Liberty will be Cyberpunk 2077's only DLC and has a larger budget than any of the company's previous expansion projects. DLC and expansions have retconned and altered endings in the past, and it wouldn't entirely be unheard of for the studio to do something like this. Regardless, Johnny Silverhand's inclusion in Phantom Liberty is one that carries a lot of weight.
Cyberpunk 2077 is out now for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.