Video Game / Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

This page assumes that you've played Cyberpunk 2077 and spoilers for the base game will be left unmarked. You have been warned.

How do you win when the deck is stacked against you? You go all in.

"You're up against seasoned players, whereas you... just stumbled onto the court. [...] So go out and play, just don't get played."

— Johnny Silverhand

Phantom Liberty is a DLC expansion for Cyberpunk 2077.

A mysterious woman named Songbird contacts V with the offer of a lifetime: Save Rosalind Myers, the President of the New United States of America, in exchange for a way to remove the Relic. Unfortunately, Myers is in Dogtown, a Wretched Hive district even by Night City standards, and has caught the ire of its warlord dictator, the former American soldier Kurt Hansen. V also comes into contact with the NUSA's Federal Intelligence Agency (spies) and is tasked with assisting them when things go awry.

Dogtown holds many secrets, and much is not as it seems. In a city of broken dreams, between people with dark secrets, who can you possibly trust? And how much will you sacrifice to save your life?

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• 11th-Hour Superpower: In "The Killing Moon", NUSA black ops start closing in on V and Songbird as they make their way to the space shuttle that'll take the latter to Luna. As things get especially heated, Songbird is forced to utilize her condition and tap into the Blackwall, which V piggy backs on to handle the load, which ends up turning them both into a One-Man Army hacking into everyone all around them and dropping dozens of heavily armed soldiers, robots, and vehicles en masse with the flick of a wrist to make their escape.
• Aborted Arc: Pursuing "The Tower" ending will effectively null the generations-long buildup of a confrontation against Adam Smasher, making him The Unfought, as Arasaka is being restructured from within to the point of moving out of Night City.
• Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: In "The Tower" ending, all of V's romance partners have moved on with their lives while they were in a coma; Judy left Night City and married a woman named Bianca, River has gotten involved in some kind of shady dealings with Trauma Team, Panam left Night City with the Aldecaldos, and Kerry is heavily focused on his music career. Most of them don't take kindly to the news of V's return, with River and Panam not wanting to talk to them after seemingly up and vanishing (Panam flat-out refuses to return V's call and Mitch has to be the one to tell them the bad news, while River does feel bad about his initial harsh attitude but wants to keep his distance because of his own difficult situation) and Judy saying that V and her should just be friends now and begging V not to rekindle their relationship. The only one still willing to resume their relationship is Kerry, but even he can't be with V since he's in the middle of a tour.
• Airvent Passageway:
  • In the "Somewhat Damaged" mission, an invincible Cerberus Killer Robot uses the level's air ducts to stalk you throughout the facility.
  • In "The Killing Moon" V makes use of multiple vent passages while helping Songbird through the spaceport.
• All for Nothing: All of the endings, one way or another.
  • Saving Songbird has you help her escape to the Moon despite the fact she has lied to you about having a cure. This results in V ending up exactly where they started at the beginning of the expansion with no progress in their quest to have a cure.
  • If you work with Reed, but kill Songbird at the end you turn her body over to the NUSA, however the President retracts her offer for a cure as the deal was to capture Songbird alive. Reed leaves, everyone else you worked with is already dead and V returns to Night City, no closer to a cure than when they started.
  • If you turn Songbird over to the NUSA, V gets the cure they were promised, but the price they end up paying is getting Johnny deleted, ending up in a two year coma, and permanently losing their ability to use combat implants and cyberware. Sure, V got their cure and lived, but at the cost of having their relationships upended and ensuring they'll never be able to become a Night City legend.
• A Lighter Shade of Black:
  • Played With. The NUSA and Militech are people involved in a lot of shady, if not outright evil, activities that the player has seen throughout the main game. However, it is clear that Solomon Reed and Myers actually believe in their dream of restoring the United States and have some personal code of honor. For example, they actually live up to their promise of curing you, unlike Arasaka. On the other hand, V just happens to become isolated from their contacts, unable to use chrome and therefore the most obvious way forward for them is to become employed by Langley and become another one of Myers's lapdogs.
  • Mr. Hands is this for BARGHEST. While a ruthless criminal Fixer, Mr. Hands is perfectly willing to support a free clinic, help a guy escape from a corporation, and help a corpo escape a blackmailing scheme among other "nice" gigs. He's much better for the city than the tyrannical Hansen.
• All There in the Manual: The "Ten of Swords" comic explains the circumstances of how and why Reed ended up becoming a scapegoat to secure a "ceasefire" between the NUSA and Arasaka. It's briefly touched on by Reed after being woken up from his sleeper staus, but he gives only the bare minimum of information.
• Ambiguous Situation: Par for the course in a spy-thriller, with many unexpected twists and revelations not being 100 percent clear even at the best of times. As a result, most if not all of the gigs and sidequests rely entirely upon the player's discretion to decide the outcome, as opposed to many of the more "straightforward" gigs found in the main game, and oftentimes you won't find out that a choice you made didn't quite pan out ideally until long after you've finished it up. And sometimes there isn't a "right" choice at all.
  • It's telling that Johnny Silverhand weighs the whole situation, and for once, has no definite opinion on which of the major branching paths is the correct one. His affinity for V grows if you choose sending Songbird to the moon or mercy-killing her in the Reed path, basically just not bending to the NUSA, but the actual quandry about the clash of personalities has him stumped and introspective.
• Ambiguously Evil: The NUSA is an expansionist power heavily entwined with Militech and led by President Myers, who herself was a former Militech CEO. However, the actual state of the former United States is so awful that there's a very good argument that I Did What I Had to Do and Necessarily Evil is the case. President Myers also lives up to her word unlike many in Night City — not that it is much comfort given the context of what living up to her end of the deal winds up leaving V with.
• Anti-Climax: There are two ways you can end the expansion early by prematurely ending V's association with the NUSA, ensuring that the main plot threads remain unresolved and V loses the opportunity to seek out the cure promised by the NUSA and Songbird:
  • The first overlaps with Press Start to Game Over, as if you take too long to finish (or intentionally quit) the opening mission to rescue President Myers, she's unceremoniously Killed Offscreen by Kurt Hansen's forces, causing Songbird to chew V out and cut off all contact.
  • The second overlaps with Refusal of the Call and Screw This, I'm Outta Here, as if V does complete the mission of rescuing Myers, they'll be charged with activating FIA agent Solomon Reed and getting him back to the President. Following this, Reed will give V a chance to back out of their entanglement with the NUSA, though Myers makes it clear that V will forfeit the cure in doing so. Should V back out nonetheless, the story ends on the spot and Solomon and Myers cut off contact with V.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you don't want to slog through the game just to reach the expansion, don't worry, CDPR's got you covered. Similar to the expansions from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you have the option of immediately jumping into the expansion without playing the base game, though doing so gives you a preset loadout, starting off at Level 15 with 20000 eddies to your name. Your attributes are pre-selected, but you are able to redistribute your points after getting past the first mission (though you'll only be able to do so once).
  • The DLC introduces a special vendor in the Dogtown stadium who sells almost all iconic weapons you might've failed to pick up during their related quests, either because you went down a path that made them unobtainable or because you simply missed them. In other words, CDPR took a huge step towards avoiding Permanently Missable Content. That said, he doesn't cover absolutely everything, so there are some items that can still be lost forever.
• Arc Villain: Kurt Hansen, the leader of BARGHEST, is the expansion's Big Bad and a direct threat to V. It's on his orders that BARGHEST and all of Dogtown want Rosalind Myers' head on a pike. The expansion doesn't end in his death, however, as the last stretch now focuses on the conflict between So Mi, Reed, and Myers.
• Arms Dealer: Kurt Hansen primarily makes his money dealing arms using his former Militech contacts and taking a slice of every business in Dogtown. It has made him fantastically wealthy despite the conditions in his micro-city.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Downplayed. While by no means a bit player prior to update 2.0, Militech was more often than not overshadowed by Arasaka in terms of plot significance and presence in-game. Post 2.0 and Phantom Liberty however, Militech, and by extension the NUSA at large, gets considerably more focus.
  • Mr. Hands was the least fleshed-out of the Fixers in the base game and offered little to not real content outside of getting V in contact with the Voodoo Boys. In Phantom Liberty, Mr. Hands is not only the main fixer of Dogtown but also a key player in the plotline.
• Artistic Licence – Military: Phantom Liberty keeps going back in regards to Myers and Hansen being soldiers or marines. Their files say they were marines, but Myers mentioned that she learned to fight in the army. Hansen is said to be a marine, but then mentions being part of the army. If they were marines they would be part of the marine corps and if they were soldiers they would be part of the army.
• A Taste of Power: In the story path where you side with Songbird, you briefly get access to the "Blackwall Pulse" quickhack, which hacks and instantly kills virtually everyone within V's line of sight. This will not be the last time you get a glimpse of this quickhack, however; if you side with Reed in "Firestarter" and follow the necessary steps, you can get a special crafting material that will let you make either an Iconic Cyberdeck or SMG, which both have access to "Blackwall Gateway", a unique single-target version of "Blackwall Pulse" that, while not as powerful as the one in "The Killing Moon", is still horrifically effective.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The Militech Canto MK.6 is an Iconic Cyberdeck and one of two unique Iconic items you can craft if you side with Reed in "Firestarter". It's one of the few cyberdecks that has a unique quickhack, that being the "Blackwall Gateway"; similar to the Blackwall Pulse V briefly uses in "The Killing Moon", it will instantly kill an enemy (or at least wipe out most of their health) and can spread with the right set-up. As powerful as it is, however, the Canto MK.6 has two flaws that make it barely worth considering: the first is that it has lower RAM than most Tier 5 Cyberdecks and the second is that it has about as many slots as a Tier 1 cyberdeck such as the one you start with at the beginning of the game. Adding to this is that the "Blackwall Gateway" quickhack requires a large number of RAM, and still costs RAM to spread to other enemies. If you want to get any real mileage out of it, Overclock and Copy-Paste are almost always required.
• Awesome Personnel Carrier: The expansion gives V the option to purchase the Militech Hellhound, a six-wheeled, armour-plated military vehicle kitted out with machine guns and rockets for the hefty price of 150,000 eddies. It's also used by the NCPD if you manage to reach a stage 4 wanted level.
• The Bad Guys Win:
  • "Who Wants To Live Forever", if you consider Militech and the NUSA villains, effectively opens the door for a decisive end to the Unification Wars on their terms. This also translates into Night City deteriorating further into a death spiral in the meantime as competing Corporations squabble over the power vacuum left behind by Arasaka.
  • By contrast, if you consider Songbird a villain, killing Reed and helping her escape to the moon ensures that she faces no consequences for endangering President Myers, causing multiple bloodbaths that got innocent people killed, and stringing V along with the promise of a cure she intended to keep for herself since she neglected to mention It Only Works Once except at the very end.
  • Failing to rescue President Myers, whenever by delaying too long or abandoning the mission intentionally ensures that Kurt Hansen succeeds in assassinating her and screwing Songbird over, and since Reed and Alex are never activated, he'll continue to rule over Dogtown unopposed.
  • The Tower ending plays with this for Yorinobu. He still gets his way in crippling Arasaka, but not only is he deposed as CEO, he and the MegaCorp are faced with an emboldened Militech and NUSA. If Takemura survived, he'll message V explaining he and Hanako tried to overthrow Yorinobu, only for the attempt to end with Hanako's death and Yorinobu making him the fall guy once more.
• Back from the Brink: The Voodoo Boys, rather than being completely destroyed during the base game if V opted to kill Brigitte, Placide and the others, are revealed here to have merely relocated from outer Pacifica into Dogtown. That said, the VDBs have since splintered into smaller factions (many of whom didn't agree with the direction of Brigitte's leadership to begin with) that are now at war with each other, while also having to contend with BARGHEST for intruding in their domain, so while the VDBs overall are still hanging on, their situation is still a precarious one .
• Battle Amongst the Flames: If V chooses to try and take in Songbird at Reed's behest, they'll have to fight Hansen in the middle of the burning stadium before they can escape.
• Beneath the Earth: The Elaborate Underground Base isn't just underground, it's deep underground, and for that matter, sealed off almost completely. The only entrances we see to it in the game (either the main story or Bree's sidequest) are through some damage to a concrete wall, implying that it was just paved over. V has to actually jump down a huge cistern just to reach the top of the elevator going into the base proper.
• Bittersweet Ending: "The Tower" ending, a new ending added to the base game if you completed Phantom Liberty by siding with Reed, either by handing over Songbird in "The Killing Moon" or refusing to euthanize her in "Somewhat Damaged". The NUSA successfully manages to remove the Relic from V's head and grants them a full natural lifespan. The downside? Johnny's engram is ultimately destroyed, and the damage done to V’s neural network is so extensive they will never be able to field anything beyond basic implants ever again, crippling if not outright ending their edgerunner career. Worse, the process also lands V in a two-year-long coma, during which most of V's old friends and associates have moved on with their lives and few, if any, want to reconnect with V when they wake up. Night City isn't in great shape, either; although Yorinobu was ousted as CEO of Arasaka, the damage done to the mega-corp forced them to restructure the company and re-centralize their power back in Japan, leaving their rivals and competitors to try and fill the power vacuum and hasten Night City's death spiral, and even then, the events of the expansion have emboldened the NUSA and Militech to the point they're all but poised to absorb one of the last "Free Cities" left in America. By the time you reach the end credits, V's reduced to being just another face in the crowd regardless of whether they decide to start over as a fixer or leave Night City for a fresh start elsewhere. The only other silver lining in this Cruel Twist Ending is that it's the only ending besides "The Devil" where you can save Saul, Takemura, and Rogue (Saul dies in "the Sun", Rogue in "the Star", and if Takemura survives to the other endings, he is implied to commit suicide if you don't help Arasaka.)
• Black Market: While this can be found almost anywhere in Night City, Dogtown's black market has access to cyberware and weapons that can't be found anywhere else. One shop vender has mods and cyberware even a Maelstrom gangoon would feel envious of.
• Boring Return Journey: During "The Killing Moon", you infiltrate a heavily-guarded airport on an island. An American troop company arrives and the airport is put on lockdown. You fend off dozens of both security guards and soldiers, also causing a Blackwall breach that will likely draw in Netwatch investigators. Finally you travel by train to a dead-end gate, complete your objective and the credits roll... and then V is sitting on a bench back in the city, having apparently retraced their steps without issue.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: To V's surprise, the FIA has a habit of maintaining analogue contingencies for transmitting classified intel and activating sleeper agents. Justified in that ancient telephone lines and century-old codebooks are much easier to keep discreet than modern Net communication.
• Butterfly of Doom: If V hands Songbird over to President Myers, then whether or not they take her offer for a cure, Militech and the NUSA's success once Arasaka is weakened is all but assured in most endings save for "The Devil". "The Tower" ending, in that light, accelerates that Foregone Conclusion.
• Career-Ending Injury: The Tower ending concludes with V surviving, but with a neural disease that permanently 'deafens' them to most cyberware, leaving them as normal as any civilian on the street.
• Central Theme: Phantom Liberty reinforces one of the central themes of the base game, that being "Quiet Life vs. Blaze of Glory", as well as loyalty to their friends. V can survive but the result will be losing any potential as an Edgerunner and living as an ordinary person for the rest of their life. They can also only succeed in this by betraying a friend. The irony is that even if they don't, they still end up killing another friend.
• The Chains of Commanding: Even at her worst and most uninhibited, Myers neither relishes in what she feels must be done, nor takes it lightly. Even early on, she can remark to V how the deaths and suffering under her watch weigh heavily.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Mr. Hands. It's eventually revealed that he is secretly Playing Both Sides in Dogtown, pretending to support Kurt while at the same time covertly assigning innocent looking gigs to V that ultimately cause chain reactions that undermine Kurt's rule of Dogtown. Presumably, Mr. Hands takes full control of Dogtown after Kurt's death.
  • Songbird turns out to have been behind virtually everything that happens in the DLC. A Downplayed Trope because almost every plan she makes goes horribly wrong. This starts with Hansen betraying her by shooting down the plane and continues with V as well as Reed tracking her down.
  • Myers. As it turns out, she's been spending the past several years, both as Militech's CEO and NUSA President, plotting and laying the groundwork for restoring America to its rightful place in the world, with the Unification Wars being only the tip of the iceberg. In the Tower ending, it's implied that the culmination of her scheming is all but imminent.
• Commonplace Rare: Smuggler notes indicate that the normal rules are reversed in Dogtown. Everyone has all the guns they need, but basic stuff like kitchen appliances are badly needed in the combat zone. "So better load up on toasters to give these people!"
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: Briefly. Depending on your chosen infiltration route during "The Killing Moon", there is a section where V must run through a train tunnel, regularly ducking into small alcoves to avoid being run over.
• The Corruption: Songbird's influence on tech manifests through the Relic as a pixelated red mist. Depending on how far the player has advanced the main quest, this counts as Foreshadowing, as it's the same way that the Blackwall is represented in cyberspace. Songbird's abilities are made possible by the same, and it's slowly killing her.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Only hinted at in the base game, but anything involving the Blackwall gets extremely ominous very quickly. Depending on your story path, the spy drama descends into pure horror. This is all because of Project Cynosure, Militech's attempt at mastering the Blackwall A.I.s. One entrance happens to be beneath your own hideout, which may be why there's rumors your apartment is "haunted" and the urban legends of teams of netrunners flatlining simultaneously in there. The host of entities pursuing you inside the Cerberus robot in the Reed ending spew all sorts of ominous words that would make Bloodborne players crap their pants.
• Crapsack Only by Comparison: In "The Tower" ending, certain dialogue choices will have V complain and bemoan their inability to use implants anymore. Misty will simply state they're now "one of the faces of the crowd" and will simply have to be more cautious with daily life in Night City. Similarly, Misty says that retiring at a cushy desk job isn't something most people would complain about, especially in a place as corrupt as Night City.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: At multiple points in the expansion, you are directed to hide the bodies of enemies you just dealt with. As of the 2.0 update, hiding an unconscious enemy is automatically a lethal action, meaning that even if you went through the trouble of taking someone down gently, they still must die to progress the mission.
  • There is no method of performing the party infiltration non-lethally. Your only option is to use your sniper perch to kill the guards before they summon more personnel.
  • Your Kill and Replace method of infiltrating Hansen's stadium laboratory is just that, kill and replace. V can express shock at the actual moment of death and the other two spies act like you should have honestly expected that.
  • There is no ending where you won't be screwing over someone or another, including V themselves. Decide to side with Songbird and help her escape? You find out she was using you just as she used everyone else, and Reed is waiting to intercept you at the shuttle that will take her to the moon. You either have to gun down Reed and give up the chance to cure V, or turn on Songbird at the last minute and ruin her plans right as she was on the cusp of freedom. Decide to side with Reed because you buy his argument that Songbird can't be trusted? The mission will end with agent Alex's death, and Songbird will escape into the Cynosure facility. Upon tracking her down, she'll beg for a Mercy Kill as she'd rather die than go back to Myers, and you can either do just that or turn her over anyway. Doing the former will cause Reed and Myers to be utterly furious, as Reed has been trying so hard to save Songbird and Myers lost one of her most invaluable assets, and this will also cost V their shot at a cure. Doing the latter once again allows V to be cured, but means explicitly going against Songbird's desperate pleas and leaving her at Myers' mercy once more.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Myers' biggest gamble is to breach the Blackwall through Songbird and is willing to risk whatever lurks beyond if it means giving the NUSA a decisive advantage over all its enemies. Doing so, however, puts Songbird at serious risk; every time she jacks into the Blackwall, she has to deal with the rogue artificial intelligences behind it, which not only puts a serious strain on her body but is also slowly killing her.
• Dangerous Deserter: Almost all of BARGHEST are former Militech soldiers who decided to stay in Dogtown at Kurt Hansen's behest.
• Darker and Edgier: Phantom Liberty manages the impressive feat of being even bleaker than the already dark base game in almost every aspect.
  • Its setting, Dogtown, is an even worse hellhole than Night City at large. Whereas Night City at least keeps up the appearance of a functioning high-tech city, Dogtown makes no attempt to conceal the fact it's little more than a collection of crumbling ruins inhabited by those who have hit rock bottom in life, all ruled by a military dictatorship.
  • The stakes of the DLC's story are much higher than anything encountered before. The base game is about a relatively normal person, V, trying to find a way to survive an unusual flavor of death sentence, and whatever conflicts between bigger players exist happen mostly in the background. In Phantom Liberty you're dealing with government conspiracies, expansionist politics that have the potential to change Night City's fate more than anything seen before, and an actual Person of Mass Destruction who could easily bring about The End of the World as We Know It if not handled properly. And this being a Cyberpunk game, there's not even a remotely good resolution to any of it.
  • The DLC's new ending, the Tower, is considered by many to be even more depressing than the game's previous worst ending, the Devil. The only positive aspect it has is that V is no longer dying from the Relic but getting to this point cost them literally everything - their friends, their career, their possessions, pretty much their whole life as they knew it, leaving them destitute, homeless and physically unable to claw their way back to the top. Not only that, is also gives many of their closest associates the shaft, something none of the base game endings do (quite the opposite in fact, your friends normally get a pretty happy ending if you did their personal quests). Last but not least, the Tower leaves Night City in a state of barely contained chaos, and it's all but confirmed that its days as a free city are numbered after Arasaka's departure left the door wide open for the NUSA to reabsorb the free state into itself - though that probably isn't the worst possible outcome - and there's a somewhat disturbing implication that V is now the situation that Songbird once was in; indebted to powerful governmental forces who are fully willing to take advantage of V's now relatively vulnerable state to call in that debt whenever they wish.
• Day of the Jackboot: In the new ending, the Tower, The Night City of 2079 is plastered with Militech recruitment propaganda, and patrolled by their police drones and mechs. With the power vacuum caused by Arasaka's retreat, Militech and the NUSA are eager to take over the even more broken and dystopic remains of the city.
• Dug Too Deep: In both a literal and metaphorical sense. Project Cynosure, the underground base of doom stretching beneath Dogtown and Pacifica, is physically very deep. The only two entrances we ever see look like they were revealed by accident when an underground wall cracked. One is beneath your own hideout and has logs from a previous team of guys ten years back who tried sorting the forbidden knowledge there, only for it to get shitcanned. The metaphorical sense is that Cynosure is all about meddling with the Blackwall, the one thing everyone agrees should not be touched. Things were not going all right even in the recovery team, as the leader's log says their netrunner got glued to her chair, refusing to jack out. A janitor's log above the "main" entrance near a cistern has him going mad from the whispers he hears from below. Cynosure may have been built beneath the earth to contain any AI leaks, but now it's become an outright dungeon that rapes the minds of any who linger.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • The dialogue in Mr. Hands' phone call wherein he informs V that they are now free to leave and return to Dogtown at their leisure will differ depending on if the player has already completed the sole Pacifica gig in the base game or not.
  • Likewise, during one part of the story, V must perform a certain number of gigs in Pacifica to earn a favor from Hands; if you take this moment to complete the aforementioned base game Pacifica gig, the gig's briefing and debriefing will be slightly changed to acknowledge the fact that it won't count towards Hands' favor, as it was already offered to begin with.
• Dramatic Irony: The Tower ending has arguably one of the most significant changes to the world of the game's endings, aside from the Devil. Yet V will not be remembered for having any part in it at all, fading away from a legend into being an ordinary, nameless soul possibly indebted to the NUSA and Militech.
• The Dreaded: MaxTac once again flaunts their status by casually waltzing into Dogtown to apprehend the rampaging Songbird. Reed explains that even with their hatred of the NCPD ("no cops" being the literal Rule #1 of Dogtown, as announced by Colonel Hansen), even Barghest is not dumb or suicidal enough to put themselves between MaxTac and whoever they are presently hunting.
• Dual Boss: In "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos", you finally get to take on MaxTac, who have been set up as the ultimate boogeymen of Night City since the original release, — by having to fight three of them at once, with each one getting both Boss Subtitles and a Life Meter.
• Elaborate Underground Base: Dogtown's underground sections contain a whole bunch of secret Unification War-era bunkers filled with abandoned military and research projects. By far the most impressive one is the Project Cynosure complex, a massive underground facility dedicated to developing Militech's version of Arasaka's Soulkiller and harnessing the power of Blackwall AIs as a countermeasure to said program.
• Elite Mooks: As trained former soldiers, BARGHEST is superior to virtually the entirety of Night City's gangs with the exception of the Voodoo Boys (who have Netrunning skills) and Maelstrom (who have a massive amount of chrome).
• Et Tu, Brute?: The Cinematic Trailer shows Solomon Reed and So Mi all the way back in 2070. After helping Solomon get on board a train back to the NUSA, she locks him in a train car with a bunch of armed thugs and two Arasaka soldiers. The expansion and Ten of Swords prequel comic reveal why So Mi betrayed him: a sleeper agent killed an Arasaka admiral and his whole family, resulting in increased tensions between Arasaka and the NUSA to the point Myers made Reed the scapegoat in exchange for a "ceasefire". This naturally soured his opinion of Myers and somewhat strained his relationship with So Mi, but he's otherwise still loyal to the NUSA.
• Exact Words: So Mi isn't lying when she says she has a cure for V's condition. What she doesn't tell V is that she's suffering a similar fate, and her cure will only work for one of them.
• Fate Worse than Death: Said verbatim by Songbird if you choose to spare her at the end of 'Somewhat Damaged'.
• Find the Cure!: So Mi kicks off the expansion by offering a means of removing the Relic in exchange for V helping her save NUSA President Rosalind Myers. While So Mi wasn't lying about having a cure, she neglected to mention she was also dying, and the cure will only work for one of them. Depending on who you side with at the end of the expansion, the NUSA uses So Mi's cure for V to repay their efforts in saving Myers or V uses it on So Mi to save her life or V forsakes the cure altogether by siding with Reed, but then defying the NUSA and giving So Mi a Mercy Kill.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: When you first meet So Mi and begin suffering unexpected seizures, Johnny takes a moment to chime in, as he is wont to. However, if you watch So Mi while he's mouthing off, she actually glances in his direction, indicating she not only hears him, but sees him as well. The next time Johnny has something to say a few seconds later, So Mi does away with glances and looks right at him, to his complete shock, before essentially "muting" him to keep from overloading the Relic.
• Forbidden Zone: Dogtown is a cordoned-off "Combat Zone" in Pacifica that's effectively a No Man's Land for most gangs, while corporations and the NCPD alike avoid getting close to it. It's not just due to the threat posed by BARGHEST, however but also due to the presence of secretive complexes left behind by Militech.
• Foregone Conclusion:
  • The Cinematic Trailer shows Solomon being gunned down by Arasaka soldiers in a train after being betrayed by Songbird. As shown in other trailers and previews, however, Solomon survived and went into hiding.
  • "The Tower" ending strongly implies that the end of the Unification Wars has not only been accelerated but is firmly in the NUSA's favor, with Night City on borrowed time. Worse, even if V doesn't go for "The Tower", there's very little they can actually do to prevent this outcome. Whether or not Songbird escapes, nothing will stop Arasaka from withdrawing (outside of "The Devil" ending), nothing will prevent the corporate power vacuum, and nothing will halt the NUSA's advance. Even in the happiest endings of the base game, nothing V does changes the grand scheme of things.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In the trailer showing Solomon Reed's attempted escape from Night City, he talks to Songbird and mentions a spot with the best quesadillas around. Songbird says that she doesn't remember. It's easy to think that she's making it up, but really it's a sign of her memory loss, caused by the runs into the blackwall.
  • When So Mi first hacks into the Relic, it causes immense pain to both V and Johnny, the latter being the worst affected by the hacking since he's tied to the biochip. This actually entails what So Mi's cure will mean for him; if you side with the NUSA and go for "The Tower" ending in the main game, Johnny's engram is outright destroyed.
  • During your rescue of President Myers and the escape through the exhibit hall, So Mi begins talking in an especially cynical fashion about Myers and the NUSA; at such an early stage in the DLC it can be interpreted as just that - her being cynical - but it's an early indication of how she really feels about Myers.
  • Before You Know My Name starts, read will mention how the operation in Night City 7 years earlier went. He will mention how 3 of his people were killed by Arasaka and that he had a decision to make, pull his people out ASAP or staying in NC and finishing the mission. Reed chose the latter. Reed is clearly remorseful over the fact that staying caused him to lose more of his people, but it also tells us that when push comes to shove, he will sacrifice his people to complete the mission and he will ultimately choose Myers' orders over helping out V and So Mi.
  • During Firestarter you can see that the Netrunner twins were part of something called "Project Cynosure". If you side with Reed at Firestarter you find out down the road what it is: Militech's version of Soulkiller.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: You have the chance of finally saving yourself but it requires you to sacrifice Songbird to the NUSA. This is a notably more sympathetic version than most cases because Songbird has betrayed you multiple times and her motivation is fundamentally the same as V's. They will both do anything to survive.
• From Camouflage to Criminal: BARGHEST is largely comprised of ex-Militech and ex-NUSA military personnel, who've all turned rogue.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: That nightmare-inducing, invincible Cerberus robot that keeps hunting you throughout the Somewhat Damaged mission? The one that kills you in a single hit if it finds you? It used to be a maintenance bot before the Blackwall got its digital digits on it.
• Game-Breaking Injury: The Tower ending has the engram within V fully destroyed, restoring V's brain cell control over their body, at the expense of the procedure rendering them incapable of having any combat (including strength-enhancing) cyberware or netrunning chrome other than the bare essentials. They're even so greatly weakened that a street thug can knock them down so easily. Meaning that even if V managed to collect enough eddies to be set for life or attempt a prospective career as a Fixer, they're a nobody as far as anyone's concerned in Night City. Doomed to obscurity as another face in the crowd or an indebted desk job in Langley.
• Game-Favored Gender: A marketing example. While both genders of V received equal focus throughout the promotion materials and trailers of the main game, Female V is featured prominently throughout Phantom Liberty's marketing, with all gameplay footage by CD Projekt Red using her with Male V having little to no presence at all. Tellingly, only Female V is shown on the expansion's key visual with her male counterpart nowhere to be seen.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • "The Tower" ending depicts V's loss of cyberware as a Career-Ending Injury that stops them from being an edgerunner. However, you can voluntarily remove V's chrome during normal gameplay, and with sufficient skill, still beat the game fairly easy. In fact, the only piece of chrome you can't remove is your artificial eyes, as the scanner is needed for various missions. That's said, due to how weakened V is, it's implied that they also suffered muscular or nerve atrophy.
  • If V fails to save President Myers early on, locking them out of the rest of Phantom Liberty's plotline entirely, news reports will broadcast as though she's still alive. On the other hand, it's just as likely that the NUSA is purposefully covering it up to keep up appearances.
  • A (possibly unintentional) update to the Outfits system means that any Special Outfits that don't use a slot will instead display what the player has equipped. The main quest involves V donning several Special Outfits to blend in. This can lead to unintentional hilarity when V shows up at a fancy party in an immaculately tailored suit and a bright pink helmet made from a repurposed drone.
• Genre Shift:
  • Sort of. The developers explicitly describe the expansion as a "spy thriller" in contrast to the high-octane action and somber tone of the main game where you're desperately finding a way to get the Relic out of your head before it kills you. Phantom Liberty appropriately puts an emphasis on the 'spy' part by involving V with FIA operatives such as Songbird, who kicks off the expansion in the first place by offering V a potential cure. Most of the main story missions and even Side Jobs and Gigs in Dogtown force you to make careful consideration about your choices and what you've done throughout said missions, as is the case with "Firestarter: where you impersonate a pair of Netrunners looking to sell a Militech version of Soulkiller to Kurt Hansen.
  • Post-Firestarter, the story veers into Cape Punk as Songbird's flaming cyber-power becomes too great to handle, and V ultimately has to decide where she'll end up.
  • The Stealth-Based Mission "Somewhat Damaged" imagines Cyberpunk 2077 as a survival horror game, where V, after getting access to an ancient Militech bunker, ends up pursued by a Blackwall controlled robot spider that can kill them in one hit if they are caught and no number of bullets, explosives, or cyber-attacks can dent it.
• Godzilla Threshold: Twofold, as during the Starport escape, the heavily armored NUSA and Militech forces are practically swarming en mass in an unprecedented way to retrieve Songbird by any means necessary, even if it risks starting another Corporate war altogether by sieging Night City like this because Songbird escaping will provoke a global incident that could lead a complete collapse of the NUSA as it is if not an all-out World War, justifying the risk to prevent a worse calamity. In response to the overwhelming numbers surrounding them, Songbird is forced to tap into the Blackwall to break through which has the risk of killing her faster than she already is and unleashing a whole slew of AI with V's help upon the unsuspecting hundreds of soldiers, vehicles, and robots, slaughtering them en mass to cut open a path to escape.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: Moreso than even the base game, as the spy-thriller theme of the expansion ends up playing around with the perceptions and moralities of characters that — barring a couple blatant examples like Hansen — makes it difficult to pin down anyone as either fully right or wrong.
• Grenade Spam: While 2.0 nerfed grenades by giving them a cooldown, Phantom Liberty made up for it with Relic perks, giving your Projectile Launcher the ability to charge up a burst of five mini-grenades. While these have high recoil they generally work wonders on crowds of unaware enemies.
• Guide Dang It!: Given the expansion's emphasis on "spy-thriller", some missions don't exactly tell you about specific conditions or parameters.
  • One early mission at the start will see you meeting with Reed after he's 'woken up' from sleeper status and asks you if you've been tailed. The game doesn't tell you if you have been tailed, with said tail having found you if you were caught on cams while escaping through the tunnels with Myers or failed to erase the camera recordings. That being said, failure only result in a short ambush and the mission goes on normally without failure.
  • In a game where Take Your Time is normally in full effect, nothing hints at the DLC's introduction mission actually being a Timed Mission. When you progress the main story far enough to kick off Phantom Liberty, you're told to make your way to Dogtown and link up with Songbird ASAP. Ignore this request for too long and the mission just outright fails, locking you out of the entire DLC storyline.
• Hollywood Hacking: Your cyber-arms Relic perk adds a dedicated control-type quickhack slot to nanowire. If you charge your nanowire attack, it adds the effect of the quickhack.
• Improbably Quick Coma Recovery: Despite spending 2 years in a coma, V is able to talk and walk almost right away with just a bit more effort. That being said, they're later mugged by a bunch of street thugs with humiliating ease, implying that their body actually has atrophied significantly, made worse by the fact that V rushed into Night City without undergoing proper physical therapy.
• Interservice Rivalry: The Federal Intelligence Agency seems to be having one with Militech's own covert operatives. Skeptics in the NUSA believe that the FIA is also being used by Myers as a secret weapon in her political games against the MegaCorp. The reality? Only the "spooks" know.
• Just Before the End: The Tower ending has Militech and various other corpos squabbling over the power vacuum left behind by Arasaka's withdrawal from Night City. It's all but stated, however, that the city is convulsing, if not in an outright death spiral, as conditions deteriorate from said power vacuum. With only a matter of time before the NUSA steps in to finish the job, its future is more uncertain than ever.
• Kill and Replace: V and Alex pull this on two of Hansen's netrunners, using specialized cyberware to change their appearance and personalities accordingly.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: The two story branches have this.
  • If you side with Reed, at the end you find a burned-out Songbird who begs you to Mercy Kill her so she won't be under NUSA's thumb. You can choose to do so or hand her over to Reed, though the former choice locks you out of the new ending.
  • If you side with Songbird, at the spaceport, she lets slip that she was just using V and never intended to cure them. V can either follow through with the plan and let her escape or be so infuriated by her betrayal that they hand her over to Reed. The latter choice will let you access the new ending.
• Law Enforcement, Inc.: Despite the definition of a Combat Zone being that the NCPD won't go there, BARGHEST serves as the semi-official police force of Dogtown. They even have their own Wanted Levels.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the Idris Elba Live-Action trailer, he asks the audience "How do you win when the game is stacked against you? You go all in." Just in case you thought he was only talking about the expansion's story and not the fixes to the game itself, he ends the trailer with "Don't forget, the game is fixed." Phantom Liberty releases alongside the free 2.0 update from the game's infamously glitchy launch, and the main game has been widely considered "fixed" for some time.
• Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair:
  • Pacifica is the epitome of every ambitious wannabe Corrupt Corporate Executive reaching too far; it had more funding than some first-world countries, the buildings were made from the highest-quality materials and designed by the mega-corps' best architects... and then the Unification War came along, turning the would-be corpo playground into a battleground, and stopping its development in its tracks.
  • Dogtown, in particular, was meant to be a gated paradise epitomizing the pride of the corpos. Now it looks like it took a nuke to the face and is ruled by a military dictatorship, with dilapidated if not unfinished buildings, slums, rusting debris, and wrecked military vehicles. Even President Myers remarks as much, finding the ruined hubris displayed by the rich and powerful rather poetic.
• Morton's Fork: Interestingly enough, the main story both plays this straight and inverts it. No matter which story path you take, the story will make you heavily question your choices. If you side with Reed, you will learn what a truly shitty past Songbird has had, and that handing her over to NUSA would be a Fate Worse than Death. On the other hand, if you side with Songbird, she presses you into committing multiple horrible acts in the name of curing both of you, only to learn that she has just been using you all along with no intent of actually curing you as the cure is a one time use and she needs it too. Simply to say, there is no straightforward good path. At the same time, however, it's hard to call any path a bad path either, with the game providing numerous circumstances and reasons to motivate the player's choice, without trying to motivate the player towards one ending for another. Even Johnny, who often has his own motivation and will occasionally play the part of V's "conscience" to try and poke them towards certain decisions based on his own personal ideals, will flat-out tell V at a certain point that he doesn't know whose side to take. Some outcomes dismay him more than others, but he typically has both positive comments and misgivings for any outcome the player chooses.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Upon emerging in the Dogtown Market, V will be looking at Herold's weapon stall. Herold has some pretty invasive cyberware, with no eyes, nose, or mouth (and flamethrowers in each elbow). Asking him why he looks like that makes him list off all the theories people have about him. When V prompts which is true, he responds, "Whichever's gonna land me a sale."
• Multiple Endings: The expansion has two pairs of endings, branching out during Firestarter and a Last-Second Ending Choice.
  • King of Wands: V chooses to side with Songbird, betraying the FIA in the process and helping her escape to Luna where the NUSA and Myers can't touch her while she works on getting a cure. Unfortunately, it turns out So Mi was planning to betray V as well and confesses this after suffering Blackwall overload. The last obstacle V faces is Solomon Reed, asking V to step aside and let him bring Songbird back to the NUSA where she can get treatment. Ultimately, V kills Reed and straps So Mi on the shuttle bound for Luna. This locks V out of "The Tower" ending and marks them as an enemy of the NUSA, most likely hunted for the rest of their days as Alex claims.
    • King of Swords: Outraged by Songbird's betrayal, V refuses Songbird's request and returns her to the FIA. While Reed is happy that Songbird will receive treatment, it's clear that he isn't happy with how events played out. Myers is still grateful for V's help and promises to help remove the Relic. If V pursues the Tower ending, Reed is asking himself if it was all worth it. The answer seems to be no.
  • King of Pentacles: V sides with Reed and works with him to capture So Mi so that he can relocate her to Europe to get her treatment and shield her from any NUSA reprisals for her acts of treason. Songbird doesn't take the betrayal well and unleashes her internal Blackwall AI to turn into a cyberdemon and escape. MaxTac gets involved, Reed goes back to working with the FIA, and then Songbird escapes again when V and Reed intercept MaxTac, leading to a manhunt in an abandoned Cynosure AI facility - except V is the one hunted down by an unkillable monster powered by the AI in Songbird's head. V eventually finds Songbird, exhausted and burnt out from prolonged use of the Blackwall, asking V to kill her rather than be under Myers' thumb once again. V refuses, leaving Songbird at Myers' mercy but ensuring both the salvation of the NUSA and V.
    • King of Cups: V agrees to Songbird's request and euthanizes her, ensuring Myers will never be able to use her as a pawn ever again. Reed is furious with V and blames them for the mission going completely sidewise. While Myers is displeased to learn of Songbird's death, she's otherwise grateful she won't be used against the NUSA or used by others. But since you failed to retrieve her alive, she won't help you with the Relic, locking you out of "The Tower" ending.
  • The Tower: The new option to the main storyline's endings. After two years of surgery, V lives, but is permanently unable to use combat cyberware, ending their career. Many of V's friends have moved on with their lives, and V becomes another face in the crowd.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: Phantom Liberty has quite a few of these.
  • The Chimera combat bot you fight in the opening missions drops a unique component that can be used to craft one, and only one, out of four powerful iconic weapon mods.
  • Similarly, the Cerberus robot drops a different component that can be used to craft either an iconic cyberdeck or an iconic submachine gun. This one is even a double example because encountering the Cerberus in the first place is tied to specific ending paths.
  • Speaking of ending paths, almost all of them offer unique weapons that become unobtainable if you choose another route. Some may be available for purchase from a special vendor in the Dogtown stadium afterwards, but others are Permanently Missable Content.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When V gets pinned down by MAX-TAC officers, one of them looms over her and, in a similar cadence to Adam Smasher from the finale of Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, asks "Who the fuck are you?!"
  • One of the highest-level Sandevistans added in 2.0, the Militech "Apogee", is clearly modeled after the one David Martinez used.
• Never Trust a Trailer: In the Cinematic Trailer, So Mi and Myers' shuttle is shot down as they're making their return to the NUSA. In the expansion proper, however, So Mi states their shuttle is being hacked and made to fly closer to Night City airspace before Kurt fires a SAM rocket to bring it down.
• No-Gear Level: During Somewhat Damaged, the final mission of Reed's path, you find yourself in an abandoned Militech facility being hunted by a very fast and very powerful robot. And due to it's hacking, you cannot access any of your implants like Sandevistan. You also are unable to use your guns, but trying to fight the robot likely would be suicide anyway.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • During your first meeting with Myers, failing to answer her when she asks who you are will result in her shooting V dead.
  • During “Firestarter,” if V chooses to escape the stadium with Songbird, at one point you are warned not to take an elevator and instead escape through the sewers. Choosing to take the elevator and ignore the objectives reveals that Reed expected this, leading to him killing V with a single shot the moment the elevator doors open.
  • In the King of Wands route mission "Killing Moon" where you send Songbird to the moon, if you attempt to go out of the spacecraft through a hatch, Johnny will ask you regarding this. If you insist on leaving, V will fall out of the hatch as the spacecraft flies, sending to the Flatlined screen afterwards.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: During the Somewhat Damaged mission, your sight suffers from creepy red Blackwall glitches whenever the Cerberus robot is close by, warning you to get to cover ASAP or else.
• Only in It for the Money: While classified a terrorist, Kurt Hansen doesn't have any higher aims for his activities and only took over Dogtown because he saw the financial opportunities available in ruling over an unclaimed portion of Night City.
• Organ Theft: In "Dogtown Saints", Doctor Anderson is engaged in a rare heroic(ish) example as he proceeds to harvest the organs of the Scavs that come to his clinic and donate them to his other patients. Given what Scavs do, this could be seen as Karma Houdini Waranty and Pay Evil unto Evil...if not for the fact that you get to see the other side of this, specifically via Nika Yankovich whose brother was brought to the clinic in the midst of an overdose. Turns out, her brother was among the only things she cares about more than scavving, and she's not happy that he's gone missing, and even less so when it becomes apparent the Good Doctor Anderson euthanized her brother to salvage his chrome, claiming he was too far gone to save anyways. Making this even murkier is that when her gang raids the clinic, rather than slaughtering everyone inside in true Scav fashion, she actually allows the patients and staff to evacuate and doesn't even touch the chrome already extracted, instead going straight for the ripperdoc running the place and demanding to know what became of her brother. As if to drive the point home, if you resolve the confrontation (relatively) peacefully and convince Doc Anderson to release Nika's brother, she doesn't become hostile or try to gun you and the Doc down; instead, she stops her attack, immediately goes to the morgue to find his body, and weeps. Leave it to Dogtown of all places to house possibly the one sympathetic Scav in the city.
• Point of Divergence: In the main game, V is presented with the choice of either working with Arasaka to remove the Relic or fight their way through Arasaka Tower to reach Mikoshi. The expansion presents a third option with Songbird offering an alternative. The nail and alternative is Cynosure, Militech's version of Soulkiller that was not only modeled after Arasaka's own version but can also undo its effects. Cynosure can ultimately save V's life, and unlike with Alt and Arasaka, they have a long life ahead of them rather than a few months. The only two caveats and downsides to this cure is that V winds up in a two-year coma and their neural network is so damaged they will never be able to field combat or netrunning chrome ever again.
• Power Up Letdown: Siding against Songbird at the end of the expansion lets you salvage two blueprints for equipment that utilizes the dark powers of the Blackwall pretty much the same way Songbird does, at least in theory. If you jump through all the hoops required to craft one of them (they are mutually exclusive), you get either a cyberdeck with a disgustingly powerful but costly quickhack that has as many slots as your starter cyberdeck or a Power Submachine Gun that, while powerful, is more gimmicky than actually useful.
• Press Start to Game Over:
  • A variation; If you fail or quit the first two missions early on where the objective is to rescue Myers, Songbird curses you out for letting the President die. V is then kicked out of Dogtown (thus also locking the associated main quests and a Cruel Twist Ending for the base game) and Johnny snarkily congrats with his approval.
  • A more standard one happens in the first mission "Dog Eat Dog", where V can fall into Bottomless Pits when trying to locate the platform lanes in the dark room after entering the garage entrance. Due to the limited illumination system, many players have received Flatlined screen via falling by accidents or recklessness.
• Private Military Contractors: BARGHEST mooks are technically all mercenaries now as they work for pay but they're a criminal organization working for an Arms Dealer (that is their former commander).
• Ragnarök Proofing: The Militech facilities hidden underneath Pacifica remain functional enough, if battered (complete with working turrets and security cameras), despite the oldest Project Cynosure bunkers dating back to the 2010s. Justified, however, in that Militech not only built them to last, but had also sent personnel there in the intervening decades, restoring them to sufficient working order to extract valuable data.
• "Ray of Hope" Ending: "The Tower" is all-around depressing for a number of reasons, particularly where V's condition and love life is concerned; because the Relic has ravaged their neural system to the point they can no longer use any combat-based implants, their odds in the Wretched Hive that is Night City are considerably dire and (with the exception of Kerry) their loved ones have all moved on and/or want nothing to do with them anymore. Despite all of this, V can choose not to let any of this weigh them down and resolve to keep moving forward, either by leaving Night City for a fresh start or by starting over as a fixer.
• Refusal of the Call: Another way to lock V out of the main quests is to refuse to continue working with Myers and Reed after successfully rescuing the former, prematurely giving up on the mission altogether. Reed then ghosts V by deleting his account, much to their annoyance.
  ERROR: THE ACCOUNT YOU ARE TRYING TO REACH DOES NOT EXIST
• The Remnant: The Voodoo Boys become this if you eliminate Brigitte and the other leadership. They move all of their operations to Dogtown and start an Enemy Civil War between themselves over who will lead.
• Rule of Symbolism:
  • If you betray Songbird in Firestarter, you will eventually track her down to a Militech Cynosure facility, where you (literally) dive deeper and deeper into its inner workings underground. You're hunted down by an unstoppable cybernetic beast wreathed in red electronic flames, which spread across the facility between bouts of Songbird's traumatic memories and the fractured screams of fried netrunners. Your only chance of victory is to stay calm and accept your own weaknesses, rejecting violence against an enemy that has mastered it. The 'final boss' is broken, frozen in time at the lowest pit of the facility, but unable to forgive herself and unwilling to change. In Night City, even Hell has been digitally remastered by the megacorps.
  • If you are loyal to Songbird in Firestarter, you will take her to the Spaceport, where you will climb higher and higher, fighting the soldiers of a highly-powerful, white-clad authority figure, until you launch Songbird into space. In contrast to the MCF, victory takes deception, violence, and an unwillingness to compromise, climaxing with the unleashed force of a hellfire-like quickhack upon the high-and-mighty soldiers and their 'many-winged' helicopter. The 'final boss' at the very top is a flawed father-figure who is willing to forgive Songbird, even after everything that she has done, but the only way to place her on the ship that will take her to the very top is to murder him. In Night City, making an actionized sequel to Paradise Lost is not beneath anyone.
• Sequence Breaking: While speaking with Kurt Hansen shortly before his death, there is a dialogue option that references the end of the "Chippin' In" quest from the base game. Players may select it even if they haven't unlocked that quest in their current playthrough.
• Simple, yet Awesome: In stark contrast to the Militech Canto Mk. 6, the Erebus has far better utility as an Iconic weapon. Its a "Power" type SMG that boasts a magazine size of 50 rounds with each Trick Bullet fired spliting into six seprate projectiles. It also has an iconic modifier that increases its base damage by 20% and has a 5% chance to upload the "Cyberware Malfunction" quickhack at any Health percentage. But the most important feature is this gun's unique guaranteed ability to upload the "Blackwall Gateway" quickhack to any enemy below 33% Health, instantly killing them. This essentially means that the Erebus has all the general benefits of the Canto without the RAM and cyberware capacity drawbacks by virtue of being a gun instead of a Cyberdeck. Even the flavor text in the Erebus' Database entry acknowledges how "terrifyingly simple" it is for the average person to singlehandedly wipe out an entire battalion just by pulling the SMG's trigger.
• Spider Tank: During the initial rescue, V and President Myers end up fighting a Chimera example of these. Songbird rigs the dormant Mini-Mecha to obliterate a wave of BARGHEST, but loses control, forcing V and Myers to flee for their lives. The machine is utterly invincible until V drops a building's ceiling on top of it, which damages its otherwise impenetrable armor so V and Myers can kill it in an epic, drawn-out fight.
• Story Branching: The story is actually quite linear up until "Firestarter", in which you're presented with the choice of either siding with Songbird and helping her escape while the FIA deal with BARGHEST or side with Reed and attempt to extract Songbird. Siding with Songbird gives you the "The Killing Moon" mission where you help Songbird escape by putting her on a shuttle bound for Luna while dealing with spaceport security and eventually the NUSA black ops under Reed's command, whereas siding with Reed gives you the "Somewhat Damaged" mission where you have to deal with MaxTac and pursue Songbird all the way down to a Militech bunker. Even the endings vary depending on who you sided with: While you have the option of giving Songbird over to the NUSA in exchange for a cure in both story paths, if you don't then Songbird will either escape to Luna in "The Killing Moon" or undergo a Mercy Kill in "Somewhat Damaged".
• Tamer and Chaster: Unlike the base game, Phantom Liberty lack explicit nudity and sex scenes, to the point that if you skip forward to Phantom Liberty in new game, you skip "carrying nude / pastie covered Sandra Dorsett" and the "brief-but-quite-lengthy sex scene between Johnny and Alt in a flashback" in the base game, both of which are unskippable otherwise.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Voodoo Boys over-focused on Netrunning and are thus rather easily disposed of in the main game if V chooses to turn on them. However, the Dogtown Voodoo Boys do not have this problem and have a bunch of recruits with guns as well as other physical muscle.
• Throwing the Fight: In "No Easy Way Out", Aaron is the son of your coach, Fred, and needs help due to the fact that he's in serious debt to the Animals and took multiple dives on their behalf, but now wants to be a "clean" boxer despite them wanting him to throw one last big one.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Dogtown is full of secrets and conspiracies.
  • The portion of Pacifica that later became Dogtown was the site of old Militech bunkers and labs which were cleverly hidden amidst the urban infrastructure. Even after BARGHEST seized control of the Combat Zone, Militech and the NUSA still sent in operatives to make sure no one else knows of those facilities.
  • "Talent Academy" is about a secret facility that takes literal children and pumps them full of drugs and cybernetics to play at a professional level. Johnny Silverhand, who is a man jaded to everything is stunned at the casual child abuse on display.
  • "Dogtown Saints" has Doctor Anderson harvesting the organs of Scavs who die in his clinic, possibly helped along by him, in order to care for his other patients in need of organs and implants that he otherwise has no access to.
• Uncertain Doom: Early in the expansion, you can befriend a pair of Dogtown residents named Jacob and Tyler. As part of the deal for not blabbing to Hansen about Myers' location, she agrees to set them up with a place outside Dogtown plus a Rayfield. After Reed extracts Myers from Dogtown and informs V, he'll also mention they've been "taken care of". It's the last you hear of them. That said, given her most noble trait is that she keeps her end of bargains—as long as said deal doesn't cross her end goals—it's highly probable she had them set them up with exactly how she said they would be, but the ambiguity of their fate is still left in question regardless.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Instead of the usual shooter gameplay with viable stealth options available, the last part of the main quest where you choose to betray Songbird contains long sections that play like a Survival Horror Stealth-Based Game in the vein of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Alien: Isolation or Five Nights at Freddy's: Security Breach; you must explore a deserted complex to solve puzzle to progress, while hiding from an invincible mecha looking for you (and failing to hide in time results in V being insta-killed). This part also lacks quest markers and a minimap, further mimicking the gameplay of a Survival-Horror.
• Villainous Friendship: With Mr. Hands and V of all people. Contrary to his behavior in the main game. Mr. Hands drops all pretense of professional distance after a few jobs and invites V to meet him face to face before becoming extremely flattering and cordial to them. He even offers to do favors for V like help them against Barghest, share his special blend of tea, and offers flexibility about mission parameters (like helping a Zetatech employee go).
• We Don't Suck Anymore: The expansion was released with the 2.0 update that improved its performance in reaction to the original game's messy launch. The live-action commercial starring Idris Elba ends with a tagline acknowledging this.
  Idris Elba: Just don’t forget... The game is fixed.
• While Rome Burns: While the streets of Dogtown are an ugly, post-apocalyptic mess, the top floor of the Barghest's base, The Black Sapphire, is a ritzy elitist club where the top players in Night City come to watch Lizzy Wizzy perform her newest number.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Going into a lawless city populated by criminals to rescue the President is the plot of Escape from New York. The actual core plot of the game also references Casino Royale (2006) quite a bit, with a spy game conspiracy leading to dealings with a Bond-esque supervillain in a casino hotel who ultimately ends up being a Big Bad Wannabe in the grand scheme of things, while the heroine turns out to be an Anti-Villain who ends up crossing the main character, who they grew attached to, out of necessity rather than a desire to genuinely backstab them. Fittingly, the mission in which V and Reed sneak into said casino hotel is "You Know My Name", the movie's Expository Theme Tune.
• Wolfpack Boss: If you side with Reed instead of So Mi, the penultimate mission involves stopping a Max Tac convoy that has her captured. After an initial wave of cops and robots, you face 4 Max Tac operatives at once, and they definitely put up a good fight. Each fits a different niche. One uses guns, one fights with mantis blades, one is a giant wall of meat who will happily punch you to death, and one hides and tries to hack your cyberware. Fortunately, you have Reed providing assistance through cover fire and hacking once they start reflexively dodging your attacks, though he can only hack one at a time.
• Wretched Hive: A worse wretched hive inside another, bigger wretched hive, to be exact. Dogtown is located in the Pacifica Combat Zone, and is just as lawless as Night City, if not worse. The gangs, corporations, and even the NCPD want nothing to do with the place, leaving the inhabitants to fend for themselves. It's also under the total control of Kurt Hansen, a former NUSA soldier who went AWOL and became a military tyrant, leading BARGHEST to dominate the Combat Zone.
• You Bastard!: Regardless of whether you side with Songbird or Reed during Firestarter, the rest of the game will go out of its way to deconstruct the wisdom of your decision to hell and back:
  • If you betray Reed, you're knowingly going along with Songbird's plan to cause a bloodbath within the stadium that leads to countless innocent lives lost, something she resolutely justifies as a Necessary Evil for you two to save yourselves. Following your getaway, Reed will call you and chew you out for making a mess of everything, as the FIA and NUSA are now going to hunt you and Songbird down no matter what it takes, which is the exact scenario he was trying to prevent. Songbird will later contact you with a plan to help her escape to the moon, but it's clear she's not in good shape, and her insistence on doing everything on her own is taking a toll on her. The spaceport infiltration immediately gets bloody once the FIA gets involved, as Reed bows to pressure from Myers and orders his troops to take no prisoners, causing yet another bloodbath you have to fight your way through. And then the final gut punch hits with The Reveal that despite her insistence that she trusted V, she was using them all along just as she's used everyone for her own ends, as the cure she promised only works once and she was going to take it all for herself. Following this confession, borne from delirium and guilt, she goes limp and is completely at your mercy. The story ends with Solomon confronting V and demanding they hand Songbird over, thus presenting them with the mother of all sadistic choices. You can stick with Songbird to the bitter end, in which case you have to kill Reed and give up on the chance to cure V, or you can turn on her at the last minute, which also gives you the opportunity to take the cure for yourself. Regardless, the ending will leave a bitter taste in your mouth.
  • If you betray Songbird during Firestarter, the story immediately takes a turn for the worse as Solomon's original plan falls by the wayside, Alex dies, and Songbird escapes, now hating V's guts. We see what kind of absolute hell the NUSA put So Mi through with Cynosure (Militech's version of Soulkiller). The runs into the Blackwall ravaged her mind and took away her personality piece by piece. We also see that in a moment of incredible emotional and mental weakness that they took advantage of her fragile mental state to 'convince' her to accept an extreme cyberware surgery which led to her current body. Then we see how she lost everything she held dear by deciding to trust Reed, who made promise after promise that ultimately did her no good. To add to that, she was in the exact same situation V was after Jackie died. Dying, alone and desperate for any kind of help, and what did you do? You sold her out and took away even the slimmest chance she had of living her own life. And to save your own skin, you have to force her back into what is effectively brainwashed enslavement.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Reed gets a few.
  • He strongly implies that Slider getting fried simply saved him a bullet, despite the hacker complying with his and V's demands.
  • The Cassel siblings are offed the moment they are no longer needed alive, which V can object to.
  • Then subverted, when Reed refers to Jacob and Taylor as having been "taken care of". While they can still turn up dead (if V and Myers were caught on camera and the security footage wasn't wiped), it wasn't by Reed's hand. Otherwise, they appear alive and well.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: BARGHEST hold a paper-thin veneer of authority and security, when all they typically do is string up the locals and run protection rackets in their supposedly 'tax-free zone'. But this low approval from the masses of Night City (combined with sufficient firepower) ensures that journalists and spies generally stay the hell away from Dogtown; this allows Hansen to host an elite nightclub of Night City's richest, where they can discuss their most disgusting business deals without fear of being outed to the public, giving Hansen his slice.

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Wires and Chains