The new feature article published by Jason Schreier of Bloomberg on Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty tells of how the expansion in question is also seen as a sort of ransom Searched by CD Projekt Red after the game’s disastrous initial launch.
The big expansion presents a large part of unpublished history, in which we also find ourselves having to save the president of the “New United States of America”, within new settings and with additional game mechanics compared to those seen so far, which open to unprecedented situations.
The initial idea of the team was to release more expansions for Cyberpunk 2077, on the model of what was also done for The Witcher 3but the problems encountered at launch and the need to fix the game changed CD Projekt RED’s plans, prompting it to condense additional content in one big expansion to be placed after a series of free DLC and additions.
All this also comes after a series of internal upheavals to the team: in May 2021, the top director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz left the studio after an internal investigation into alleged prevaricating behavior, accusations always denied by the person concerned, who nevertheless decided to leave the company.
Later, brother Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz also left CD Projekt RED, leaving the lead position on the development of Phantom Liberty vacant. The latter was replaced by Gabe Amatangelo, who in the meantime also directed the work on Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.5 and received carte blanche to carry on the work on Phantom Liberty together with his team.
With this change of leadership, CD Projekt RED wanted to shake up the internal situation, in the idea of being able to redeem the game and the team itself after the scandals that had previously emerged. Also for this reason, Amatangelo will also be director of the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077to give some continuity to this idea of renewal.