This special episode of Night City Wire — the show centered around discussion, news, and announcements regarding Cyberpunk 2077 — heavily featured the star of Phantom Liberty, Idris Elba (Thor: Ragnarok, Luther, The Suicide Squad, The Wire). The world premiere of a brand-new trailer starring Elba — set seven years before the events of Phantom Liberty — started the show, and was followed by additional behind-the-scenes footage of the well-known actor.
Watch Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — Official Cinematic Trailer
The audience had the opportunity to see Elba discuss his character in the expansion, secret agent Solomon Reed, in both an interview and a frame by frame analysis of the trailer itself.
Watch Idris Elba BTS
Later in the episode, more details were revealed about new elements and changes to gameplay. Game Director Gabe Amatangelo talked about the revamped perk and skill trees, and the completely new Relic skill tree that’s coming exclusively with the Phantom Liberty expansion. Also presented were three short videos featuring CD PROJEKT RED gameplay designers sharing their favorite character builds. As a bonus, the studio also released the Cyberpunk 2077 Build Planner — a free tool where players can create and plan their own builds in their browsers; everyone wanting to explore the changes made to the perk system, including the Relic skill tree from Phantom Liberty, can do so here.
The release date for Cyberpunk 2077’s free Update 2.0 was also revealed during the episode. With its revamped police system, redesigned perks, enhanced cyberware, and more, the update will be available from September 21st for all players who own Cyberpunk 2077 on current-gen consoles and PC.
Like in all CD PROJEKT RED games, music plays an important storytelling role in Phantom Liberty, and composers, P.T Adamczyk and Jacek Paciorkowski took part in this episode of Night City Wire to discuss how they created brand-new music for a spy-thriller story. The composers gave insight into Phantom Liberty’s score, and unveiled that the score is available to stream right now in full. They also discussed details of the new radio stations included in the game. One of the new stations’ playlists — Growl FM — is composed entirely of tracks hand-picked from those submitted for a music competition organized for the Cyberpunk 2077 community. During the show, a Growl FM documentary was announced, releasing on September 18th, highlighting how the radio station came to be.
Toward the end of the music segment, the theme song for Phantom Liberty was teased; the song is written and performed by Dawid Podsiadło, currently one of Poland’s top artists. Dawid previously worked with the studio to record music for the critically acclaimed anime, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
Watch Dawid Podsiadło BTS Teaser
The world premiere of Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077’s spy-thriller expansion, is coming to Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC — including GeForce Now — on September 26th, 2023. More information on Cyberpunk 2077 and the Phantom Liberty expansion can be found on the game’s official website, Facebook, and X.
Listen to the tunes from Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty today!
The 15 released tracks are a selection of Phantom Liberty’s full score and take listeners on a nearly hour-long journey into the world created specially for the expansion by composers P.T. Adamczyk (Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners) and Jacek Paciorkowski (Seven: The Days Long Gone).
Listen to the official score of Phantom Liberty
During the special episode of Night City Wire — the official series covering Cyberpunk 2077 — the studio also announced that the free Update 2.0 will include three new radio stations: 89.7 GROWL FM, comprising tunes from winners of a community competition, 107.5 DARKSTAR RADIO, including two tracks by Idris Elba who plays secret agent Solomon Reed in Phantom Liberty, and 99.9 IMPULSE RADIO, containing an over hour-long DJ set by Idris Elba and featuring the Polish duo Private Press.
