As we approach Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty CD Projekt Red has made sure to roll out the red carpet for their highly anticipated expansion of Cyberpunk 2077 in the form an almost equally anticipated massive 23.15GB 2.0 Update Patch on September 21. The patch notes can be found here, and show the massive amount of work CD Projekt Red has put into getting the formerly panned Cyberpunk 2077 up and running as the high-quality AAA game it was always meant to be.
One of the most notable parts of the update are the police system that CD Projekt Red has spent a lot of time on, with this update the NCPD has been completely revamped to be more responsive and aggressive whenever V commits a crime, which adds to V’s wanted level. The higher your wanted level, the bigger the guns the NCPD pull out to stop your rampage, climaxing at the dreaded MaxTac special unit swooping down to confront you. You can fight them on foot or you can utilize the completely remade vehicle combat system, with more depth now that ever, giving you the freedom to slash tires or even use melee weapons if you’re on a motorcycle.
The next, and possibly biggest, change is the perk system. The perk system has been reworked from the ground up:
A complete Perk tree overhaul. These trees now contain fewer perks, but impact gameplay in a more meaningful way. Progressing in a given Perk tree will allow you to unlock special abilities such as Overclock mode for netrunners, Bolt shots for Tech weapons, the Adrenaline Rush ability for Body-focused character builds, and so on.
So while each player’s V has less choices, each choice is much more impactful, and thankfully for those who don’t want to start a new playthrough your points will be refunded and you’ll be allowed to redistribute them among the new perk tree as you see fit.
This is all just scratching the surface of the many changes Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 update is giving in preparation to possibly more changes come the release of Phantom Liberty, there’s much more they’ve stored in here including entirely new radio stations, new UI for the quest journal and phone system, and new content. It’s exciting to see how much work CD Projekt Red has put into improving public perception of Cyberpunk 2077 since its buggy release, and it’ll be even more exciting to see how they follow up on this momentum come Phantom Liberty and beyond.