Nice, Cyberpunk 2077's director reckons pulling off something as good as Phantom Liberty again is "very achievable"

Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion was very good, so good in fact, that it ended up popping up in some GOTY debates despite being, you know, a DLC. That’s a pretty high bar to try and match, but the game’s director reckons that’s something that CD Projekt is definitely capable of.

Even if a few sneaky additions are still finding their way into the original game, a lot of the focus has begun to shift to its sequel, codenamed Project Orion, with work having kicked off in earnest at CD Projekt on that game earlier this year. We already knew that the studio has pretty high expectations for it, and Gabe Amatangelo seems to reckon it has a good chance of at least matching Phantom Liberty.

Speaking to Game File’s Stephen Totilo, Amatangelo - who became Cyberpunk 2077’s game director in May 2021 and therefore played a key role in its turnaround following a well-documented rocky release - said that he thinks pulling off something like Phantom Liberty again is “very achievable” for the studio. Why does he believe that?

Well, the main reason looks to be the more effective working habits the team at CD Projekt cultivated while working on the expansion - which Amatangelo says they approached as though it was a sequel to the base game. “The big change was just to give everyone more freedom,” the developer revealed, “letting them just create and not have to worry about the game directors checking the box on every little thing.”

Amatangelo also alluded to allowing more mixing between development teams from different departments, an approach which looks to have allowed for a more seamless collaboration during the creation of things like the game’s cut-sparse cinematics and dialogue sequences. It also seems to have mirrored one of the main things the developers were aiming to pull off gameplay-wise with the DLC - making bits of the game like side quests feel a bit more connected to everything else going on, especially the main storyline.

So, hopefully the success the studio had with that approach will translate into Project Orion and allow it to hit similar heights to Phantom Liberty, and maybe even surpass the adventure about presidents, hackers, and Idris Elba.

We’ve still got a while to wait to find out, so why not check out this Cyberpunk 2077 mod, which sends you all over Night City to collect some cool art you can use to decorate your apartments, in the interim.