You can meet Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty's Solomon Reed before you even play the DLC

It seems like CD Projekt Red has snuck in Idris Elba's character in Cyberpunk 2077 elsewhere in the game before you even meet him in the DLC.

Now that it's finally out, Phantom Liberty has introduced us all to Solomon Reed, a secret agent deep undercover. But as spotted by some fans online, it looks like you can come across Reed before you even get to the DLC itself. A player shared a screengrab to the game's subreddit, which you can see below, of a character that really looks like Reed, or more specifically Elba. For one, it really does look like Elba, but more importantly his cyberware matches up exactly to how Reed's does when you meet him in the DLC.

Elba before the DLC in vanilla game??
byu/Siddharth_9697 incyberpunkgame

Even more importantly than that, though, is a bit of dialogue from Reed that goes into what he does in his spare time. As you're playing through the DLC, at one point Reed will mention that he works as a bouncer at a club in Night City, so it does track even further that it's him. Others have even apparently spotted him elsewhere, like at a bar called Malted Iguana Liquors, but it's worth noting he isn't always there.

Other commenters also pointed out that you can see another new character, Song So Mi, or Songbird, around Night City too, with one person saying she can be found at the bar where Johnny Silverhand's band Samurai first played, Red Dirt.

Phantom Liberty launched earlier this week, and so far has been received very positively. Our own Alex wrote his thoughts about the DLC here, going so far as to say it's made the game a "must-play classic".

Prior to the DLC, the base game also received its 2.0 update which made a number of large changes, including things like the skill tree, as well as a number of tweaks and fixes.