Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty livestream offers a longer glimpse of five-star chaos

Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion got a new trailer a couple of days ago, alongside news that many of its system overhauls will come to the base game for free. Now developers CD Projekt Red have gone into more detail about the changes in a new Phantom Liberty livestream which showed the expanded skill tree, some new perks, the overhauled vehicle combat, among other things.

Phantom Liberty is set within a new area of Night City called Dogtown, to which you're invited by a Netrunner called Songbird. The livestream introduced both and then dove into the new Relic skill tree. You'll level up in the tree via data terminals by exploring Dogtown, and then can use it to unlock skills which enhance your cyberware, to bring new functionality to mantis arms, for example, or let you exploit vulnerabilities in enemy cyberware.

One of the biggest criticisms of the base game at launch was about the police, who would often spawn in impossible places, and never escalated in their pursuit of you in dynamic or interesting ways. Some of those problems were resolved in earlier patches, but the livestream showed ways in which Phantom Liberty goes further. You can now gain heat, police will ram your car and build roadblocks, and they'll eventually send armoured Max Tac units after you who previously only appeared in scripted sequences.

As for where within Cyberpunk 2077's story Phantom Liberty takes place, the developers said that the questline unlocks after the Voodoo Boys/Brigitte storyline. If you're coming to the game for the first time, or don't have your old saves, you'll be able to skip straight to Phantom Liberty from character creation, and if you're already long past that point in the game you'll get an in-game phone call inviting you to the quest.

There were lots of other little details mentioned as well, such as that Phantom Liberty adds a new apartment V can attain, and that it contains no new romances. You can watch the full livestream archived over on Twitch. Phantom Liberty is due to launch on September 26th.