On 8.5.2023 the Phantom Liberty Tour started its brilliant kick-off at the CD Projekt RED Headquarters (Warsaw, Poland). A certain number of Chooms were able to visit the developer studio, chat with the developers and, as a highlight, play the soon-to-be-released addon Phantom Liberty for exactly one hour. One participant of the event has now agreed to write down her impressions of the event for us and publish them here.
As we are mainly working in German-speaking countries, you can find the splitter on the 2nd page in German!
All right, let’s start from the beginning…
Hello! My name is Barbara- also known as crushovitz on Twitter or sherlotka-2137 on Reddit. I’m a huge Cyberpunk 2077 fan and I was one of the lucky ones who took part in Phantom Liberty Tour at Warsaw.
First things first: all people who wanted to attend had to be at least 18 years old and sign up on the Phantom Liberty Tour website. I had to shortly explain why exactly I should be chosen out of thousands of other players. I wrote that I am an admin of one most active Facebook groups for Polish fans of Cyberpunk 2077 and how the game and the people I met thanks to it changed my life. And… it worked! I got the invitation for Saturday- as far as I know, at first the event was supposed to be one day only. However, so many people from Poland signed up that they decided to split it up.
We had to show our IDs and QR codes we received earlier on emails and then we were brought outside the main building. Luckily, it stopped raining. The whole place was stylized as Dogtown- there were huge metal containers with graffiti and BARGHEST logo’s on it, fake military equipment and big military tents where we could get some beer or food and talk with other people. Every hour, one of the CDPR employees would take another group (around 15 people) inside one of the buildings to try out the expansion. We weren’t getting bored while waiting for our turn – we could take part in contests with some cools prizes (like Edgerunners ramen bowl, Cyberpunk 2077 artbooks and Rafał Kosik’s „Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence” book), paint graffiti on a huge wall, take group photos with cosplayers, or play darts and foosball.
Finally, at 13:45 I had the chance to play a game. Taking photos and videos of our screens was strictly forbidden. We could choose the platform to play on (PC, Xbox, Playstation). We also had three character builds to choose from: netrunner, strong solo (strength-focused), and fast solo (reflex-focused). I played as a netrunner on PC. In the game world, we could move freely, explore, and wander around Dogtown, but we were encouraged to progress the story to see as much as possible- so that’s exactly what I did.
Unfortunately we only got to play for one hour, so it’s not very long. I didn’t manage to check out all the menus or read the skill tree carefully, but still- I loved what I saw. Gameplay feels enhanced, the UI looks way clearer and simply better. Polish voice acting is amazing, the story got me hooked up and I absolutely love how alive and climatic new district feels.
After 19:00 we all gathered inside for Q&A with devs. We were also told not to record it, so I’m not sure if I can write about it. Well, better be safe than sorry! Developers answered some of our questions and then… it was the end of the day. We all received huge goodie bags (including a figure from collectors edition and special Phantom Liberty Tour t-shirt), said goodbye and went home.
Big thank you to people from CDPR for invitation and organizing such an amazing event! I feel really honored to be a part of it. And of course- can’t wait for 26th of September!
We thank Barbara very much for the impressions and the great pictures. Next date is 08.25.2023 in Cologne for Gamescom. Have applied myself and let’s see if an invitation reaches me XD The event will not take place directly at Gamescom, but nearby. But you can play Phantom Liberty on your own at the Xbox Booth 😉