Celebrating the third anniversary of Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion, designer Paweł Sasko has reflected on the journey of CD Projekt RED leading up to the release, and how the team is moving forward. In the process, Sasko also reflects on the poor state of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch, and how the team worked quite hard to give it the complete makeover that defines it to this day.
In discussing how the development process for Phantom Liberty was different from that of Cyberpunk 2077, Sasko noted that the base game was made with a structure close to a “waterfall model” where multiple departments would take over the work, leading ot decisions accumulating around leads and directors.
“For Phantom Liberty we moved toward multidisciplinary content teams, our pods, where designers, writers, cinematics, art, audio, QA and many other disciplines could work on the same piece of content together. It took a long time to learn how to work this way, but once it started clicking, I could feel the difference.”
Ultimately, Phantom Liberty and the coinciding free update for Cyberpunk 2077 would turn general opinion of the game to the positive side of things. Despite this, Sasko doesn’t think that the expansion undoes the poor state of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch.
“I do not think Phantom Liberty erases the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, and I would never want to tell our story that way. When I stood with Gabe Amatangelo at The Game Awards in 2023 to accept Best Ongoing Game, I thought about all the developers who kept putting their hearts into Cyberpunk and about all of you who stayed with us, came back, or decided to give the game another chance.”
Earlier this month, CD Projekt RED had revealed that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty has sold 15 million copies since launch. The base game still remains at 40 million copies sold.
In the meantime, the company has already begun work on a sequel, with pre-production having started back in May 2025. Sasko is working on the title as an associate game director, and creator Mike Pondsmith has confirmed that it will leave Night City behind to instead focus on a brand-new city that has been described as “Chicago gone wrong”.
Cyberpunk 2077 was originally released on PC, PS4, and Xbox One back in 2020. At the time, the title was heavily criticized for its plethora of performance issues and other creative decisions. It would get native versions on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S in 2022, which, when paired with post-launch updates, served to ease many of the performance issues that players first experienced.
2023 would see the release of Phantom Liberty, which featured Idris Elba playing the role of FIA Agent Solomon Reed. The expansion’s story is set to take place in the midst of the base game’s main narrative, and sets protagonist V off on a brand-new adventure inspired quite heavily by a variety of spy fiction stories, from James Bond to the Bourne series.
For more details, check out our reviews for Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty.
