If you get really invested in your RPG decisions, you might have played one of Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty routes and then put the expansion down. It’s your way of saying “this was my story and that’s how it played out.” In most cases, I’m all about playing RPGs just like this—sometimes the mystery of what could have happened is part of the appeal of decision-based games. That’s how things work in the real world. You make a choice based on the information you have, and you live with it. However, in the case of Phantom Liberty, I think the expansion is an exception where you should play through both possible endings.
Without getting into spoilers, Phantom Liberty has a great diverging point during the Firestarter quest that’s determined by a decision you make. Regardless of which route you take, this quest leads to the expansion’s final act, and both paths provide some of Cyberpunk 2077’s most memorable, climactic moments.
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If you’ve played through the original endings of CD Projekt Red’s messy, but much-improved RPG, you know its multiple paths are pretty unapologetic in how much information from the other routes they withhold from you. If you choose to team up with Rogue, you miss out on a haunting finale to the Arasaka story. That same storytelling principle is baked into Phantom Liberty’s two conclusions.
I picked one choice in my first run, and it felt like my “canon” decision when all was said and done. But for the sake of my review, I reloaded an old save and saw the second route through, and was surprised at not only how much story I missed, but how drastically the final quest lines diverged into something completely unrecognizable from the other.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about choices and consequences, and Phantom Liberty is no different. But playing through the other choice, even if it’s not the decision you want to make, greatly enriches the text of the expansion. If you’ve played through one route and felt satisfied with what you saw, I still advise you to see the rest of the expansion through, because it will likely make you feel even more strongly about the decision you made.