Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

Solomon Reed

I finished the DLC a week ago, and what keeps coming back to me isn't Dogtown, isn't the new ending—it's that scene of Reed standing on the rooftop smoking.

How did the trailers portray this man? A reliable old-school agent, the player's steadfast ally, with Idris Elba's face right there—it's hard not to trust him. I thought the same way for the first few hours. Reed brings V into Dogtown, arranges a safehouse, provides intel, giving you the feeling that "this guy is dependable."

Then the game starts dismantling that image.

Solomon Reed

FIA AGENT // SLEEPER

Portrayed by Idris Elba

The first crack appears when V asks Reed why he left the FIA. He doesn't answer directly, just says a bunch of platitudes like "some things need someone to do them." I didn't pay attention at the time. Later I realized this is CD Projekt Red's approach—Reed's core trait is that he never tells you the complete truth.

He's not lying to you. Every sentence he says, taken apart, is true. But what he selectively omits—that's what's truly deadly.

As the mission progresses to mid-game, players start to realize Reed's loyalty isn't to V, or even to President Myers—it's to the concept of "New America" itself. He's a believer. He believes NUSA represents some kind of order, some kind of legitimacy, even though he's seen the dark side of this system with his own eyes. This faith isn't the fanatic kind—it's the kind that chooses to believe after disillusionment. That's more terrifying.

There's a scene in mid-game where Reed explains to V why he didn't defect after the FIA abandoned him. The gist is: he knows there's corruption in the organization, betrayal, shady deals, but if he also defected, then everything he'd done before would be meaningless. He chose to keep believing, not because the organization deserves trust, but because he needs his previous life to have meaning.

Elba's performance here is particularly restrained. He doesn't push it, doesn't choke up, his eyes don't dramatically shift—he just calmly states something he's thought about for years. This approach is harder to act than Silverhand's rock star flamboyance. Keanu Reeves has many highlight moments playing Silverhand, but those moments are carried by emotional peaks. Elba plays Reed through sustained low pressure, always taut, you know there's something inside this man, but he won't let you see it.

What makes me most uncomfortable about Reed is his attitude toward V. He needs V. He uses V. But at the same time, he genuinely cares whether V lives or dies. These two things don't contradict in him. He can push V into the fire while sincerely hoping V comes out alive. I don't know how to categorize this relationship. Calling him a villain isn't right—he's genuinely helping you. Calling him an ally isn't right either—his goals and yours have never completely aligned.

There's a side dialogue in the game where V can ask Reed what he thinks of Silverhand. Reed says something like, "People like that think they're heroes while alive, only to discover after death that they were just tools for others." V can argue back or stay silent. I chose silence, because I didn't know if Reed was commenting on Silverhand or himself.

I keep thinking about this conversation. Reed knows he's being used as a tool. The difference between him and Silverhand is that Silverhand refuses to accept this position, so he lives tormented; Reed accepts it, so he lives peacefully. I don't know which is more tragic.

After finishing the entire DLC and looking back, CD Projekt Red's positioning of this character is too clever. He's not a character meant for players to like—he's a character that players can't simply categorize. I spent over sixty hours, and at the end I still couldn't say whether he's a good person or a bad person. I only know he's a believable person—believable doesn't mean trustworthy, it means his behavioral logic is self-consistent from start to finish, and I believe people like this exist in reality.

This is one of the best-written "gray characters" in any game I've played.

The Side Quest That Made Me Replay Three Times

The quest giver is an unremarkable intel dealer in Dogtown, generic NPC model and everything. He wants V to kill someone, gives vague reasons, pays well. I had just finished a big main quest and wanted a simple job to decompress, so I took it.

The first phase is investigating the target's location. This part is normal—scanning, hacking, tailing, standard procedure. The target is a middle-aged man living in a rundown apartment on Dogtown's edge, lives alone, nothing special. I was planning to just sneak in and deal with it, but the game popped up an optional objective: "Investigate target's identity."

I clicked it out of curiosity.

For the next two hours, I ransacked that apartment building. The target wasn't home, but his room was full of stuff—old photos, handwritten notes, terminal emails, newspaper clippings on the wall. I read through them piece by piece, piecing together this person's life: he used to be a NUSA intelligence analyst, discovered evidence of his superior's corruption, tried to report it, got a failed hit put on him, escaped to Dogtown and hid for over a decade. He now scrapes by doing low-level intel work for local small gangs, long since ceased to be any threat.

The intel dealer who hired me to kill him is the underling of the person who tried to silence him back then.

I stood in that shabby room, looking at the "evidence" this person had accumulated over a decade—he was still collecting, still trying to prove he was right back then—and suddenly I didn't want to kill him anymore.

This side quest can be completed by just doing the assassination—the client pays, mission ends. You can also confront the client, which triggers combat, fight ends, mission ends. But if you investigate the target's identity first, then confront the client, a third path unlocks: you can choose to tell the target the truth, then take him to confront the client face-to-face.

I chose the third path.

What happened next was unexpected. When the target met the client, he wasn't angry, didn't question him, just asked one thing: "Are they still looking for me?" The client said no one's looked in ages, you're just an old man no one cares about now. The target was silent for a long time, then said "so what have I been hiding for all these years," and walked away himself.

No combat, no kill, no reward item. Mission complete, journal closed.

I stood there stunned for several minutes.

I reloaded, replayed, this time just killed the target directly. Mission complete, got paid, client even praised my efficiency. I reloaded again, played a third time, this time killed the client. The target as the only witness can be silenced or let go—I let him go. He looked back at V as he ran, didn't say anything.

Three endings, not one of them comfortable.

I later searched Reddit for this quest and found there's a fourth ending: if after investigating the target's identity you neither kill him nor confront him, but instead hack the client's terminal to get info on his employer behind the scenes, you can trigger a hidden option to sell this intel to Hansen's people. After selling, the client gets silenced by Barghest, and the target keeps living but never knows what happened. I couldn't find the trigger conditions and was too lazy to replay again.

This side quest has no markers indicating it's related to the main story, doesn't count toward 100% completion stats, rewards are just normal level. But it took me eight hours, made me read through dozens of terminal records and handwritten notes in that rundown apartment. CD Projekt Red buried this thing in a corner of Dogtown, waiting for players willing to spend the time to dig it up.

I don't know how many players will complete this quest line. Most people probably just kill the target, take the money, and leave—two minutes done. That's the normal process. I spent eight hours there, got an uncomfortable story—what kind of reward is that?

I don't know. But I'm glad I finished it.

Ending: I Chose the Cure, I Regret It

Process-wise, players need to cooperate with the FIA and So Mi to complete a series of missions, finally entering the "Blackwall"—that mysterious firewall in the game that isolates rogue AIs—and borrowing the power of an AI inside the Blackwall to strip Silverhand from V's brain. The process is painful, Silverhand says goodbye to V in the consciousness space, Keanu Reeves acted that scene well, I hit the screenshot key several times.

Then the game jumps to two years later.

V wakes up in a hospital. Someone I don't recognize is sitting beside me, says they're a liaison arranged by the FIA. V asks how they're doing, the liaison says the surgery was successful, chip removed, nerve damage irreversible, all combat implants removed, you're a normal person from now on.

I controlled V walking out of the hospital, standing on Night City's streets. The mission marker tells me to go to my apartment. I walked for a bit, found I no longer have double jump, no cyberarm, sprint speed slowed down, no mission icons on the map. I went to the apartment, there's beer in the fridge to drink, the balcony to stand on, and then? Then nothing.

The game enters free roam mode, but V is no longer that V. Viktor's clinic is still there, if you visit he'll say congratulations on surviving. Panam's phone doesn't connect, story says she's already left with the Nomads. Judy, if you did her storyline, sends a text saying she's in space, misses V a lot, but won't come back.

I roamed in this state for half an hour, then closed the game.

I searched online for other players' reactions and found many felt the same as me: this ending is an emotional punishment. It gives you what you want, then makes you realize what you wanted was meaningless.

The problem is I'm not sure if this is design intent or missing content.

If CD Projekt Red's intent was to let players experience the cost of "losing everything for survival," then this design succeeds. But succeeding by giving you an empty game world with nothing to do—is that good design? The Witcher 3 Blood and Wine's retirement ending also has Geralt leave the witcher life, but that ending has a vineyard estate, interactable NPCs, some sense of ceremony for "a new life beginning." Phantom Liberty's cure ending is just... empty.

I played a second playthrough, this time chose the other path, didn't remove the chip, let Silverhand stay. That ending's V will die within months, but before death they're still a legendary merc, still have things to do. I found I prefer that ending.

I don't know what this says about me. Maybe deep down I still want a hero narrative, even a dead hero is better than living as an ordinary person. Maybe CD Projekt Red wanted me to realize exactly this. But I'm more inclined to think the cure ending's follow-up content was cut or left unfinished, causing it to not land emotionally.

If anyone asks me which ending to choose, I'd now say: don't choose the cure. Not because it's bad, but because it's too empty.

2.0 and Technical Stuff

Dogtown

That area has no main quest content, just a few petty theft random events. But I wandered there for two hours. Every villa can be entered, there are residents inside—some cooking, some fixing things, some just sitting on moldy sofas staring into space. These people aren't quest NPCs, no icons above their heads, talk to them and you get one or two lines of small talk.

One of the villa's pools had been converted to a vegetable garden. An old man was squatting there watering, using a bucket rusted through. I stood nearby watching for a while, he looked back at me, said "what are you standing there for, not like you're going to help," then continued watering.

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