The late 2020 launch of Cyberpunk 2077 was mired in controversies, though CD Projekt Red managed to steady the ship over the following few years. But now, as the anticipation surrounding the Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC keeps building, one question that naturally arises is whether the expansion's antagonist has any hope of living up to the recently revitalized legacy of Adam Smasher.
Despite the lore painting him as one of the strongest people in Cyberpunk 2077's Night City, fighting Smasher in the game was a pretty anticlimactic experience for many players. Anything from electric damage-dealing weapons and quickhacks to over-leveling did the trick against this Arasaka monstrosity even on the highest difficulty level. Making matters even worse, most character builds could straight up outshoot Smasher on easier settings. Since the game spent dozens of hours building him up as this ultimate big bad, the unchallenging nature of his fight left much to be desired.
Cyberpunk Edgerunners Redeemed Adam Smasher as the Ultimate Villain
This all changed with the September 2022 debut of Cyberpunk Edgerunners, which did wonders to enrich the world of CDPR's open-world RPG. Apart from introducing a cast of compelling new characters, the Netflix-exclusive series also added to the backstories of some familiar faces from Cyberpunk 2077, including Rogue and Wakako. But none of them benefited from this anime revisit as much as Adam Smasher did.
While the fandom initially labeled Cyberpunk 2077's Adam Smasher as a disappointing villain that fell short of the TTRPG lore, Cyberpunk Edgerunners managed to repair that reputation. The Studio Trigger anime reestablished him as what he was always supposed to be - a diabolical villain that oozes uneasiness wherever he appears and poses a grave threat to whomever he encounters. Not just a giant robot that's mean to people, but the ultimate warning against cyberware and everything such technology represents in this deeply broken world.
Granted, the power difference between Cyberpunk 2077's Adam Smasher and the one seen in Edgerunners could be explained by simple narrator bias. After all, it's pretty well-established that V is a much more capable mercenary than David, so Smasher might have simply looked more imposing through the Edgerunners protagonist's eyes. Not least because he appears amid David's cyber-psychosis episode in the anime, whereas the symptoms of that reality-wrecking illness never manifested in V. Regardless, the fact remains that the anime did a much better job at portraying Smasher as the ultimate antagonist that he was always meant to be.
Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty's Antagonist Has a Lot To Live Up To
And while there's no doubt that Adam Smasher is the big winner of Cyberpunk 2077's resurgence, his redeemed villainous image is going to be a tough act to follow for the Phantom Liberty's antagonist. CDPR did say that the expansion will be looking to deliver a "spy thriller" experience of sorts, suggesting the DLC might resort to using the hidden villain trope. Should that come to pass, it kind of seems unavoidable that the antagonist of Phantom Liberty will be less immediately menacing than Smasher, even if they prove to be deadlier than the final boss of Cyberpunk 2077.
One way in which the expansion's antagonist could surpass Smasher is by posing a bigger threat to the game's world instead of just the player. After all, the political drama with espionage undertones teased by CDPR indicates that Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is setting the stage for a larger conflict than the one from the game's main campaign.
While that obviously doesn't mean there's no room for a big bad like Smasher in the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, there's no denying that Phantom Liberty's antagonist is going to have a lot to live up to. Unless, of course, CDPR goes for a cop-out and just pits the players against Smasher again, which the DLC's timeline will probably allow but hopefully won't happen.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S, while the Phantom Liberty DLC is planned to launch exclusively on current-gen consoles and PC sometime in 2023.
