After a rocky couple of years, Cyberpunk 2077 is back and better than ever. Not only were players treated to the massive 2.0 update that fixed many of the base game's issues, but they are also being whisked away on a brand-new journey thanks to the Phantom Liberty expansion. This expansion is taking Cyberpunk 2077 to new heights by introducing new stories and locales along with whole new mechanics to play with. While this is all great to see, something about Phantom Liberty's introduction feels strange.

Video game companies always want to give players a reason to buy into DLC, so they often include new locations for them to explore. Instead of bringing them to whole new cities, they usually just add onto the base game's open world with new areas. While this makes sense from a gameplay perspective, it does not make much sense from a story standpoint. Locations like Phantom Liberty's Dogtown just miraculously appear one day without really being mentioned or accessible before. It is something that many expansion packs do, yet it may be time to change that approach.

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Phantom Liberty's Dogtown Was Inaccessible Until Now for Some Reason

Cyberpunk 2077 lets players explore the massive Night City to their heart's content. Many of them have been traversing its streets since day one, while others have jumped on for the first time to experience the 2.0 update. No matter when they joined, players have been exploring almost every inch of this world, or at least they thought they were. For some reason, there was an entire district that they were not able to see before, nor did many NPCs even mention it. It is almost like it never existed until Phantom Liberty launched, which may break immersion a bit.

From a gameplay perspective, it would make sense that Dogtown has not been really mentioned or featured until Phantom Liberty. The district did not exist in Cyberpunk 2077 until the DLC launched, and it was likely only in the planning stages back in 2020. There was no guarantee that CD Projekt Red would be able to make more content, so the idea of Dogtown was not really introduced until now. However, its sudden existence does not make much sense within the confines of Cyberpunk 2077's world.

From a lore perspective, it seems strange that there was an entire district under player's noses. While there may have been some references to Dogtown around Night City, the district was never mentioned until it suddenly appeared this week. It was inaccessible, the story never brought it up, and most of Night City seemed to act like there was no such thing. Since it is such a war-torn centrally located district, it probably should have been mentioned before. And yet, its absence is par for the course for most modern video game DLCs.

Since video game developers want to expand their worlds with DLC, they often need to introduce never-before-seen areas. Some of the biggest culprits of this are the MMO genre where games like World of Warcraft have mysterious continents appearing in the ocean every few years. They were either cloaked in a mysterious fog, inaccessible due to various conflicts, or the characters just had little interest in exploring them. While it may work in a meta sense, it does not work as well from a story perspective, and it may be time for the industry to stop approaching the concept in this way.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is a breath of fresh air after many controversial years for the RPG. It feels like the game is finally in a healthy spot, and although it may not reach the heights of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, it is still a fantastic experience. Even with that, CD Projekt Red's approach to this DLC just does not make much sense. Yet, that is the approach it chose, so players may just have to suspend their disbelief a bit before jumping in.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty is available for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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