Phantom Liberty, the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, was both 87% great and harsh, according to PCG's Ted Litchfield's Phantom Liberty review CD Projekt Red makes tough decisions in games. decisions, but the fork in the road for Phantom Liberty was a really tough one. And according to CDPR, that's the studio's other big point, a Sophie's Choice kind of moment: choosing who to side with in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Naturally, there are spoilers for both.

Chatting with PC Gamer at this year's GDC, Phantom Liberty's quest director Paweł Sasko said the key decision in the expansion - choosing who to side with, Song So Mi or Reed, in one of the climactic final missions is "almost like a first thought" that the studio will structure the rest of the DLC, he said. 'It's kind of working backwards from there. We know what choices we want to make, and then we're like, "Okay, how do we make that as difficult as possible in the scene that we're going to introduce before that?" And it's like asking yourself that question."

The goal was to balance the choices "so that it's almost 50-50" with respect to the number of people siding with So Mi and those siding with Reed. That meant a lot of rewriting, some scenes were rewritten "five or six times," and plots were discarded many times where many people would choose one character over the other.

I must say, I think they succeeded. When I played Phantom Liberty, I agonized over this decision for a very long time, but ultimately decided to side with So Mi (smash the state, et cetera): "Sasko said, 'We're still not completely satisfied, we're not completely satisfied.

This honestly surprised me. I had expected more people to go with Reed than with So Mi. For one thing, we spent a lot of time with him in the DLC, and for another, he is played by Idris Elba. His star quality was probably appreciated.

CDPR took that into consideration. Sasco said, "Their gender does matter ...... Their appearance, their looks, how attractive she is, how attractive he is ...... Everything had to be taken into account when it came to creating the perfect choice that would completely confuse the player."

But at least the studio had experience. Specifically, the choice of So Mi/Reed was much like choosing sides between Temerian special agent Vernon Roche and Scoiater terrorist/freedom fighter Iorveth in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. According to Sasko, CDPR had been working with Phantom Liberty during the planning process, he asked himself, "Should we do the structure of The Witcher 2 in this expansion?" and this is what happened as a result.

Hearing that made me realize how far CDPR has come as a developer since the "Witcher 2" days, and I say that as a lover of "The Witcher 2." Iorveth's work was a little more interesting to me because he was an axeman whose job was to oppress the enslaved underclass, whereas Iorveth was an extremist in pursuit of actual ideals.

The choice between So Mi/Reed seemed rather difficult, but I still chose the shady idealist over the straight cop. But in both cases there are plenty of people who disagree with me. I think that's the point.