CD Projekt Red brought its Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, Phantom Liberty, to this year's Summer Game Fest, and Morgan was immediately enamored with its new "Dogtown" area. (He also keeps referring to Idris Elba as his new best friend, though none of us have yet dared correct him.) The demo gave us an insight into the latest work CD Projekt is working on to patch up cyberpunk's glaring flaws: a new police AI with a GTA-style notoriety system, a skill tree for combat augments, and expanded car combat. But what comes after "Phantom Liberty"?

According to a Bloomberg interview, director Gabe Amatangelo plans to move on to a sequel.

"Amatangelo said he will direct a full-fledged sequel to 'Cyberpunk 2077' after 'Phantom Liberty,'" wrote Bloomberg's Jason Schreier. Overseeing Cyberpunk 2078 (a fake title I made up myself) is an impressive role for Amatangelo, who joined CD Project Red in January 2020, the final year of Cyberpunk 2077's development. he was named game director in May 2021, and this year, the title of vice president Prior to joining CD Projekt, Amatangelo was the design director for the Dragon Age: Inquisition DLC.

CD Projekt announced in October 2022 that a sequel to cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Orion, is planned. It is good to see confirmation that this is due to the steady hand of the game director who has provided the last few updates.

Amatangelo's role in the project is indicative of CD Projekt's plans to move to Unreal Engine 5 rather than its own REDengine, and with a game of the size of Cyberpunk, the vast amount of in-house technical development is essential. It will be interesting to see if the move to Unreal Engine 5 will be a positive or difficult transition for the sequel.

"From what I've actually played, 'Phantom Liberty' is currently second fiddle to 'Cyberpunk 2077'. If it were still 2021, it would have been a hard sell for me. But last year's "Edgerunners" update smoothed out some of the game's worst problems and let its best qualities (characters, guns, cars, and an incredibly pretty city) shine through. If the "Phantom Liberty" update does the same, I expect it to be as expansive a send-off as "Blood and Wine" was for "The Witcher 3.