Details from a Cyberpunk 2077 expansion may have leaked

(Image credit: CD Projekt)

A dataminer claims to have found subtitles for an upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion in the February patch that brought CD Projekt's underwhelming open-world game up to version 1.5. An archive containing text files, mostly of English dialogue but some in Polish, has been uploaded to multiple subreddits, including r/GamingLeaksAndRumours.

Inside the archive are folders called "quest" and "open_world", the second of which has subfolders for "fixers", "mini_world_stories", "scene", "street_stories", and "world_encounters". The text lays out a storyline and related sidequests that begin with V infiltrating the Combat Zone, an area of Night City that wasn't previously explored in Cyberpunk 2077.

The questgiver is a netrunner using the name Songbird who hacks into V's head and temporarily replaces Johnny Silverhand, which seems like a convenient way of explaining Keanu Reeves' absence. Presumably getting him back into the recording booth for even a sizeable DLC wouldn't be worth the cost.

While the meat and potatoes of this expansion seems like a side story, there are also files relating to Cyberpunk 2077's endings, suggesting that if you play through it you can unlock a different version of at least one of them. It all looks pretty legit, but it's also probably an excerpt from a work-in-progress that could change drastically by the time it's done, and is currently scheduled for a 2023 release.

Earlier this year CD Projekt joint CEO Adam Kiciński reiterated that Cyberpunk 2077 expansions were still in development, saying, "I can confirm we are working on expansions; nothing's changed here." However, the announcement of the next Witcher game mentioned "the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 expansion" in the singular, and during a CD Projekt Q1 2022 results conference Kiciński also seemed to refer to a "Cyberpunk expansion". Redditors who were expecting two add-ons are not taking the idea there will only be one well, though it's entirely possible they're reading too much into inconsistent plural usage by non-native English speakers. We'll have to wait and see.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.