Phantom Liberty and the Death of an Ol' Reliable Friend

The hot, breaking news of the week was tied to some kind of summer games announcement/preview-fest (I don't rightly remember which one and sort of don't really care).  If you've been keeping an eye on Cyberpunk news, then you undoubtedly saw the 9 trillion articles, trailers, sponsored ads and whatnot--I know my social media feeds have been chocked full!  It finally looks like the Phantom Liberty DLC is happening and the hype train has officially left the station.  There were definitely a few pieces that stood out to me, so let's dig in!  Here's a shiny new trailer (I mean, if you haven't already seen it a dozen or so times):

1.) Expect a $29.99 price tag.

If you were hoping that Phantom Liberty would be like the DLC for The Witcher 3 in that it was very reasonably priced, well, just keep hoping because that era is over.  However, it does sound like there's going to be quite a bit of new content including new cyberware (including some that adds interesting abilities like changing your appearance as a disguise or allowing you to "air dash") and talent trees.  The story takes place in a new part of Night City, so there's also new locations that will include side missions and scanner jobs.  Apparently it's much more difficult to design content that includes a lot of verticality as opposed to the flatter terrains in The Witcher 3, so that's part of the price justification.  (Source)

2.) The system requirements for the entire game are changing.

In order to utilize all the new, shiny graphical bells and whistles (ray tracing, DLSS, etc.) the entire game is getting an upgrade.  This announcement gave me some palpitations because my 4 year old PC isn't exactly cutting edge anymore (not that I was ever running it on super-high settings).  Luckily, I should still fall somewhere on the low to medium end of things.  If you're running an older machine, you might want to check them out.  This update should be happening prior to the release of Phantom Liberty.  (Source)

3.) The age of the HDD is ending.  RIP old buddy.

One of the interesting pieces of news that hasn't just been tied to Phantom Liberty is the fact that new release games seem to be moving away from support for old school, hard disk drives.  Part of the system requirement announcement mentioned that they will be dropping support for HDD's and are pushing for people to use solid state drives (SSD's).  The game will still work if you are using a HDD but they won't be testing it or offering support for HDD based systems.  I am still using a HDD for my game storage, so maybe it's time to start looking into swapping over to a SSD (I've read that there's really not a great difference in load times...but I guess they're trying to push people into the 21st century).  Bethesda's upcoming space-Skyrim, Starfield, also includes a similar requirement, so get to upgrading those old drives if you want to be rocking the triple-A titles.

So, what?  Should we all run out and pre-order?

No, please don't do that!  I plan to keep the ol' peepers peeled and wait awhile to see what happens--it sort of doesn't seem that many people are doing that since both Phantom Liberty and Starfield shot up to the top of the Steam charts...and they're not even close to being out!  Patience, people...patience!  People who got a chance to play Phantom Liberty are saying positive things about it, but don't forget the absolute train wreck that was the Cyberpunk release.