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Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 update added a hidden Doom clone filled with secretsPlayers found a mysterious trail of breadcrumbs… then modded their way to the end
Players found a mysterious trail of breadcrumbs… then modded their way to the end
Image credit:CD Projeckt RED
Image credit:CD Projeckt RED
Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 update arrived last week alongside new (andtruly excellent) expansion Phantom Liberty, bringing ahost of tweaks and improvementsin an impressive climax to the originally technically-troubled and artistically-questionable game’squite staggering redemption arc.
The Making Of Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City | Cyberpunk 2077 InterviewWatch on YouTube
The Making Of Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City | Cyberpunk 2077 Interview
While just how good Phantom Liberty is is its own pleasant surprise in many ways, Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.0 update brings its own slightly more buried secrets. Namely, a playable Doom clone starring Johnny Silverhand tucked away in a corner of Night City, which has led players down a further rabbit-hole of mysteries.
The arcade machine featuring the ‘90s-inspired minigame is hidden in a derelict church near the Badlands’ Protein Farm, and boots up a Wolfenstein-aping shooter called Arasaka Tower 3D featuring a pixellated Keanu Reeves and a retro soundtrack based on 2077’s own score. (Thanks,Eurogamer.)
The game tasks players with blasting their way down Arasaka Tower’s 120 floors as Silverhand - a nod to his role in a deadly bomb attack more than half a century before the events of 2077.
The minigame itself is what you’d expect from a charming homage to Doom-likes, but the mystery thickens once you reach the leaderboard screen. One player’s score references the running FF:06:B5 Easter egg previously found on both statues in Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City and a set of ruins in The Witcher 3. (Spoilers for the FF:06:B5 Easter egg in Cyberpunk 2077 follow.)
On top of that,smarty-pants Reddit usersdiscovered that waiting in a specific server room on the 52nd floor until the timer hits 270 unlocks a secret maze on the -10th floor, which itself contained eight QR codes.
The QR codes could be pieced together and scanned to run script for a noughts-and-crosses game. That wasn’t all, though. Enterprising fans worked out that a ninth piece of the QR code could be recovered using a method known as Reed-Solomon error correction - for whom Idris Elba’s Phantom Liberty character Solomon Reed appears to be named.
The completed QR code then ran another game of noughts-and-crosses, this time against an unbeatable AI. When the game hit its unwinnable state, it dropped a quote from ‘80s movie WarGames: “The only winning move is not to play.”
Image credit:CD Projekt Red
Said treasure was found via a set of coordinates relating to a mattress in a desert, which can be stood on for a very specific amount of time to unlock a cutscene and a custom version of the Mackinaw truck called the Demiurge.
Other players are continuing to try and work out how to connect the dots as CD Projekt Red intended - and with several other mysterious names on the leaderboard for its hidden minigame, it might be that there are a few more secrets to be discovered yet.
