Failing Cyberpunk DLC’s First Mission Unlocks A Secret Ending

V stands in front of a red background.

Image: CD Projekt Red

Cyberpunk 2077 often rewards players for exploring Night City off the beaten path, but not so early in its just-launched Phantom Liberty expansion. Failing one of the DLC’s early objectives won’t just lead to a game over, it will fail the expansion’s entire questline for you.

That discovery recently made the rounds online in a clip shared by Cyberpunk obsessive Synth Potato. As the starting “Dog Eat Dog” mission transitions to “Hole in the Sky,” players are tasked with rescuing a high-value target from certain doom. If they choose to ignore it or take too long to get there the mission becomes a failure, complete with a special mini-epilogue from Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand. Basically all of the Phantom Liberty main storyline quests then become locked off. Oops.

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The VIP in question in “Hole in the Sky” is of course NUSA President Myers. The first part of the mission involves rushing to her crash site. That should be the easiest part, but that apparently wasn’t the case for Synth Potato’s brother. Instead, he drove like a maniac and never reached the objective, accidentally unlocking one of the expansion’s “secret endings” in the process.

“You can straight up fail Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty’s introduction and lose access to the entire DLC’s main quest if you choose to ignore the objective and let Myers die with a special cutscene and line delivery from Johnny if you do so!” Synth Potato tweeted yesterday. “Shout out to my brother for driving like an idiot and finding this lmao Insane attention to detail and an awesome Easter egg.”

Read More: 17 Essential Cyberpunk 2077 Side-Quests To Find In Night City

This failed ending shows V waking up from a blackout, on the ground in Dogtown. “Your presidential rescue op. Miserable failure,” Johnny Silverhand says. “Honestly though, good fucking riddance.” He then suggests the two of you go on living life, starting by getting a drink.

Thankfully, anyone who accidently gets this ending can still reload their last autosave to go back and try to complete the mission successfully to continue on the Phantom Liberty questline. As Synth Potato points out though, it’s a nice little alternate outcome that adds to what makes the revived, more complete Cyberpunk 2077 experience so rich.

Biden Got Nervous About AI After Watching Mission Impossible

A photo shows Joe Biden looking concerned with his hands up.

Photo: Saul Loeb / AFP (Getty Images)

President Joe Biden signed an executive order designed to create the first real US regulations and suggestions about artificial intelligence on October 30. The order came after months of meetings about AI tech, though the White House also confirmed that, strangely, the new Mission: Impossible film played a part in its signing.

If you’ve not been paying attention for the last year, you might have missed that AI-powered tools and software have become the hot thing as tech companies run like rats from the sinking ships that are NFTs and the metaverse. While it’s the shiny new toy all tech bros worship, AI also has a lot of controversy surrounding it. Artists and authors are rightfully upset that AI scrapes their work to create new images or text without paying them a dime. The tech has also been used to create silly content that likely upsets big companies like Nintendo and also has led to some really disturbing stuff featuring dead kids talking about actual murders. Overall, not great! And while it’s taken far too long, the US government finally seems interested in trying to control this nightmare tech. Thanks to… Tom Cruise?

As reported by the Associated Press, after signing the first comprehensive executive order governing AI tech on October 30, the White House talked about how this came to be, mentioning long meetings with advisors and experts. But also, apparently, Joe Biden watched Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning: Part One at Camp David and became more worried than ever.

In the film, a powerful and dangerous sentient AI known as “The Entity” goes rogue and destroys a submarine, killing its crew in the process. The rest of the movie features the AI enemy using cloned voices and other tech trickery to cause all sorts of problems for our heroes.

“If he hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about,” said White House Chief of Staff Bruce Reed, who reportedly watched the action movie with the president.

Of course, it wasn’t just Mission: Impossible that convinced Biden to do something about AI, with Reed telling the AP that the president was “impressed and alarmed” after being shown fake videos and images of himself and his dog. But like any good boomer, it took a silly movie about scary terrorists to help Biden understand what was going on. Whatever it takes to slow down and control AI technology, I guess.

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