Cyberpunk 2077 moderators did unused missions and “E3 V” can be played • Eurogamer.net

It’s been over four months since the release of Cyberpunk 2077, and while you may have taken down the controller to wait for the official game updates, the modders have worked hard to create new weird additions and much-needed fixes. Along with the significant improvement in community-made modding tools (such as the newly released WolvenKit), in recent months, modders have found snippets of unpublished content and, in some cases, made it playable. These include unused searches and old V files – and modders have also seen some interesting references to unused characters from the broader Cyberpunk tradition.

One of the most significant discoveries involves a collection of concert quests, which normally cannot be played in the vanilla version of Cyberpunk 2077. If you want to try them yourself without getting into debug mode, now you can, as modder romulus_is_here (who I spoke to earlier for an article about another set of unreleased searches) has made a way to save the game, allowing you to access them with relative ease.

Entitled Cut Gigs Save Game, the mode allows you to try four missions that did not enter the released game, two of which have car chases. However, not all are in a particularly great shape: a concert called “Hothead” is playable, but very glitchy, while another called Desperate Measures lacks some NPC dialogues. The other two are in better condition and both have multiple results. Here is an example of a concrete cage trap, accessed in debug mode a few months ago:

The modding community also seems particularly fascinated by the “restoration” of the masculine and feminine aspect, as they appeared in the E3 demonstrations and trailers. This by a group of moderators Cyberpunk 2077, for example, restores the original E3 female V network and the textures found in the files “back to their full glory”. (It also pairs nicely with this version of the V 2018 women’s haircut). Meanwhile, this male version V by almico was created through a combination of original files and custom work. Modder almico explained that a lot of parts remain in the game’s files and he intends to add other original pieces in the future (such as V’s original eyes).

And if you need some authentic clothes to match the E3 V, modders have you covered … literally. There is a KickingWriter and Wulfgaardian mode that restores E3 V women’s clothing, while a Spookie mode restores the original look of the 2018 E3 samurai jacket.

During their adventures digging into the Cyberpunk 2077 files, the modders also found some interesting file names that provide clues about the development process of Cyberpunk 2077 and some of the missions and characters that were considered for launch. A warning that below are some spoilers for the Cyberpunk story 2077.

Romulus used Ghosts of Night City mode to find surrogate models for more characters in the larger Cyberpunk 2077 tradition, which are referred to in files as NPCs, but never appear in the game. One of them is Garven Haakensen, a character in the 2020 Cyberpunk RPG for pen and paper. He was deputy mayor of Night City and served under Mayor Mbole Ebunike, who held the post in 2020 (shortly before Johnny Silverhand bombed Arasaka Tower in 2023).

In the files Cyberpunk 2077 Haakensen is listed under sq012, a side quest called “I fought the law” given by Elizabeth Peralez, during which you also meet River Ward. This search can currently be played in Cyberpunk 2077, but some of the characters tagged with this search – including Haakensen, a ripperdoc and a braindance performer – seem to have never reached the final version.

Lexigraph community member is credited with identifying database entries for another mysterious mission called q111, a major mission that never appeared in the game released. While all the assets for this mission have apparently been cleaned up, references to the characters’ names can be found in the location files. A data researcher found the objectives of this search, which mentions some of these character names. It seems that this search involved River Ward and took place in the Night City prison complex – which is not explorable in the current version of the game.

Another notable character who appears in the files is Morgan Blackhand, Mike Pondsmith’s Solo player character in Cyberpunk 2020. In the game’s files, Blackhand is listed in the Love Like Fire mission as an “outdated” NPC. This is the flashback scene in which Johnny Silverhand and Rogue head to the Arasaka Tower to plant a bomb. In the Cyberpunk tradition, Blackhand was part of this mission and fought Adam Smasher on the roof (after which he is presumed dead), but never appeared in the released version of Cyberpunk 2077. So it seems that CD Projekt Red at at one point he even considered Blackhand in the game – although it’s hard to say when they decided to let him out.

Romulus told me that there are several unique searches that have been in play since the release, some of which are not in a playback state or just exist as an input package. A minor search, as Lexigraph discussed in an extensive post on Reddit, involves a washed Corpo named Ken Lee, whose daughter joins the Corpo line of work and ends up losing her life. Another minor search apparently involves bicycle racing – with “manufacturers, drivers and mentions of Kiroshi optics”, which Romulus speculated could be a braindance roll.

These are just some of the latest restoration and discovery projects in the Cyberpunk 2077 modding community in recent weeks (along with the modes that reintroduce surrogate models), but hopefully we’ll finally see some of them made officially playable in the game . CDPR has announced that the game will receive a number of free DLC updates, and judging by the recent addition of several new missions in patch 1.2, we may not have to wait much longer to see them.