By 2026, Cyberpunk 2077 has long since shed its troubled launch skin. The Phantom Liberty expansion and the transformative 2.0 update polished the game into something truly worthy of its neon-drenched ambition. Leveling, combat, police systems—almost every pillar got a massive rework, and Night City finally began to feel like the reactive, living dystopia it always promised to be. Yet even with all that refinement, one feature still sits awkwardly in the narrative, like a chrome implant that never quite meshed with the flesh. The new Relic upgrade system gives V incredible combat tools, but it also asks players to do something that V would probably scream at them not to do. It’s a head-scratcher, really.
The relic inside V’s skull isn’t just another piece of tech—it’s the central tragedy of the entire main story. After a botched heist leaves V bleeding out in a landfill, the biochip brings them back from the brink, but at a steep cost. From that moment, Keanu Reeves’ digital ghost, Johnny Silverhand, takes up permanent residence, chipping away at V’s identity with every passing day. The entire narrative becomes a frantic race against time: get the Relic out before Johnny completely overwrites V’s consciousness. The game hammers home the idea that this artifact is a slow-motion death sentence, a lethal tumor wrapped in engram code. Every conversation with Viktor, every ominous Relic malfunction, drives the point deeper—this thing is killing you.
So, what’s V thinking? Phantom Liberty arrives, and suddenly the Relic isn’t just a ticking bomb; it’s a power-up dispenser. The expansion scatters Militech Data Terminals across Dogtown, and each one V accesses feeds the Relic, unlocking a new tree of combat abilities. Players can now enhance their mantis blades, supercharge their optical camo, or turn enemy turrets into temporary allies. The upgrades are genuinely fun—who wouldn’t want to see their cyberdeck spit out emergency cloaking or force a critical weakness onto an elite foe? From a pure gameplay perspective, it’s a brilliant motivator to scour every corner of the new district. But oh boy, does the story logic creak under the weight. Instead of desperately seeking a way to rip the Relic out, V is now actively seeking out ways to make it stronger. It feels a bit like someone diagnosed with a brain tumor deciding to feed the tumor protein shakes so they can get better headaches.
That dissonance isn’t unique to Cyberpunk 2077—Baldur’s Gate 3’s infamous tadpole powers ran into the same ethical quicksand. In Larian’s fantasy epic, players were encouraged to consume more mind flayer parasites to unlock a grid of powerful Illithid abilities, even though the whole plot revolved around preventing exactly that kind of ceremorphosis. Both games present a tension between the player’s desire for cool abilities and the protagonist’s instinct for survival. Yet in Cyberpunk, the contradiction bites a little deeper because the Relic is so intimately tied to the relationship with Johnny. Strengthening it should logically accelerate the overwrite process, because after all, the relic is literally Johnny's beachhead. The game never explicitly punishes you for this—no faster relic degradation, no extra Johnny dialogue mocking your short-sighted greed—but the implication hangs in the air: by juicing up the biochip, V is effectively turning the volume up on their own replacement.
Of course, meta-game reasoning patches over these cracks as best it can. The Relic skill tree gives players meaningful goals during the Phantom Liberty campaign, and the new perks slot beautifully into the overhauled talent system. Sprinting towards an enemy while activating the optical camo, then unleashing a vulnerability-laced blade combo feels incredible. Night City’s power fantasy has never been more potent. For many, that’s enough—after all, fun is fun, and suspension of disbelief has always been a flexible muscle in role-playing games. Still, hardcore role-players can feel the fabric tear a little when the game asks them to treat a central threat as a buffet of tactical boons.
As of 2026, no official patch has attempted to bridge this narrative gap with, say, alternative unlock conditions or Johnny commentary that acknowledges the twisted irony. Some modders have toyed with the idea of tying Relic upgrades to increased relic malfunction frequency, but for console players, the vanilla experience remains blissfully unaware of its own contradiction. It’s a strange artifact (pun intended) of game design, born from the very real need to give expansions their own progression hooks. In the end, the Relic dilemma doesn’t ruin the journey—Phantom Liberty’s spy-thriller storyline and 2.0’s systemic upgrades are too good for that. But every time V jacks into a Dogtown terminal and feels the Biochip hum with newfound might, a tiny ghost of Johnny Silverhand might just be chuckling in the background, wondering how long it’ll take before V realizes they’re strengthening their own coffin.
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