Is Cyberpunk 2077 Still Playable After Beating The Game?

Summary Don't rush through Cyberpunk 2077's main storyline - explore Night City fully to experience every ending and hidden quest available.

After completing the game, players can go back to explore Night City and complete all side quests and gigs they might have missed.

V's fate in Cyberpunk 2077's endings may be bleak, but the game allows players to go back and uncover every detail with new opportunities.

There's plenty to see and do around Cyberpunk 2077's Night City, both as part of protagonist V's main storyline, and various gigs, side-missions, and more. Therefore, it's understandable that upon completing the game's main campaign, players might be keen to jump back in and finish off all the extra activities they had yet to do, either for the sake of completion, or just to further immerse themselves in the futuristic Californian metropolis that developer CD Projekt Red had built.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077]On a first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077, players could easily be forgiven for believing there's a ticking clock as the game creates a false sense of urgency in its story by constantly stating how V's body is deteriorating due to the prototype version of Arasaka's "Relic" technology embedded in their head. This is also amplified by the percentage counters in the main pause screen, which has one referring to Relic degradation. However, someone who works at CD Projekt Red recently stated that these percentages don't matter. Because of this false urgency, it's likely that new players would rush through the main storyline and miss several details in the wider open world.

Related Cyberpunk 2077's Easiest Hidden Quests To Miss While Cyberpunk 2077’s side quests offer a change of pace from the dystopian setting, the hidden quests are among the most creative in the game.

Many Of Cyberpunk 2077's Endings Have A Sense Of Finality

V Likely Won't Survive In Most Endings

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Most of Cyberpunk 2077's endings will have events that the game's main characters won't be able to come back from, with some of them seeing V and Johnny talking in cyberspace and deciding which one they would let return to V's body, and which one would go beyond the Blackwall and be destroyed, meaning that V may never return from the final mission. Alternatively, other endings see V returning but knowing that they only have months left to live and choosing to go live them out with Panam and the Aldecados, or become a Night City legend by embarking upon a suicide mission in space.

When V plugs into Mikoshi in the final level, they essentially die, as the Relic has overwritten V's core DNA, and sees Johnny as the body's true host, and V as an intruder. This forces Alt Cunningham to create a digital copy of V to redownload onto the Relic, which is why if Johnny takes over V's body, he is fine, but if V returns, they only have months left to live.

The endings in which V does survive aren't much better, either, as they are either condemned to being a lab rat for Arasaka after the megacorp removes the Relic, or if they side with the Federal Intelligence Agency (FIA) in the Phantom Liberty expansion, they are taken to Langley where the technology is removed, but at a great cost. Upon waking up after years in a medically-induced coma, V finds that almost all of their relationships are in various states of disrepair, with some completely ruined, and their nerves are so damaged by the procedure that they will never be able to use Cyberware again, essentially making it impossible to return to their past life.

Related Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty DLC Endings Explained (In Detail) Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty DLC has several possible endings to its story, and can even affect the ending for the main game in one situation.

Night City Is Explorable After Cyberpunk 2077's Credits Roll

The Game Takes Players Back To An Earlier Point

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Because of the finality of these endings, it would seem like Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't be playable after the credits roll. Fortunately, the game returns to a point just before V meets with Hanako in the Nocturne Op55N1 mission, and before players have to make any major decisions that set them down the path to one of the game's set endings.

It's worth noting that because of the point in Cyberpunk 2077 that players return to, some options for endings may already be locked off depending on their past actions in the game. This largely depends on how relationships were built, or whether certain characters died during the main campaign. For achievement hunters who may be looking to try each ending after the Nocturne Op55N1 mission, if certain criteria aren't met by this point due to actions already taken, the only way to get some of these is to start a new game and make different decisions. It is possible to play through every ending from this point if players have a good relationship with the main characters and Takemura survived the Arasaka attack in the Play It Safe mission.

Fortunately, because of the point players return to, all of Night City is explorable once again, so players can carry out any additional activities they may have missed, embarking upon typical video-game antics in which they do every possible side quest and gig or search for every collectible shard instead, as they seem to have all the time in the world. Considering just how rich and detailed Night City is, and how many hidden missions there are outside of the ones marked on the game's map, it's great that Cyberpunk 2077 gives players the option to do this once the credits have rolled, as it is practically guaranteed they won't have witnessed everything in their first playthrough.