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Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty and its endings. Phantom Liberty does not provide an unequivocally happy ending. The Tower is the closest to a conventional survival outcome: V is cured of the Relic crisis, but loses the ability to use combat cyberware, spends two years in a coma, and wakes to a life transformed by time. Whether that is hopeful or tragic depends on what you think matters most for V.
The short answer: survival, not simple happiness
Phantom Liberty has no ending that the game labels as morally correct or emotionally happiest. The expansion gives you outcomes with different costs, then leaves you to decide whether those costs are acceptable. The Tower, the ending most often described as the “good” or “happy” option, allows V to survive the Relic crisis through NUSA treatment. That apparent victory comes with permanent consequences: V can no longer use combat implants, spends two years unconscious, and wakes after Night City and V’s relationships have moved on.
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That makes “survival ending” a more accurate description than “happy ending.” If your priority is remaining alive, The Tower may feel hopeful. If your priority is bodily autonomy, combat capability, personal identity, or preserving the life V built before treatment, it can feel devastating. The game deliberately refuses to settle that argument for you.
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Lead quest designer Paweł Sasko explained the design philosophy in an interview with GamesRadar+: “We never wanted the game to tell you what the correct decision was. I wanted you to live with your own interpretation of it.” The endings are built around that principle rather than around a single canonical answer.
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Which decision controls your Phantom Liberty ending?
The decisive choice arrives in the main job Firestarter. V must choose whether to help Songbird escape or help Reed capture her. That choice determines which finale route opens for the rest of the expansion.
| Choice in “Firestarter” | Route that opens | What it means for the expansion finale |
|---|---|---|
| Help Songbird escape | Spaceport route | V follows Songbird’s escape storyline toward the spaceport finale. |
| Help Reed capture Songbird | Cynosure facility route | V follows Reed’s pursuit into the Cynosure facility finale. |
There are four broad Phantom Liberty outcomes described in route guides, but only two are available during a particular playthrough because the Firestarter decision locks you onto one side’s path. This is why a single save cannot show every immediate finale without returning to an earlier decision.
The two branches are not simply cosmetic variations. They put V in different situations, ask V to judge Songbird and the NUSA differently, and determine whether the treatment route that leads to The Tower can become available.
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The Tower is not one of Phantom Liberty’s immediate finale scenes. It is an alternate ending for the main Cyberpunk 2077 campaign, made available by specific outcomes in the expansion.
You can unlock it in either of two ways:
- Initially help Songbird escape, then give Songbird to Reed. This means following Songbird’s side at Firestarter, but choosing to hand her over later rather than allowing the escape to continue.
- Initially help Reed capture Songbird, then spare Songbird. This means taking Reed’s side at Firestarter, then choosing mercy when the later decision gives you the opportunity to kill Songbird.
Both conditions lead to the same essential opportunity: V can accept the NUSA treatment and unlock The Tower as an ending to the main story. The other expansion outcomes do not unlock that cure route.
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Because the unlock depends on a reversal within the selected branch, simply siding with Songbird or simply siding with Reed is not enough. The later choice involving Songbird is what determines whether V receives the treatment option.
What happens to V in The Tower?
The Relic crisis is cured
V accepts NUSA treatment and survives the Relic crisis. The condition that has driven the central time pressure of the campaign is no longer killing V. In the narrowest medical sense, this is the clearest victory available: V remains alive without the Relic continuing to threaten V’s life.
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Combat cyberware is no longer usable
The treatment has a major physical cost. V can no longer use combat implants. That change matters because cyberware is not merely equipment in Night City; it is part of how V fights, travels through danger, and expresses a chosen identity. The Tower does not restore V to the same body that entered Dogtown. Survival comes with a permanent limit on the abilities that defined V’s career as a mercenary.
V loses two years to a coma
The treatment leaves V in a coma for two years. When V wakes, the world has had time to change without them. Friends, contacts, ambitions, and routines are no longer frozen at the moment V entered treatment. The ending’s emotional force comes partly from that absence: V survives, but cannot reclaim the intervening years.
The story ends instead of returning to free play
CD PROJEKT RED’s support documentation explains that The Tower epilogue has no rewards and is designed to let V’s story end. It does not return you to the game’s Point of No Return after the ending. That structure reinforces the trade-off: this is not a cure that restores the old adventure while preserving every possibility. It is a final outcome for V.
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Why some players read The Tower as a happy ending
V is alive
The strongest case for calling The Tower happy is straightforward: V survives. The Relic crisis is cured, and V is no longer facing the same immediate death sentence. For a player who sees continued life as the central objective, losing combat cyberware may be painful but still preferable to dying or surrendering control of the body to another consciousness.
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The Tower also leaves open the possibility of an ordinary future. V wakes as a living person rather than as a terminal patient. The ending does not promise that this future will be easy, successful, or familiar, but it gives V time that the other outcomes may deny. Hope in this reading comes from possibility rather than from a triumphant return to mercenary life.
The choice is consistent with choosing life over legend
V’s Night City identity is built around risk, reputation, and increasingly extreme cybernetic capability. Accepting treatment means giving up that version of V. A player may see the decision as an act of self-preservation: V chooses an imperfect civilian life instead of dying to preserve a dangerous career. Under that interpretation, The Tower is bittersweet but fundamentally hopeful.
Why other players read The Tower as tragic
Survival costs V’s autonomy
The cure is not free in a symbolic sense. V’s body is changed by a treatment controlled by a powerful institution, and the result removes the combat implants that made V effective. A player who values autonomy may regard that as a defeat even though the Relic is gone.
Two years cannot be recovered
The coma is more than a time skip. V wakes after two years that cannot be replayed or repaired. Whatever relationships, plans, or opportunities depended on V being present have continued without V. The ending therefore treats time itself as part of the price of survival.
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V’s established identity no longer fits
Night City’s mercenary life is not just a job. It is the role through which V understands competence, purpose, and independence. Removing combat cyberware may force V to reconsider who they are when the abilities that carried them through the story are gone. A player invested in V remaining that person can experience The Tower as an erasure rather than a rescue.
The ending closes the door on the old adventure
Because the epilogue does not return V to the Point of No Return and provides no rewards, there is no post-ending continuation in which the cure and the previous lifestyle coexist. The finality can feel honest, but it also prevents the player from treating the consequences as temporary.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Is one Phantom Liberty ending canonically better?
No. The available evidence does not identify a moral ranking among the endings, and the game does not attach an objective happiness score to them. The route guides describe what each choice unlocks, while the developers’ stated approach emphasizes personal interpretation.
That distinction matters because “good” can mean several different things:
- Physical survival: The Tower is the clearest outcome if staying alive is the highest priority.
- Bodily autonomy: A player may reject a treatment whose consequences remove combat cyberware or place V’s future in institutional hands.
- Continuity of identity: The Tower asks V to live as someone whose former abilities and career are no longer available.
- Relationships and belonging: Two years away can change the people and communities V hoped to return to.
- Freedom from the Relic: Other routes may preserve different forms of agency even when they do not offer the same cure.
Those priorities can point to different conclusions without making one player’s reading incorrect. The ending is designed to expose the cost of the value you choose, not to reward a universally correct strategy.
A practical decision guide before “Firestarter”
If you are deciding how to play rather than trying to reach a specific ending, use the following framework:
- Decide whether you want the cure route. The Tower requires one of the two Songbird/Reed reversal outcomes. If you want that option, plan to either hand Songbird to Reed after initially helping her or spare her after initially siding with Reed.
- Choose the route whose conflict interests you. Helping Songbird leads to the spaceport route; helping Reed leads to the Cynosure facility route. The initial choice determines which finale sequence you will experience.
- Keep a save before the later Songbird decision. The cure route depends on what you do after the initial branch. A separate save lets you explore the consequence without replaying the entire expansion.
- Judge The Tower by your V’s priorities. Ask whether a cured life without combat implants is preferable to preserving V’s established abilities or refusing the NUSA solution.
- Expect a final epilogue, not a new free-roam reward loop. The Tower is intended to end V’s story and does not send you back to the Point of No Return.
Exact menu wording and route behavior can vary with the game version, so follow the current objective text on screen when the branch occurs. The essential logic remains the same: Firestarter selects the route, and the later Songbird decision determines whether The Tower becomes available.
So, does Phantom Liberty have a happy ending?
It has a potentially hopeful ending, but not an uncomplicated happy one. The Tower gives V the thing the main crisis threatens to take away—life—while removing combat cyberware, consuming two years, and ending the story with V outside the life they knew. Calling it happy is reasonable if survival and a chance at an ordinary future outweigh everything lost. Calling it tragic is equally reasonable if identity, autonomy, time, and continuity matter more.
Phantom Liberty’s final judgment belongs to the player. The game supplies consequences rather than a verdict, and The Tower is deliberately written as a survival ending whose emotional meaning depends on what you believe V was trying to save.
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