Opera Singer Analyzes the Bleak Perfection of the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty OST



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Phantom Liberty has an absolutely incredible soundtrack that to the surprise of no one is deeply aesthetic, dark, and fantastically ponderous. The use of vocals is fascinating and a personal highlight for me.

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Chapters:
00:00 a brief overview
00:40 HYPE TRACKS
03:36 SLOW TRACKS
06:06 Never Looking Back Breakdown
11:30 Discomfort forces us to think and listen
16:10 My Favorite Track
16:50 Netrunner and V’s Theme

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Hi, I’m Marco Meatball, a former pro opera singer, turned voice actor, turned YouTuber. I grew up loving video games and video game music after first discovering them when I was 7 years old. Since then, I have lived and breathed all things video games. This channel is all about video game music and the beauty of modern composition, how it allows us to connect more deeply with the games we love, and how we can better learn to understand ourselves through it and the experiences it provides.
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About Cyberpunk 2077:
Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt, based on video game designer Mike Pondsmith’s game series. Set in a dystopian Cyberpunk universe, the player assumes the role of “V” (played by Gavin Drea/Cherami Leigh), a mercenary in the fictional Californian city known as “Night City”, where they deal with the fallout from a heist gone wrong that results in an experimental cybernetic “bio-chip” containing an engram of the legendary rock star and terrorist Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves) threatening to slowly overwrite V’s mind; as the story progresses V and Johnny must work together to find a way to be separated and save V’s life.

The game’s development began following the release of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine (2016). The game was developed by a team of around 500 people using the REDengine 4 game engine. CD Projekt launched a new division in Wrocław, Poland, and partnered with Digital Scapes, Nvidia, QLOC, and Jali Research to aid the production. Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith was a consultant, and actor Keanu Reeves had a starring role. The original score was led by Marcin Przybyłowicz, and featured the contributions of several licensed artists. After years of anticipation, CD Projekt released Cyberpunk 2077 for PlayStation 4, Stadia, Windows, and Xbox One on 10 December 2020, followed by PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on 15 February 2022.

Cyberpunk 2077 received praise from critics for its narrative, setting, and graphics. However, some of its gameplay elements received mixed responses while its themes and representation of transgender characters received some criticism. It was also widely criticized for bugs, particularly in the console versions which suffered from performance problems. Sony removed it from the PlayStation Store from December 2020 to June 2021 while CD Projekt rectified some of the problems. CD Projekt became subject to investigations and class-action lawsuits for their perceived attempts at downplaying the severity of the technical problems before release; these were ultimately cleared with a settlement of US$1.85 million. By September 2022, the game has sold more than 20 million copies. An expansion, Phantom Liberty, released on 26 September 2023 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. A sequel, codenamed Project Orion, was announced.

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36 thoughts on “Opera Singer Analyzes the Bleak Perfection of the Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty OST”

  1. hey mate, i have a song recommendation if your keen to hear it, its from ark survival called We Aren't Meant to Live Forever. a lot of sad tones to the song with a mix of adventure and wonder

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  2. From Just another weapon and Never lokking back I get a more space-y feeling rather than a cyberpunk-y feeling. Tho the feeling is the same. Especially with Never looking back, I got the image of "You get in an escape spacecraft and launch into space, the mothership explodes behind you, you look at your scanner and no one else made it out. You have limited water and no food, the closest habitable planet is one week away with hyperdrive, but even if you reach it by rationing your water, it's not a colonized planet."

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  3. i wonder if you're gonna do a breakdown on some song such as Been good to know ya, You shall Never Have to forgive me again, or even the NEW phantom liberty (yes, it's the name just released yesterday), or even Samurai Musics. imo Cyberpunk really have wide Genre, really gives you the impression that the world is alive through music. most games usually tried to stick to the genre of the games, which makes sense for medieval style but sometimes sci fi also affected with locking the music to one genre. cyberpunk really gives a big impression that this world exists (or will exist in the future) visually, metaphorically or literally and i really have a big respect on it

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  4. Never Looking Back feels very contemplative to me. The Catholic mass analogy is spot on. I don't necessarily feel loss immediately. It starts as wonderment, that something beyond my understanding has happened and I am stunned. Pure shock. Denial. "This cannot be!" It is a forced reflection on a moment that elicits a feeling that this is not how this was supposed to go.

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  5. After completing Phantom Liberty in its entirety, meaning every route possible, without spoiling anything; your read on Never Looking Back is scarily accurate. The track is heavy, to say the least.

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  6. I'm really glad I re-downloaded the game for the expansion just for the music. Holy hell… the OST for this game is so damn good. "The Rebel Path" has been on repeat in recent days.

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  7. You mentioning Easter European sound quality of the vocals in some tracks actually made me realize something!

    The singing seems to appear in the OST when a certain character – Songbird So Mi – is on screen, it's her leitmotif.
    That is – Songbird looks a lot like a Mavka (Nyavka) from Ukrainian mythology. Mavkas appear as beautiful women from the front, but when they turn your back to you, they reveal their backs being of almost undead nature – organs peeking through, bare spine, all that. Their entire idea almost screams duality. Same with Songbird who is normal from the front, but from behind she looks completely robotic – her full back is purely cybernetic.
    Mavkas lured people into the woods to grant them an untimely demise. The quality of the singing is like if Songbird is plunging into the abyss, dragging us with her, deeper and deeper into the woods. It is insane how much her music tells about her.

    Considering CDPR are Polish devs,,, it's just too good to be a pure coincidence.

    (Also surprised you did not touch on You Can't Hide From Us, the most haunting of them all. :,) )

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  8. Dont want to spoil anything, so keep scrolling: but never looking back plays when you make your final big choice in phantom liberty. It can also determine if you get another ending to the main game or not

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  9. The reason some of the songs might start slow is that they play in combat which could be stealth or live combat. You may infiltrate an area and hear the slow start and then you get spotted and oh god oh fuck here comes the bass, vocals, and grenades.

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  10. So I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time and 1. It is a fantastic game, every decision you make matters and there’s no easy answer to everything 2. The soundtrack I definitely feel is not appreciated enough it is amazing. It makes every pivotal moment feel emotional and tense depending on what’s happening. But I’ve also realized that playing Phantom Liberty feels more different than playing the base story missions. Idk why but the stakes feel more…higher than ever actually. You also don’t know who to trust. Adds to that spy espionage element.

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  11. Its really interesting about the similarities and differences between "Im a Netrunner" and "Just another weapon" (MINOR SPOILERS FOR PL AHEAD):

    Essentially they are both songs about Songbird, but one is a representation of our first encounter with her. "Songbird" the netrunner, its starts as abrupt as her first contact with us, its fully of confrontation and put up walls and agendas, it makes us suspicious. Meanwhile "Just another weapon" shares so many elements with it, but starts softly more calmly and is way more personal and intimate and it represents Song So Mi the person behind the alias, the name is ironically Just a weapon because by this point in the story we learn so much more about her personally that while others see her as just a weapon its not the same for V, we see the person behind the Netrunner, behind the weapon. Well, that is, should you choose to make those decisions…

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  12. A fantastic song that sets the "Spy Drama" feel of the game expansion is from Dawid Podsiadło and P.T. Adamczyk. It is used in "Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — Official Launch Trailer" to great effect.

    "Dawid Podsiadło, P.T. Adamczyk — Phantom Liberty (Official Cyberpunk 2077 Music Video)" is the name of the full song.

    Also, the music in "Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — Official Cinematic Trailer" haunts me, chills run up and down my spine and I can feel the pain of the character in those moments.

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  13. Much like with the original OST for 2077, you get such a new, incredible perspective on the music once you've witnessed the entirety of the story. I remember feeling this hollow, melancholic feeling once I completed the original story – which by the way is not a criticism at all. And it's the same again here, Never Look Back is such an incredible piece of music that when listened to with the context of the world of Cyberpunk and more specifically V's journey through Night City it really hits home…and to an extent even makes you question things about your own existence, albeit probably not to the extremes of a bleak, dystopian future 😅

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  14. In "Never looking back" you can hear vocalisation that is heavily reminiscent of Witcher 3 soundtrack, what a great throwback (at least it sounds similarily for me).

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  15. 11:48 "What it means to be alive and what the soul's purpose is in this world." You just NAILED the description of the cyberpunk genre. Past Style over Substance, past "High Tech Low Life", past dystopian futures, cyberpunk makes us question what does it mean to be human in a space where what we know as humanity can be and is regularly augmented and commodified.

    If you're asking "What is a soul's purpose in this world?", then Cyberpunk 2077 is the game for you, choom.

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  16. An absolutely amazing thing about White Singing (especially live) is that you can literally feel the performers voices deep in your bones. That clear high pitch sound gives you the feeling that its penetrating right thru your body to your soul and it doesnt stop until the voice disappears. Really amazing thing to experience in person.

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  17. You're playing Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time?
    Make sure you do the quest chain called Sinnerman and no matter your beliefs stick it out to the end. The starting job is to join a guy as "backup" while he ambushes a convict that was just released, let it play out and follow where it takes you.

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  18. The statement that you make at 15:39 is proven so fundamentally accurate if one experiences the absolute outpouring of emotions in the scene it is played…
    Truly, my favorite track of the DLC and on of my favorite tracks in video game OSTs…
    Thank you for your in-depth analysis!

    Reply

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