The journey of Cyberpunk 2077 from its turbulent launch to its celebrated Phantom Liberty expansion stands as one of the most remarkable redemption arcs in modern gaming history. As of 2026, CD Projekt Red has firmly cemented the game's legacy, not just as a corrected title, but as a foundational world ripe for exploration. However, the bittersweet finality of Phantom Liberty being the sole major expansion left a palpable hunger among fans for more stories within Night City's neon-drenched sprawl and beyond. This yearning has found a new focal point in the recent revelations about a scrapped DLC that would have taken players to the Moon, a concept that now shines like a distant, guiding star hinting at the ambitious trajectory of the confirmed sequel, codenamed Project Orion.
The Ghost of DLCs Past: A Lunar Blueprint
The uncovered details of the cancelled Moon DLC are more than just a historical footnote; they serve as a crucial blueprint for CD Projekt Red's future vision. Reports indicate this expansion would have plunged players into the heart of intense corporate warfare waged not on the streets of Night City, but within the pressurized domes and mining facilities of human settlements on the Moon. This setting promised a stark contrast to Earth—a desolate, corporate-controlled frontier where the struggle for power and resources plays out under an alien sky. The shelving of such a conceptually rich and spatially distinct expansion suggests its scope may have simply outgrown a DLC format, much like an architectural model that proves too grand for its initial plot of land, demanding an entirely new foundation.
Connecting the Cosmic Dots: From 2077 to Orion
The seeds for a spacefaring narrative were subtly planted within Cyberpunk 2077 itself. The game's conclusions offer players two distinct paths off-world:
| Ending Path | Destination | Narrative Context |
|---|---|---|
| "The Sun" / "The Star" | Arasaka Space Station | V undergoes experimental treatment, trading the city's chaos for the sterile silence of orbit. |
| "The Crystal Palace" (Temperance) | Crystal Palace Casino | V embarks on a legendary heist in the ultimate high-stakes, zero-gravity environment. |
These narrative branches, coupled with the abandoned lunar plans, create a compelling pattern. Project Orion's codename itself—a direct reference to one of the most prominent and recognizable constellations—is a not-so-subtle nudge toward the cosmos. The logical progression for a sequel is not merely to iterate on Night City, but to expand the playable universe, creating a dynamic interplay between the grounded, urban decay of Earth and the high-tech, resource-starved colonies of space. This potential dual-setting could transform the sequel from a street-level story into a system-spanning epic.
Industry Precedent: When DLC Dreams Become Sequel Realities
The transformation of cancelled downloadable content into full-fledged sequels is a well-established tradition in game development. This phenomenon is not a mere coincidence but a testament to how potent ideas can evolve:
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Grand Theft Auto: Vice City 🌴: Began life as a mission pack for GTA III before becoming a defining title of its era.
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Assassin's Creed Mirage 🏜️: Originally conceived as an expansion for Assassin's Creed Valhalla, it grew into a focused, standalone experience.
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Hollow Knight: Silksong 🧵: Initially planned as DLC for the original game, its scope ballooned into a highly anticipated sequel.
In this context, the cancelled Moon DLC for Cyberpunk 2077 is not a dead idea but a dormant one, hibernating like a spacecraft in a stable orbit, waiting for the correct launch window—a window that Project Orion may well provide. The expansive nature of lunar corporate colonies, with their unique geopolitical tensions and environmental challenges, offers a perfect canvas for a sequel to explore new gameplay mechanics and narrative depths that a DLC could only gesture toward.
The Narrative Horizon: What Lies Beyond Night City
While Night City masterfully encapsulated the core Cyberpunk themes of transhumanism, corporate dominance, and societal collapse, its borders also felt like a narrative event horizon, keeping the wider world tantalizingly out of reach. Phantom Liberty deepened the political intrigue within the city but did not break its atmospheric seal. The promise of the Moon—and by extension, Project Orion—is the promise of breaking that horizon. It proposes a future where the consequences of corporate actions are measured not just in city blocks, but in astronomical units; where the struggle for a new life isn't just a drive to the city limits, but a rocket launch.
As of 2026, CD Projekt Red remains strategically focused on its other flagship franchise, The Witcher, meaning concrete details on Project Orion are still on the distant horizon. Yet, the spectral outline of the cancelled Moon DLC provides the most substantial clues available. It paints a picture of a sequel that could boldly go where the first game only glanced: into a future where the Cyberpunk struggle escapes gravity itself, playing out across a solar system where Earth is just another contested node in a vast, corporate network. The legacy of Cyberpunk 2077's revival may ultimately be that it built a world too compelling to contain on a single planet, setting the stage for Project Orion to launch the franchise into a bold, new stratosphere.