Cyberpunk 2077’s biggest mystery has unravelled even further in Update 2.0 and the Phantom Liberty expansion, with some fans who got too close to the truth being (politely) silenced by developer CD Projekt Red.
A series of strange letters and symbols has been at the centre of the bizarre mystery, which even seeped beyond Cyberpunk 2077 and into CD Projekt Red’s other franchise with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The release of the game-changing Update 2.0 includes even more clues, however, and the incoming Phantom Liberty expansion likely has even more.
The mystery, known as FF:06:B5, began when players discovered the code on a statue worshipped by monks in Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City (below). A series of other numbers hidden throughout the city attracted even more attention, and a Reddit page dedicated to FF:06:B5 now has more than 24,000 members.
So there’s some insane new mystery in Cyberpunk 2077 added with 2.0 that seems to be tied to The Witcher, Strange languages, a server room, and a QR code that’s being revealed through secrets in a new arcade game, r/FF06B5 is losing their minds over it trying to decipher it 🤔… pic.twitter.com/f7MmlcqBfb
— Synth Potato (Ameer) 🥔 (@SynthPotato) September 24, 2023
Cyberpunk 2077 quest director PaweÅ‚ Sasko confirmed there is a solution to the mystery, but the clues dropped in The Witcher 3 (which included portals, deserted towers, ouroboros symbols, and more strange numbers) weren’t enough to solve it.
Now, with what will be the final major addition to Cyberpunk 2077 in Update 2.0 and the subsequent Phantom Liberty expansion, fans have seemingly got much closer to the answer. A post from Til_W on the FF:06:B5 subreddit outlines several new parts to the mystery alongside some controversy surrounding datamining and an agreement reached between the community and CD Projekt Red.
The next steps to the mystery begin in Update 2.0 with a laptop dumped in a landfill outside Night City. Players can read a conversation between in-game characters TyRo/\/\aNtA and Polyhistor which talks about a reference to FF:06:B5 inside a retro video game “over 60 years old”.
Given The Witcher 3 does exist as a video game within Cyberpunk 2077, having appeared in-game on the cover of Retro Gaming, and would have launched just over 60 years before 2077 in 2015, fans first assumed this was a reference to its FF:06:B5 secret.
Other connections suggest this too, with the laptop featuring the same letters as featured in The Witcher 3’s clue alongside the ouroboros symbol. While fans are currently dissecting, translating, and analysing these symbols, no clear answers have been found yet.
Adding to the mystery, the retro game mentioned could be something else entirely: Arasaka Tower 3D. This arcade game added in Update 2.0 lets players play as Johnny Silverhand through the Arasaka Tower terror attack of 2023 in a Wolfenstein-esque shooter. This isn’t to be confused with the actual Arasaka Tower attack that players experience while playing as Johnny, but is a twisted retelling of that event in video-game form playable by the characters of Cyberpunk 2077. Our brains are melting too.
The Arasaka Tower 3D arcade game is fully playable but lies inside a secret room inside a church belonging to, wait for it, Polyhistor, one of the two characters talking about the retro game previously. Confirming all of this is absolutely connected, one level of Arasaka Tower 3D features a hidden room with none other than a low-poly model of the statue that started this entire mystery.
The hidden doors themselves are also a vibrant magenta colour that match the symbol found in The Witcher 3, and uncoincidentally, the hex code for FF:06:B5 is the same pink colour. Coming to the end of Arasaka Tower 3D also shows a list of high scores, the lowest being set by Polyhistor (as PLHSTR) at FF06B5.
It’s another part of the arcade game that really moves things along, however, thanks to a secret maze level that once completed gives players (in the Cyberpunk 2077 world) access to keypads in a server room back in Polyhistor’s church.
As for what to input on these keypads, nobody knows yet — at least not through official means. Coming up with no concrete leads, dataminers delved into the game’s files and actually discovered some codes, but despite this being very Cyberpunk, CD Projekt Red has asked them not to reveal the secret.
“As you already know the datamining team managed to achieve something interesting,” wrote lead member leprotravel on the FF:06:B5 subreddit. “Of course, this could not escape the eyes of [CD Projekt Red]. Today we had long negotiations about the possibility of posting a detailed guide dedicated to the methods used by dataminers and how they exactly achieved the specified result. This was supposed to be a comprehensive, structured post covering many hours of work.
“However, we received a refusal from the [CD Projekt Red] team. But in a very friendly way, since they appreciate the diligence of players in discovering secrets in their games, regardless of the methods they use.”
CD Projekt Red explained, perhaps fairly, that datamining to progress the mystery is cheating, and they’d like players to be patient and discover the next steps and final secrets properly. Even with the datamined secrets, however, the FF:06:B5 sleuths assured the mystery is not complete and there is still more to find.
These next secrets will perhaps arrive when Phantom Liberty launches on September 26 or, just as clues appeared in The Witcher 3, this could be a mystery spanning CD Projekt Red games for years to come.
In our 9/10 review of Phantom Liberty, which admittedly doesn’t take into consideration the amount of cryptic clues and theories, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty completes an immense turnaround for CD Projekt Red’s future RPG kickstarted with the anime spin-off, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and its latest 2.0 Update.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.