Trauma Team is an aspect of the Cyberpunk universe that CD Projekt Red’s 2077 doesn’t engage with much. The group is a militarized team that shows up for the rich when they’re in need of medical help. Conceptually, it’s a microcosm of Night City as a capitalist hellhole, but 2077 doesn’t make a ton of use of them. Really, it was the Edgerunners Netflix anime that best illustrated Trauma Team’s place in the world, as it had a scene where protagonist David Martinez’s mother was left to die because she didn’t have a priority membership for their services.
It’s a bleak commentary on the American healthcare system, and it’s a really interesting part of the world. Since Edgerunners featured Trauma Team so prominently, 2077 fans have raised issue with how little the entity is featured in the game, and it sounds like developer CD Projekt Red wants to give them a little love in its upcoming Phantom Liberty expansion. In an interview with Kotaku at Summer Game Fest, Cyberpunk 2077 quest designer Pawel Sasko said fan reaction to Trauma Team led to the development of a new minigame that will be playable in the expansion when it launches on September 26.
“We had a criticism that people [would say] we don’t have much Trauma Team in our game, for instance,” Sasko said. “We thought about it, and we are actually in Phantom Liberty introducing a completely new arcade minigame called Trauma Drama.”
Sasko compares it to Roach Race, an arcade mini-game that was added to Cyberpunk 2077 in a free update, and stars Roach, Geralt of Rivera’s horse from The Witcher. Like Roach Race, Trauma Drama will be a sidescroller, but instead of a horse, you’ll play as a member of Trauma Team saving clients.
Trauma Drama is one of several changes and additions CD Projekt Red is adding to Cyberpunk 2077 with Phantom Liberty. The expansion will cost $30, but several of the systemic changes will be free to those who only own the base game, including the cyberware capacity change evocative of the Edgerunners anime.
Kotaku is covering everything Summer Game Fest, from the main show on Thursday to other events happening throughout the next week. Whether you’re into larger-than-life triple-A games or intimate, offbeat indies, you can keep up with all things SGF here.