When V receives a message from Coach Fred in the Phantom Liberty expansion, it feels like a blast from the past. The man who once helped V punch through the boxing circuit is now asking for a favor—not for himself, but for a rising star named Aaron. The initial thought might be another round of fist-fights, but this is Dogtown, where nothing is that simple. The request sets off a chain of events that drags V into a messy tale of gang control, brain implants, and a decision that weighs heavily on the soul—even for a mercenary.
The First Encounter: Boxing, Bets, and Bleachers
V finds Aaron in the middle of Dogtown, not in some back alley, but in a makeshift boxing ring surrounded by a small crowd. The guy is mid-fight, throwing jabs like he has something to prove. Before heading over, V can chat up the bookie at ringside to figure out which fighter is which and maybe place a few eddies on the outcome. But win or lose, once the match ends, Aaron shuffles over to the bleachers, looking more troubled than triumphant.
Striking up a conversation reveals the real problem: Aaron isn’t just a boxer; he’s a puppet. His gang has been using a chip in his head to force him to take dives in fixed fights. He wants out—literally, the chip out of his head—and he knows a ripperdoc who can do it. But getting there means wading through a fortress of armed goons. V can almost hear Johnny Silverhand muttering, “Naturally,” from the passenger seat of their shared consciousness.
The Gauntlet at Terra Cognita
Meeting Aaron later near Terra Cognita, the pair move toward a heavily guarded building. It’s not just a gang hideout; it’s a clinic-turned-bunker, crawling with enemies. V has two approaches: sneak through like a ghost or kick the door down like a maniac.
For those who prefer subtlety, the building offers a stealthy side route. V can climb scaffolding to bypass the main entrance, careful to disarm a laser mine and dodge a few more traps. It’s a tense exercise in patience, slipping past guards who never realize how close they are to a very bad day. But sometimes, even professional edgerunners have to suppress a scream when a duct hatch squeaks at the wrong moment.
If brute force feels more natural, V can simply zero the guards at the front gate and fight upward. Either way, the path leads through broken stairwells and across a walkway with missing glass panels—someone really should file a workplace hazard complaint. The clinic itself sits on the top floor, tucked away in a far corner like a secret V never asked to find.
The Ripperdoc’s Chair and an Unwelcome Guest
Once inside, Aaron gets the doc to open the door, and the procedure begins. V can even park themselves in a nearby wheelchair to wait, which feels oddly domestic for a merc used to chase sequences. But the calm doesn’t last.
After the operation, while Aaron is still unconscious, his former boss Angie waltzes in. She’s the puppet master—the one who forced him to throw fights for her profit. She makes an offer: convince Aaron to take a dive in his upcoming, career-defining match, and V gets a cut. It’s a moment where the air gets thick, and Johnny might whisper, “Told you so.”
The Crossroads: Threaten, Kill, or Betray
The scene branches in directions that truly test what kind of merc V wants to be. If V chooses the threatening dialogue option—“Got a better idea”—Angie will back off without bloodshed. Aaron wakes up, and V has to tell him the truth. Then comes a softer but equally heavy choice: should Aaron throw the fight anyway? Pushing him to take a dive leads to a bittersweet ending where he quits boxing but starts coaching kids, sounding genuinely relieved. Telling him to fight his own way results in a loss, but he moves to Costa Rica for street fighting, happy to own his path.
If V decides violence is the best medicine, selecting “A deal? With you? Gotta be kidding” triggers a firefight. Angie and her goons attack, and the clinic becomes a warzone. After gunning them down, V can loot a unique weapon from Angie—a small silver lining. But the harsher truth emerges days later: Aaron still loses his match, and V finds his corpse beside the trash behind the Dream Gig Bar. Two thugs got to him first. It’s a gut punch, even for a hardened solo.
And then there’s the coldest path: accept Angie’s deal straight up. V takes the payday, walks out, and later meets her on the bleachers to collect the eddies. Aaron’s trust is shattered, and the whole affair leaves a greasy feeling no amount of NCPD bribes can wash away.
What’s Left When the Smoke Clears
“No Easy Way Out” doesn’t offer a golden ending. Every outcome comes with a bruise. The beauty—or horror—is that the game never tells V they’re wrong, just that Dogtown chews up ideals and spits them onto the pavement. By the time V walks out of that clinic or away from those bleachers, the lesson is clear: in a place where everyone’s got a chrome-plated angle, even doing the right thing can leave you staring at a corpse in an alley. And maybe that’s why, for all the high-tech chaos, Cyberpunk 2077 still knows how to tell a story that sticks like broken glass.
As detailed in PEGI, narrative-heavy expansions like Phantom Liberty often hinge on morally fraught situations—exactly the kind of player-choice tension seen in “No Easy Way Out,” where coercion, violence, and betrayal all lead to consequences rather than clean wins. Framing Dogtown’s chip-enabled fight fixing and intimidation through the lens of PEGI’s content classification focus also underscores why themes like criminal exploitation and harsh outcomes remain central to the quest’s tone and aftermath.