The Cyberpunk 2077 Keanu Reeves performance was absolutely one of the RPG game’s best elements. The star of The Matrix and John Wick movies channeled his inner rockstar to bring Johnny Silverhand alive, and in a case of art imitating life and life imitating art in an endless circle, Reeves’ grunge band Dogstar is close to releasing its first new music in over two decades – and I can’t help but see the similarities with Cyberpunk 2077.
Reeves played bass in Dogstar before the band broke up in 2002, but mid last year the group announced “We’re back,” alongside some brief teases of upcoming music. Now, Dogstar says it’ll be releasing music later this summer, and I’m starting to see why Reeves says he loves playing Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077 so much.
“Thank you everyone for the kind comments,” Dogstar writes in a follow-up to a recent post, seen by NME. “We are overjoyed to see such a response. Honestly, didn’t expect this. It makes us want to play out even more.
“We will be rolling out some new music this summer, followed by some gigs. As soon as it’s all figured out we will let everyone know immediately. So much to do, but rest assured, we are on it and have assembled a fantastic team that are helping us.”
So if you fancy seeing a young Reeves kill it on bass, I’ve got a treat for you.
I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of Dogstar and didn’t realise Reeves was in a band, but suddenly his Johnny Silverhand Cyberpunk 2077 character starts to make a lot more sense. While Silverhand is a veteran-turned rock band frontman and anti-corporate activist with a death wish, and Reeves is an actor, I can’t deny that the symmetry here between the Cyberpunk 2077 character and the real Reeves.
Also, Reeves plays bass in Dogstar and Silverhand plays guitar and sings in the Cyberpunk 2077 band Samurai, but it’s still absolutely incredible. To top it off, Dogstar is my exact type of American alt-rock, so it’s a win-win.
Will we see Dogstar (or some sort of reference to the band) in the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty DLC? I think it’s a perfect opportunity to do something fun with the real-world band and Reeves’ returning character, even if it seems extremely unlikely. Keep an eye out during those Phantom Liberty playtests though, you never know what you might see.
If you want to give Dogstar a listen, which I recommend you do, the band has the 1996 EP Quattro Formaggi alongside two studio albums, 1996’s Our Little Visionary and 2000’s Happy Ending, with more on the way for the alt-rock grunge band later this year.
In the meantime, you can spruce up your CD Project Red game experience with our picks for the best Cyberpunk 2077 mods, or check out the biggest upcoming games of the year and beyond instead.
