The disastrous release of Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red has been in an ever-constant state of damage control, going out of their way to fix the game so that it can even be a fraction of what was promised to fans.
Following the release of the recent patch 1.3, CD Projekt Red revealed that their game plan, for now, is to focus on patching the game as much as possible before moving on to quality of life changes. Patch 1.3 is the most substantial patch thus far and, because of it, the game itself is infinitely more stable than before. To their credit, CDPR has been following through on their commitment, but there are still some things that need fixing.
10 Improvement: Beat On The Brat Missions Are Easier
One of the most criticized aspects of Cyberpunk 2077 was its hand-to-hand combat. Without the proper cybernetic upgrades, hand-to-hand combat in the game has very little impact and is far from satisfying to pull off. The Beat On The Brat missions focused entire on hand-to-hand combat, preventing the player from using any kind of weapon or physical upgrade to give themselves an edge. While the reason for this is explained in-game, the end result is just a tedious line of sidequests. With recent patches, however, the missions have been made considerably easier, meaning that if a player is dedicated to completing all sidequests, these missions will be much less of a headache.
9 Issue: De-Spawning Civilians Are Still A Thing
A smaller problem, given the scale of things, but still extremely immersion-breaking. The behavior of civilians around the player character has never been good. For some time, they would react to gunfights and cyberpsycho attacks by crouching down and not budging an inch. After patch 1.3, they behave much more realistically now, as crowds will actually try to escape whenever violence occurs. Unfortunately, all the player has to do is glance away for a second and once they look back, they will find themselves alone on a once crowded city block. Again, it’s a minor issue, but it makes the game feel a lot less like the sandbox it was advertised as.
8 Improvement: Driving Is Infinitely Better
Driving was universally agreed to be one of the worst aspects of Cyberpunk 2077. It had the same problems as the driving mechanics in Grand Theft Auto IV, as vehicles seemed to have little to no traction to the ground. It was so easy to take a turn and glide off the road and into a crowd of civilians — or, more likely, a wall — that even driving short distances was a trial. After patch 1.3, driving and vehicle handling are significantly better. The patch also fixed issues with the map. It is now zoomed out while in vehicles, so missing turns because the GPS warns the player too late is now a thing of the past.
7 Issue: Pop-In Issues Still Persist
With the significant improvements to things like driving, some new issues have reared their head, although significantly smaller problems than before. The game always had an issue with pop-in or with textures not properly loading in until it’s too late. While these problems have been improved significantly, they still persist to some degree. In this particular case, console players have reported that the improvements to driving have made it easier to notice pop-in and late-loading textures while driving as well, though not nearly to the degree that these problems were at launch.
6 Improvement: Smoother Experience Overall
For a long time, Cyberpunk 2077 was deemed only playable on PC or next-gen consoles, but even those versions had tons of issues in their own right. While these versions of the game definitely ran better than others, they were still plagued with things like intense framerate drops, texture issues, crashes, and others.
CDPR has released a number of hotfixes and patches to date and now the game is considerably more stable. The game runs a lot smoother and, seems to be much closer to resembling a finalized product, even though it is still a far cry away from what was advertised to consumers.
5 Issue: Patches Have Reset Some Quests
Despite CDPR seeming to work nonstop to fix up the game as much as possible, there are some glitches in the game that seem to arise out of the new patches that are being released. One issue that has recently arisen in the recent launch of patch 1.3 is that some quests have reset. Specifically, it’s been reported that one or more of the Beat On The Brat fistfight missions have been reset after downloading the patch. Those missions have been made much easier, so it isn’t too much of a hassle to complete them again, but it is still an indictment of the many broken aspects of the game.
4 Improvement: A.I. Has Been Improved
The A.I. has been one of the most boasted aspects of the game by CDPR and, fittingly, has been the most criticized by fans. Civilian A.I. barely functioned, with NPCs simply walking in circles on the sidewalk, or piling up traffic because the player parked their car on the side of the road. The A.I. is much more competent now, civilian cars will now drive around obstructions in the road and civilians will now act much more realistically to the things that go on around them. Sections where the player is in the passenger seat and an NPC drives have also been improved. NPCs actually look to be driving the car instead of moving independently while the car navigates itself to the destination. Enemy A.I. has also significantly improved so the overall experience is better.
3 Issue: Some Quests Are Still Glitchy
A lot of the game’s bugs went further than just video or audio glitches. Oftentimes the bugs would actively prevent the player from progressing in the game. There were a number of quests that were bugged in Cyberpunk 2077, with the side quest Killing In The Name or the Delamain questline being pretty famous examples. For the most part, the bugs have been ironed out of these quests but there are still some issues. There have been reports of quests not behaving properly while playing them, for example, a cyberpsycho fight where the cyberpsycho in question seems to just die all on their own.
2 Improvement: Reseting Perk Skills
Patch 1.3 also added the ability to reset all of the perks on V’s skill tree. As long as a player has the requisite eddies, V’s perks will be reset and the player can reallocate them however they please. These only apply to the perk skills, not the skill points, but it regardless allows the player to get rid of any skills that they haven’t made any use for and add them to skills that they actually want. Something like this is definitely a warm welcome as a lot of the perks on the game’s skill tree turned out to be objectively less useful than others, and this is a good way for players to rectify any errors.
1 Issue: Police Chases Are Still Boring
One of the most important parts of the game, and still one of the most broken mechanics, is the way police respond to V whenever they are called on the scene. Previously, the issue was that cops would spawn on foot just outside of V’s vision. While that problem has been, for the most part, patched out, there is still the issue of police just giving up on chasing V the second that V starts driving away in a car. On top of that, now that the cop-spawning issue has been alleviated, V can shake dozens of police officers just by driving up a city street. It breaks the immersion that V can lose heat with minimal effort.
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