Genre: | Role-Playing Game | ||
Developer: | CD Projekt RED | Official Site: | http://www.cyberpunk.net/ |
Publisher: | CD Projekt | Classification: | TBC |
As per CDPR’s masterpiece that is The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077 shines brightest when the focus is squarely on its excellent storytelling. The various people you meet, and the Street Stories you discover, serve as that interaction point lacking elsewhere - adding context, history, and presence to the wider Night City. From investigating political corruption that then leads into a surprising and deeply confronting exploration into the life and memory of a serial killer, to putting on one last show for a bunch of aging rockers as the setting for a tale about letting go.As someone who held off once it was clear the game had launched too early, I've been champing at the bit for this soft reboot, and intend to play the game from the beginning.
A lot of this side of Cyberpunk 2077 carries the feeling of playing something that will stick with you for years -- it has that quality. Each major story adds to the world, the setting, the mystery. Throw in PC visuals that are easily some of the most impressive you’re likely to see this year or next, it’s the one part of the experience that lives up to the futuristic setting and promise seen in the many pre-release gameplay slices and trailers.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now showing as Optimized for Xbox Series X / S, just before CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077 stream tomorrow 👀 https://t.co/vJAOCfVdhe pic.twitter.com/768VMr8BYB
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) February 14, 2022
IMPORTANT PRODUCTION UPDATE pic.twitter.com/KOnaIVOt4v
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 20, 2021
Johnny Silverhand's Alternative Appearance – can be enabled in Settings in the "Additional Content" tab. Multilayered Syn-Leather Deltajock Jacket, Luminescent Punk Jacket - both available in the stash in V's apartment after receiving a message from Viktor after completing The Ride. They're of Rare/Iconic quality by default, Crafting Specs to craft a higher quality will also be unlocked. Archer Quartz "Bandit" - available as a reward or for purchase (depending on choices made by player) after completing Ghost Town and then receiving a message from Dakota or Rogue. If you haven't received the message, make sure to be in the Badlands area and move further away from Dakota's workshop. Dakota will also need a couple of days to contact you.
Improved the minimap's zoom level when driving, so that it's more zoomed out and easier to navigate. Automatic Love - screen with pictures of Skye and Angel will be displayed substantially longer, making it easier to choose between the two. Added a button which allows to reallocate the distribution of Perk points on a character's skill tree. Increased the number of slots for autosaves from 10 to 20 and for quick saves from 3 to 10 across all platforms. Added Database links to Journal entries. Added an accessibility option for center of screen dot overlay which helps with reducing/avoiding motion sickness. It can be enabled in Settings → Interface → Center of screen dot overlay. Fixers will now message V to offer a car for purchase less often. Improved the Screen Space Reflections effect so that it looks less grainy on consoles and on lower visual settings qualities on the PC . Added a filter for quest items in the Backpack. Quest item tags from miscellaneous Job items will now be removed after finishing associated quests, allowing to sell or drop them. It is now possible to rotate V in the Inventory with a mouse. Players will now properly be able to craft a quickhack even if they once crafted it and then got rid of it. Added a comparison tooltip for cyberware. Improved a notification when buying cyberware and not meeting the level requirements to equip it. It's now possible to upgrade crafting components in bulk. Added new sleeping spots for Nibbles in V's apartment. Icon on a disposal crate will now turn red when player picks up a body instead of being grayed out. Landmine icon will now be grayed out after disarming it. It's now possible to use an elevator while carrying a body. Happy Together - Barry now has an updated, more unique appearance. Base item will now be highlighted green like other components if it's present in the Inventory when crafting the same item of a better quality.
Quests & Open World
- The Metro: Memorial Park dataterm should now properly count towards the Frequent Flyer achievement.
- Fixed glitches in Johnny's appearance occurring after buying the Nomad car from Lana.
- Fixed an issue in Gig: Until Death Do Us Part where it was not possible to use the elevator.
- Fixed an issue in Epistrophy where the player could get trapped in the garage if they didn't follow the drone and ran into the control room instead.
- Added a retrofix for the issue we fixed in 1.21, where Takemura could get stuck in Japantown Docks in Down on the Street - for players who already experienced it before update 1.21 and continued playing until 1.22, Takemura will now teleport to Wakako's parlor.
- Fixed an issue preventing the player from opening the phone in the apartment at the beginning of New Dawn Fades.
- Fixed an issue where the player could become unable to use weapons and consumables after interacting with a maintenance panel in Riders on the Storm.
Visual
- Fixed various issues related to clipping in NPCs' clothes.
UI
- Fixed an issue where subtitles were not properly aligned in the Arabic language version.
Stability and performance
- Various memory management improvements (reducing the number of crashes), and other optimizations.
- Improved GPU performance of skinning and cloth rendering.
Console-specific
- GPU and ESRAM optimizations and improvements on Xbox One.
- Memory management improvements on PlayStation 5.
Stadia-specific
- It's no longer possible to get soft locked in the key bindings menu if a keyboard is not available
“This is an important step in addressing the behavior of the police in our game. It should decrease the problem of NPCs spawning behind players' backs and create an impression that it takes some time for the police to arrive at the crime scene after the crime has been reported. We've also added a recon "drone" unit to create the feeling of the police assessing the situation.” — Patryk, Lead Gameplay Designer & Łukasz, Technical Design Coordinator, CD PROJEKT RED
"Analyzing feedback on our driving model suggested a lot of players were having issues with the speed of the steering. Most complaints came from players using keyboards on PC or were on platforms with lower frame rates, and centered around how hard it was to keep cars off the sidewalks and such.
We have added a Steering Sensitivity slider to the Options menu. This allows the steering speed for all vehicles and all input devices to be slowed down, without affecting the maximum turn radius.
When experiencing lower frame rates, our cars were harder to control. We traced this to some code that wasn't handling extreme changes in frame rate properly. The steering speed is now very consistent from 20 to 60+ FPS.
Last, we looked at a bunch of tweaks to individual cars and adjusted some of them that were too twitchy in low frame rates, including the player's Archer Hella." — Séamus, Senior Vehicle Programmer, CD PROJEKT RED
We're working on the issue where the conversation with Takemura may not start during the quest "Down on the Street" for @CyberpunkGame and plan to release a Hotfix to address it as soon as possible.
— CD PROJEKT RED CS (@CDPRED_Support) January 25, 2021
In the meantime, here's a potential workaround👇https://t.co/ujjxb8snGu
In this update we focused on various stability improvements, which you can find outlined in the patch notes below. We will continue this work in patch 1.2 and other upcoming updates. At the same time we will keep fixing the bugs you encounter and listening to your feedback on how to improve the overall game experience.
Stability
Various stability improvements including:
- Memory usage improvements in various systems within the game: characters, interactions, navigation, in-game videos (news, tv, etc.), foliage, laser effects, minimap, devices, AI, street traffic, environmental damage system, GPU-related, and more.
- Various crash fixes (related to, among others, loading saves, game opening/closing and Point of No Return).
Quests/Open World
- Fixed an issue where calls from Delamain would end immediately and seem like they cannot be picked up in Epistrophy.
- Fixed an issue where players would not receive calls from Delamain when approaching relevant vehicles in Epistrophy.
- Fixed an issue where the objective could get stuck on "Answer the call from Mr. Hands" in M'ap Tann Pèlen.
- Fixed an issue where Judy could teleport underground in Pyramid Song.
- Fixed an issue where it would be impossible to talk to Zen Master in Poem of The Atoms.
- Fixed an issue where Takemura wouldn't call in Down on the Street.
- Fixed an issue where Jackie could disappear in The Pickup.
- Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to get out of the car in The Beast in Me: The Big Race.
- Fixed an issue where players could stop receiving calls and messages after moving too far away from A Day In The Life area.
- Fixed an issue where opening the package wouldn't update Space Oddity.
- Retro-fixed the saves affected by a rare issue where speaking to Judy in Automatic Love would be impossible due to an invisible wall. The underlying issue is under investigation.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from collecting the reward in Gig: Freedom of the Press. The quest will auto-complete for those who could not collect the reward previously, and the reward will be provided automatically.
- Fixed an issue where Delamain would remain silent throughout Epistrophy if the player initially refused to help him.
UI
- Fixed an issue where prompt for exiting braindance could be missing.
- Removed an invalid item from loot.
Visual
- Fixed an issue where a grenade's trajectory could be displayed in photo mode.
- Fixed particles' hue appearing pink when viewed close up.
- Fixed cars spawning incorrectly in Reported Crime: Welcome to Night City.
Achievements
- Fixed an issue where completing one of theassaults in progress in Santo Domingo would sometimes not contribute towards progression for The Jungle achievement, preventing its completion.
Miscellaneous
- Addressed the issue responsible for saves getting oversized (related to the modifier indicating if the item is crafted), and trimmed the excess size from already existing saves (note: this won’t fix PC save files corrupted before 1.06 update).
- Fixed an issue where input could stop registering upon opening the weapon wheel and performing an action.
- Fixed an issue where the "Continue" button in the Main Menu could load an end game save.
PlayStation-specific
- Performance optimization of crowds on PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5.
- Various crash fixes on PlayStation 4.
Xbox-specific
- Improved memory usage for character creation, mirrors, scanning, camera remote control, menus (inventory, map) on Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox One S.
PC-specific
- It will now be possible to obtain achievements while in Steam offline mode. Note: Offline mode needs to be enabled before starting the game. This change does not work retroactively.
- Addressed the game startup crashes related to loading cache on NVIDIA graphics cards.
Stadia-specific
- Concert audio should no longer be inaudible in Never Fade Away.
- Fixed corrupted textures on several melee weapons.
- Tweaked default deadzone settings to be more responsive. Note: the change will not affect settings unless they’re set to default.
Powered by a suite of ray-tracing effects covering reflections, global illumination, shadows, and more, seeing Cyberpunk 2077 in motion is, well, next level. Being able to walk from an apartment building onto a busy Heywood intersection and not only have that be seamless and devoid of a loading screen but feel real is something else. There’s no doubt that what CDPR has pulled off here is nothing short of a technical feat, and in partnering with NVIDIA the results can be seen the moment you fire up the game on the latest GeForce RTX 30 Series graphics card.
The magic though, lies with DLSS -- NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling, AI-based rendering that not only improves performance at higher resolutions (with or without ray-tracing), but presents an image as crisp and detailed as its natively rendered counterpart. What makes the DLSS implementation in Cyberpunk 2077 so incredible is not that graphics hardware might struggle to keep up when it's turned off, but that it allows the game to look this good in the first place.
That little note above is not there to merely add context to this review, but to highlight how an experience can change based on the platform on which it is experienced. In the case of CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, you could say that our review setup is something of a best-case scenario - the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX hardware, a vibrant 4K LG OLED display, immersive sound in the form of studio-grade speakers, and a brand-new controller.
This is not to say you need the above to get the most out of Cyberpunk 2077 on PC -- it scales well across a wide range of hardware configuration -- it’s simply, again, context. As per our review in progress we noted that stepping onto the streets of Night City for the first time can be overwhelming due to the sheer level of detail on display. On a high-end rig it is… breathtaking.
Choose Your Upbringing
We mentioned The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and all previous entries from series-handler, and best New Kid on the self-management Gaming Block, or the “Donny” of gaming, CD Projekt RED. What’s different this time around is in antithesis to how the studio lauded their previous efforts -- “The World Doesn’t Need a Hero, it Needs a Professional”. That marketing line rang truest in The Witcher, because you played as an established character with a full backstory. In Cyberpunk, however, you are master of your origins domain.
In the truest RPG sense, you create your character; male, female, binary, fluid… the choice is yours. But expansive to this oldest of gaming options for the truly hardcore out there, is a prefabricated starting point. You can choose between three distinct cultural allegiances. And these will reflect your starting point in the game. If you consider another very popular RPG series, The Elder Scrolls, your intro regardless of allegiance was always the same. Your story started *here*. In Cyberpunk 2077, depending on said allegiance you start elsewhere, and your path to becoming a Cyberpunk in the year 2077 is unique and different not only based on all of the above, but also on decisions you make along the way. In many ways, this opens the massive game up to replayability -- a slice of design brilliance that will no doubt keep eager Nomads, Street Kids or Corpos coming back for more.