As Cyberpunk 2077 has been repeatedly updated, the focus has primarily been on the improvements made to the performance of CD Projekt RED’s open-world adventure, especially on console where – let’s be fair – it launched as more than a bit of a pig. But returning to Night City, I’m stunned by the depth of these updates. And I am surprised they’ve not been talked about more.
I played Cyberpunk 2077 on PC, back before it was released to the world and chaos ensued. At the time, I thought the game was, y’know, pretty great. It wasn’t perfect. Its love of sledgehammer-level subtlety grated, and it wasn’t a GTA-quality open world (though it was arguably never going to be so, coming from a studio a fraction of the size of Rockstar). But it was an interesting, exciting open world, with some gloriously breakable RPG systems, decent shooting, and a branching story structure that I honestly found to be surprisingly compelling and engaging. I spent about 60 hours with it and loved it.
Then it came to consoles. Oh, god, it came to consoles. Those console versions were what they were, right? A mess. Launched a thousand memes. A high-end PC experience that was beset by some bugs, but no more than your average open world game release, suddenly gave way to brutal bug compilation videos of a game in terminal decline, as systems both graphical and mechanical seemed to collapse in on themselves and implode.
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