Gaming History 101

Despite being released just over 4 years ago, there’s consistent draw to return to Cyberpunk 2077, an open world first-person RPG by developer CD Projekt Red (of The Witcher fame) based on a tabletop game simply entitled Cyberpunk. The first 15 months or so of this title’s life was a tragic tale of poorly optimized console versions that were borderline unplayable and drove players to avoid the game completely. At the time I first picked up and played the game, it was available on Playstation and Xbox for a mere $10 at big box retailers, the version I purchased at Best Buy even came with a free steelbook. Then came the big version 1.5 update that supported the new generation of consoles and ironed out a lot of the problems in February, 2022. Finally on September 21, 2023, the title was once again overhauled with a 2.0 update that provided gameplay changes, additional enhancements, and an expansion, Phantom Liberty, two days later. Needless to say the history of this title is a roller coaster that thankfully concludes in a redemption story.

I first took the plunge into Night City as protagonist V in May, 2022, on my Xbox Series X. Despite initial hesitations and a distaste for rewarding publishers that release games in unacceptable shape, I enjoyed it, completing a female run in 42 hours. Back then I remember feeling like the characters you meet, aside from Panam and Takemura, were largely throwaway with sudden breaks in their stories. I also remember thinking that many of the early systems were annoying, such as having to use spec points to do basic things like upgrade weapons and the armor system affecting your aesthetics prevented me from feeling like I was truly roleplaying V. Side content was also harder than I expected, especially hunting cyberpsychos that could kill you in a few shots but had to be taken down non-lethally in ways the game barely explained. In the end, I would consider it “good, but not great” (or 3.5/5 for those of you who just need a score).

Now playing the 2.2 release, not only has Cyberpunk 2077 changed significantly, but so has my PC hardware. These days my gaming PC consists of a 12th generation i7, an RTX 4070 TI, a lightening fast SSD, and 32GB of RAM to boot. As the release of Phantom Liberty hit the shelves of physical and virtual stores alike, I was tempted to dive back in. Given the very positive feedback of the 2.0 update, praise for the expansion, new ray tracing features (including full path tracing on PC), and a killer deal on the Ultimate Edition, I decided it was time for a replay on this newest and best version. Boy, am I glad I did.

While I have yet to play Phantom Liberty, in the last 2 weeks I’ve logged 34 hours in a new playthrough and it is already a whole new experience. The ray tracing features and upgraded graphics bring the already beautiful world of Night City to life with sharp detail and realism. Minor tech gripe: I don’t love the HDR implementation so I opted to let Windows 11 apply Microsoft’s auto HDR, which I find more appealing. On another tech note, I was worried about stuttering in the game – a problem that seems unavoidable on many PC big releases – but was pleased to find a smooth experience using the graphics preset auto-assigned by the game. While I’m not going to run down the massive 2.0 update changes, I will say that it was reassuring to see clothes no longer account for your armor (this has been relegated to cyberware) and crafting is now inherent to V’s abilities instead of part of a character build. I’m not sure if the game is less challenging, but the new ability trees allowed me to better craft my V for handling situations the way I prefer (stealth, non-lethal) so I’m finding all encounters to be less of a slog. The cyberpsychos also default to a non-lethal takedown, but you can find non-lethal mods to guns in any gun shop. One gripe, I do find with the newer version’s world is that both police and gangs seem to be more aggressive now, if you get on their bad side it can be annoying to shake them off. Still, it’s a small price to pay for a gameplay overhaul that seemed to fully address my issues and I’m betting this also applies to issues others had with the game that I haven’t noticed.

A side effect of enjoying this new world is that I want to spend more time in it, so I find myself taking on random side missions, gigs, and – God help me – even racing missions. What I didn’t expect was for it to open up more story-driven missions that allow me to get to know characters that I had no idea continued their stories. I did some digging and for whatever reason, Cyberpunk 2077 has a major problem with event-driven missions not triggering, which can lead you to never see them progress if you don’t know they exist. Those complaints I had the first time around with side characters seemingly dropping off the map, I now know were missions failing to trigger. Note: The next paragraph has very vague spoilers on some of this content.

I thought that Judy Alvarez just faded into the sunset after you wrap the Evelyn storyline, but it turns out she has a whole side quest that expands from that somber “just go” ending I experienced the first time. Hell, I didn’t even know she was a romance option! It was very clear she would have been into my female V, but as it turns out my initial playthrough just failed to trigger these missions. The same is true of Claire, the bartender at Afterlife, who I thought was getting me all psyched for a series of race missions only to never contact me again after completing the first one. Turns out, she does have a series of races that upon completion, reveals her story, which is both conflicted and personal. There’s even an interesting series of missions that come from clicking on a specific web site in game. All of these options were dead ends in my initial playthrough that I never knew existed because after completing a single mission, they drop off your board until you get a text from these people triggering it to return. Sadly, this has never been fully fixed as of version 2.2 when this was written, but CD Projekt Red has reported some fixes over updates that make these missions not triggering less common. What I’ve found has worked rather well is upon completing a mission with a major side character, I then go home, sleep 24 hours, go do some side content (missions, gigs, NCPD requests) in a district that doesn’t contain my apartment or the character, then return home and sleep again for 24 hours. It’s not fool-proof, I’ve got a mission I know continues that just isn’t triggering, but it helps. To anyone who hasn’t played the game, you want to be extremely slow and sparing with Takemura’s missions as they can quickly find you in the endgame. I was also told that Phantom Liberty is best played near the end of the game or at the clear point of no return, not from a challenge but from a story standpoint. Either way, this unfortunate series of mission bugs prevented me from getting some impressive storytelling, which hopefully others can avoid.

It’s great to be back in Night City as V and enjoying an enhanced version of Cyberpunk 2077 from the improved visuals to the redone gameplay, and playing missions that originally bugged for me. I get the feeling I’ll likely double my playtime when all is said and done, especially factoring in the expansion. While I mentioned PC enhancements, the console versions have also been upgraded and optimized to their capabilities, so this comment should apply to all players. If you haven’t touched this game before, or like me played before the expansion and 2.0 update, now is the perfect time to dive in.