CD Projekt Red (CDPR) has detailed the improvements it plans to bring to Cyberpunk 2077 in its upcoming 1.2 patch. The announcement, written as an in-universe newscast, details planned quality-of-life improvements including police not instantly appearing when you commit a crime, an improved driving experience, and a setting that should prevent you from accidentally dodging into traffic or off a building.
While the game has received a lot of criticism for being generally buggy — and, in some respects, unfinished — it does seem like CDPR is trying to address some of the most memed-on complaints. In the section of the blog post about the improved police response, there’s a jokey in-universe anecdote that captures an experience many players will have had:
“My choom, Jake, was in a shoot-out with Tyger Claws the other day, when he missed a shot and hit a pedestrian on the other side of the street. In an instant, the NCPD swarmed up on him and put him down. It’s like they appeared out of thin air right behind his back! It’s too brutal of a response for a regular accidental murder if you ask me!” — Mike from Kabuki, 28.
The driving experience in the game is also, uh, not very good. CDPR is hoping to make it better by improving the steering response (you can see a comparison video below) and making it so your car can automatically get unstuck if it finds itself resting on a barrier or other object. While the improved steering should help, there’s also plenty of other issues with driving (such as collision detection) that will have to be addressed before driving becomes, you know, fun.
The patch was initially supposed to come out in February but was delayed when the studio fell victim to a ransomware attack. CDPR is now aiming to release it in “the second half of March.”
CDPR also seems to have heard feedback that this list of changes is rather small for a full point release; hours after we published this post, the company tweeted that there’ll be more, promising that “full patchnotes will be coming later.”
Gillean got her hands on just a couple of changes – full patchnotes will be coming later!
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) March 19, 2021
It’s now been around three months since the game was pulled from the PlayStation Store due to the immense number of bugs (and the fact that it was nearly unplayable on a base PlayStation 4). So far, Sony and CDPR haven’t responded to requests for comment on when the game will return to the platform, so it’s unclear if this patch will be enough to return the game to the platform’s online shop.
Update March 19th, 6:10PM ET: Added tweet from CDPR about full patchnotes.
