by JameCyberpunk 2077 was one of the most hotly anticipated games of the past decade. Developer CD Projekt Red (CDPR) had scored a huge hit with their previous release The Witcher 3, and following years of hype, impressive demo’s, high-profile media events, and repeated delays as the studio insisted the game had to be “perfect” before release, there was no way that Cyberpunk could fail to meet up to expectations.
At least, that’s what we all thought…
The Debacle
The farce of Cyberpunk’s original launch has been covered to death in the media already, so we’ll only give it a brief mention here; this title was a shambles. The furor amongst gamers was unprecedented; the game was completely unplayable on some last-gen versions of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which only just barely managed acceptable framerates on the newer Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 machines. Sony took the unprecedented move of pulling the game entirely from their online store. Microsoft was a little less harsh, but did offer full, no-quibble refunds to anybody that asked for one. Try getting that out of them for any other title.
It was a disaster and destroyed years of goodwill that the studio had built up among the games playing public.
The Road to Redemption
CDPR knew they couldn’t sweep this one under the rug – the game showed too much promise, and fans had been looking forward to it for years. No, the game needed to be fixed. They needed to do a “No Man’s Sky” – if you’re not family, that was another hugely-anticipated game that turned out to be hugely underwhelming on launch day. But the developer kept on working on it, with no guarantee it would be profitable for them to do so, winning themselves the kind of goodwill money simply can’t buy in the process.
Update 1.3 & Free DLC Push
In August 2021, a full eight months after the original release of the game, fans began to receive the 1.3 patch of the game. Fingers crossed, the patch should be available on all platforms within the next week or two. CDPR has certainly been listening to feedback from their customers. I’ve picked out a handful of the biggest fixes I personally cannot wait to finally see resolved in Update 1.3:
- Minimap zoom level is now more zoomed out whilst driving, making it much easier to navigate.
- Increased number of autosave and quick save slots on all platforms
- Added a filter for quest items in the backpack
- Bulk upgrading of crafting components
- Enemies will now detect the player slower or fast depending on currency difficulty setting
- Fix issue where crafting specs at clothing stores were only available on initial visit
- Rebalancing of loot drops
- Added new items to many vendors stock, as well as removing duplicate products
- Improved framerate consistency, especially during combat
- Rearrangement of quest shards into correct categories
This is just literally scratching the surface – there are numerous improvements to almost every one of the game’s missions and quests, too, so if you were one of the many fans left shocked and disappointed by the shocking state of the “gold” master of this game, you can read the full details here.
Will a full casino ever be realized, as fans asked for before release?
It seems frankly implausible that a city of the future would not have multiple casinos scattered throughout it, and whilst we got a look at an underground casino of sorts in the mission “Tyger & Vulture”, I couldn’t help but find myself wondering why I can’t play Blackjack or Poker for a chance at earning some extra Eurodollars.
I wasn’t expecting REAL gambling of course – I already know where to find the best Slingo casino games, and I like to keep that distinction clear between video gaming and pure casino gaming, but we were promised a real, living, breathing, city. There have long been rumors of a casino being built over at Westbrook that would be activated in a future DLC, but I’m not going to get my hopes up for now.
What makes this even more surprising, is that fans made their feelings clear on this subject long before the game was even released. Poker seems like the perfect game to partake in within this dystopian world, why isn’t it featured?
It’s possible that CDPR were scared off a little by the controversy surrounding gambling in video games caused by EA and their endless loot box obsession during the last few months prior to Cyberpunk’s eventual release date. But GTA and Cyberpunk occupy the same mature area of gaming, and the former now has its own fully fledged casino – The Diamond. Come on CDPR, give us a real casino in Cyberpunk 2077!
