If you were waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to be fixed before playing it… keep waiting

Cyberpunk 2077 is an Early Access game. It wasn't labeled that way at launch, but it should have been (and while it may not have sold quite so many copies, it probably would have cut down on the outrage from players at the state of it). Cyberpunk 2077 was far from finished when CDPR pushed it out the door a couple years too early, and despite a massive patch released earlier this week that made a number of improvements, it's still far from finished today.

Cyberpunk 2077's 1.2 patch, released earlier this week, weighs in at 33GB and includes nearly 500 fixes for the PC version of the game. That's a hefty patch, and it contains tons of important fixes for quests, gameplay systems, and the many, many, many bugs Cyberpunk 2077 shipped with. Despite the surprisingly long list of fixes and tweaks, the experience post-patch is ultimately about the same. 

After playing a couple hours with the 1.2 patch, I can't say I really noticed much of a difference. Yes, the patch made it so cops and police drones spawn a bit further away when you commit a crime, but that doesn't really make their response feel any less ridiculous, especially when you're in a remote area with hardly anyone around and can see them blip into the world. And despite the swarms of teleporting police, they're still incredibly easy to evade because they give up the moment you're out of sight and never jump into cars to pursue you.

Post-patch, I still get the bug where I'm suddenly thrown hundreds of meters away from the spot I was standing. I still regularly see NPCs floating in the air. I still see those ridiculous 2D cars that are supposed to simulate traffic at a distance, and I still see them in places where there's no need to simulate traffic at a distance. I still can't get the second part of the vending machine quest to kick off, despite the quest marker pointing me to the spot I need to go to kick it off. I don't have any mod conflicts, either—this is a completely clean install of the patched game. It's just still heavily broken.

The first thing I did after installing the patch was run to the spot outside V's apartment, where on day one I witnessed cars repeatedly and hilariously smashing into a barricade on the sidewalk. They're still doing that. There are fewer cars on the road now, which makes it less noticeable, but every car that does go down that road still smashes immediately into that barrier and sends hunks-o-car flying through the air. It's still funny to me, but it demonstrates just how much more there is to fix. (Though at least now V sleeps on their bed like an actual human being would.)

Some players are having an easier time post-patch, reporting that driving is much improved on PC using the keyboard now that there's a steering sensitivity slider. Some say performance has improved as well, with more consistent fps and quicker load times. Naturally, as happens on PC with patches for just about every game ever made, other players are reporting a worse experience. More crashes, lower fps, and new quest bugs in place of old ones. The subreddit is still packed with glitch gifs, as it has been since day one.

I do think Cyberpunk 2077 is still worth playing, both when it launched and right now. There are lots of great characters and some really interesting quests. It looks amazing and it's a beautiful world (if a rarely rewarding one) to explore. Yes, the glitches and bugs and half-assed systems like police responders can grate and frustrate, but the goofy physics bugs can be amusing, too, and at times the characters and story are engaging enough that even distracting bugs don't completely ruin them.

But if you had decided to wait until the game was really finished until you played it, or were planning to pick up where you left off once everything was fixed, you've still got plenty of waiting to do. No single patch, no matter how big, is going to result in Cyberpunk 2077 suddenly becoming the game it was meant to be. It's going to take a long time, and lots of work, and dozens of patches, until the game really feels like it's finished. If that's what you're waiting for, there's no need to wake up just yet, samurai.