On Tuesday we got the big “Next Generation” patch for Cyberpunk 2077, and last night I finally got around to popping my head in to play with a few new features. Cyberpunk was easily my favorite game of 2020… but that was largely because I was playing on the PC with a pretty beefy system. If you had the bare minimum of specs or were on one of the consoles… your experience with this game was significantly different. Essentially I had the privilege of a great experience, but I know that for most people… that was not the case. With this patch however I am hoping the rest of the world can start to get the experience that I had.
To be honest it isn’t like CD Project Red had been slacking on updates because the game was already significantly different from the one that released a year and some roughly fourteen months ago. This is essentially the thirteenth patch that we have gotten from the release of the game. Not all of them added significant features, but in truth quite a few of them were rather lengthy. This one however seems to add more new systems and features and places the game on what seems to be extremely sturdy footing. If you want to check out the full list of changes the patch notes can be found here.
One of the most significant changes is to the way that driving works in the game. Suffice to say that driving… especially with WASD on a keyboard felt awful. There were a number of tweaks that you could make to your configuration to make it manageable, but it always felt like you were riding a thin line between being in control and sideswiping an entire district full of people. I managed to win all of the racing mini-games with a keyboard… but it was a constant challenge. Now things are just easier and the turning radius of your vehicle feels way more sticky and less likely to side out of control. This also means that I am going to have to essentially unlearn the behaviors that I have been using to account for the awful system, but it is very much a welcome change. Your vehicle feels like it has more weight to it and acceleration curves have been adjusted to account for this, and braking feels more significant.
Something that players have been begging for since the release of this game, is a way to legitimately change your the appearance of your V. Sure modders have sprung forth to fix this problem, but now it is super simple to change your appearance at pretty much any time. When you look in the mirror in your apartment you will now see an option to dive into the appearance modification interface, with unfortunately fem/masc body/voice/genitalia options being locked. I am guessing there are too many quest decisions locked to the gender options that it would be challenging to shift that mid save. However this should solve some of the issues of folks who created a V, thought they looked cool… then had one or two features that ended up bugging the hell out of them while playing the actual game. My first Masc V absolutely had this problem, where the lighting in character creation was wildly different than that of the game and I did not love my chosen appearance.
What I spent most of my time playing with however was the housing options. I am a sucker for housing in games and I am so glad to see Cyberpunk 2077 actually fleshing this out a bit. Firstly you can take your original apartment and give it a makeover by choosing one of a handful of preset styles. I would have rather had something where we could actually decorate the apartment ourselves… but this is at least something. I chose the Neon Sands theme for my original apartment which gives it a sort of neon yellow and mauve appearance with new textures being applied to the carpet and accent wall panels. I dig it quite a bit and fits my Nomad Fem V that I was last playing.
There are four new apartments added to the game. The cheapest of these is Northside in Watson and it has an Arcade cabinet and feels very small and cozy. The next would be Japantown/Westbrook and it has more of an Asian themed vibe and weirdly feels sorta like a hotel room. The next one would be Corpo Plaza in the City Center, and it feels a bit like the room you send the spider bot through in Konpeki Plaza. The most expensive and the one I went for is the Loft apartment which is located in The Glens just down the street from the Coyote bar in Heywood. One of the things I dig about the Glens apartment is that you have this really cool entrance with someone watching the door and a vending machine.
The apartment itself is this gorgeous loft with three levels. The main floor has the kitchen, pool table, and entertainment area. There is a small loft area that has a library and from what I can tell there are no intractables there. Then the big loft includes the bedroom and bathroom.
Here is another shot of the loft from the bedroom level and the views out of the city are phenomenal. One of the nice things about apartments is that all of our stashes are linked which means you will always have access to all of your gear regardless of which one you duck into. You can of course purchase ALL of the apartments but that would be pretty cost prohibitive until late game. I ultimately plan on doing this with my current play-through of the game, because why the hell not.
One of the cool things I noticed is that a bunch of the objects are have unique interactions. For example you can attempt to play pool… fail to hit the ball into the pocket and then flip off the table. You can turn on the television and instead of just having to play random things… you can actually flip between what appears to be three unique channels. A number of things give you buffs for example if you take a shower you get a refreshed buff that regenerates health during combat up to 60% for an hour. If you make a pot of coffee you get the Energized buff that gives you +25% max Stamina and +30% stamina regeneration for an hour. If you sleep in your apartment you get the rested buff which increases skill experience by 20% for an hour and regenerates any missing health.
There a ton of other changes including item cost balancing and an increase in credit gains… as well as a number of new weapons added into the game. My focus however was on the housing systems and trying to determine if driving actually worked well. I am sure I will explore some of the other changes over time. Essentially if you had been sitting on the fence about Cyberpunk 2077… this might be a time for you to check it out. If you have a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X/S you can also check out the game for free right now as they are running a trial. It seems like you download the full game and then are put on a 5 hour timer to get as far as you can within that time. If you like it, you can purchase the game and carry the save over, if not you can uninstall it and move on with your life but I believe the save will stick around in case you ever change your mind.
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