Call it a glow-up, a rehabilitation, or simply a phoenix rising from the ashes; there is no mistaking that Cyberpunk 2077 is a game that has done more than merely weather the storm. It’s been a tumultuous saga of epic proportions, beginning with the turbulent launch that saw it suffer under the weight of expectation and criticism.
Cyberpunk 2077’s journey over the past three years has been nothing short of an equal-part redemption story and a poster child for not promising too much too soon.
Now, as CD Projekt RED finally reaps the fruits of its labor, the tale for the ages seems to be inching towards a triumphant climax.
When Cyberpunk 2077 debuted back in December 2020, it was met with scathing reviews ranging from mediocre to being a downright disappointing game. Complaints from both critics and players centered on performance issues and the lack of features as well as a plethora of bugs and glitches. The fact that the game had been yanked off the PlayStation Store due to these performance issues only served to further tarnish its reputation. The long-awaited RPG had a rocky beginning, and the steep road to recovery was riddled with detours and potholes.
However, CDPR refused to throw in the towel. They hunkered down and committed themselves to resolving the game’s underlying issues. The first major shift came about two years post-launch. Rather than focusing on expansion and DLC, the team devoted its time to optimizing performance and fixing bugs.
With the implementation of quality-of-life improvements and new gameplay additions, Cyberpunk 2077 began to rise from the ashes. The fruits of their labor were evident when, after nearly three years and half a million reviews, Cyberpunk 2077 finally attained a “Very Positive” review score on Steam, where 80% of players reviewed the game positively.
The fact that Cyberpunk 2077 has managed to claw its way to a ‘Very Positive’ rating is massive. It signifies that the majority of the players now acknowledge the remarkable turnaround the game has achieved since its initial release. To put things in perspective, this would have seemed like an unattainable feat when Cyberpunk 2077 launched to a polarizing reception in 2020. It’s not only the CDPR team celebrating; fans and players are recognizing the perseverance and tenacity that the team displayed in turning the game’s fate around.
What fueled this turnaround, you may ask? To answer that, one needs to recognize the core strength of Cyberpunk 2077.
Despite the initial backlash, Cyberpunk 2077 was always a fundamentally good game. Night City remains a vibrant setting. The core story and NPC side storylines were all fairly fantastic, and the first-person protagonist, V, was well-acted. It was the technical issues, the bugs, and the glitches, that were holding it back. Once these problems were addressed, the game had finally began to show its true potential.
The release of the “Overdrive” ray-tracing mode only solidified the game’s comeback. The game now stands as one of the best-looking PC games on the market, provided you have the gear to run the cutting-edge settings. Players’ reviews after these improvements started rolling in positive, slowly but steadily improving the game’s overall rating.
The next milestone in the game’s journey will be the imminent release of Phantom Liberty – its first and only expansion – on September 26. It promises not just new story components but also significant overhauls to skill trees, police AI, and several fundamental changes to the game to make it even better. The CDPR team hopes to learn from the original launch and aims to produce an expansion that’s great as is, not something that requires fixing post-release.
Despite the optimism surrounding Cyberpunk 2077, fans remain cautious about believing the hype. CDPR has committed a significant amount of time and resources to address the issues that plagued the game at launch and appears determined to continue improving the player experience. But, at the end of the day, it still fumbled the ball before and it might still happen again.
The good news is that the incoming expansion for Cyberpunk 2077 is just the start. Once it’s out, the game’s development team, led by a new face, can finally focus on the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. It isn’t scheduled to come out anytime soon at all. However, with all the painful and expensive mistakes CDPR has made in recent years, the hope is for the company to know better by now than to rush things.
