What the hell is wrong with CD Projekt Red?
That’s probably the thought that’s going through a lot of people’s heads right now. In the past few months, this once renowned golden beacon of the gaming community has been taking one hell of a beating. From harsh criticisms online to class action lawsuits there is little doubt that CDPR has fallen from their very high pedestal. And they have a long way to go to ever earn back the public trust that they clearly took for granted.
Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the biggest embarrassments in gaming history. Overpromised, but greatly undelivered. At release, the game suffered from many cut content, an abundance of bugs, performance issues, and frequent crashes. It’d be challenging to come up with the mental gymnastics to call this game a finished product. It’s early access at best.
For months, players have been forced to be patient. Even with numerous hotfixes and updates to the game, it is nowhere near the completed state it should’ve been in. But maybe that could all turn around some time soon? CDPR recently announced on Twitter about the upcoming Patch 1.20 which was an update many of us were looking forward to since 1.10 in January.
The tweet shares with us some insight about some key details regarding 1.20.
While reading through I was initially giddy with excitement. I had placed Cyberpunk 2077 on hold till they could at least patch the game enough to be tolerable. And I’m very much excited to get back into Night City. But as I read through the announcement and saw the video clips they had posted, I had to ask myself…
Was this a joke?
Granted, another tweet from them claimed that this was only a couple of changes that Patch 1.20 was going to introduce so I have no idea if other changes were going to be more significant. But looking at the key elements of this update, I can’t help but be disappointed and angry. All this time, and this was the best they could do?
First, there’s the infamous police problem that all of us were experiencing.
At the current moment if you were to commit a crime, police would spawn exactly behind you where you weren’t looking. Doesn’t matter if you’re on top of an isolated rooftop. Doesn’t matter if you’re in an enclosed room with only one entrance. Police officers and drones would instantly teleport to your behind to dish out some corrupt justice.
This is massively immersion breaking and possibly the biggest problem Cyberpunk 2077 has to face. So how does 1.20 address this?
I’ll tell you how it doesn’t address it, by adding actual competent AI. Instead it seems CDPR took the easy way out and just increased the spawn distance for police personnel. There are no police cars arriving on the scene. No Max Tac rappelling down from above. Police officers just happen to be a block away closing in on your position. This poor band aid solution to a serious problem the game is facing.
The one neat touch to the police update was the recon drone arriving (or “spawning” into the scene) to give the illusion that police personnel are surveying the situation.
It isn’t all bad. Next up on the list is an update regarding handling vehicles. This new update promises more fluid control when driving vehicles so we don’t accidentally end up driving on the sidewalk and having the police teleport to the scene of multiple hit and runs.
Unfortunately this seems to be the only part of the patch that seems somewhat satisfactory. The next two are so lackluster I have to wonder why CDPR decided to highlight them.
If your vehicle gets stuck on a ledge, there’s now wiggle room for you to push it off. While I can be thankful for this, it feels like an update that should be on the lower end of the priority list. This part of the patch isn’t a bad thing, but it feels so lackluster from the game’s more pressing issues. Why is this one of the key elements of this patch?
The dodge ability has been long since complained by the players. How often was it that we tried to peak from a corner only to accidentally dodge to the side and into the line of view of the people trying to kill us? All they needed to do was give us a separate configuration for dodging. How was this not fixed months ago?
The fact that CD Projekt Red made the announcement as blog from the Night City news station as if to be immersive to what’s happening in Night City is insulting. This patch isn’t worth the wait. It feels like they tried to make it sound like a big deal to at least fulfill the bare minimum of what they promised a month ago.
This is pathetic. CDPR can be better than this.