CD Projekt’s infamous RPG is a hot mess and a must-play.
Both can be true at once.
Writing anything good aboutCyberpunk 2077can feel a little like defending the indefensible.
It is also, honestly, quite a good game.
And those two things can be true at once!
Playing around with the latest “next-gen” patch only brings it into sharper focus.
you could have multiple apartments now.
you’re able to change your hair.
The purpose of all this is “quality of life”, a term I’ve come to loathe.
Some of it’s reasonable (Why don’t crowds react to you properly?
Why are some perks a bit useless?
Why does this motorcycle turn like a bus?)
and some less so (Why can’t I have an auto-walk button?
The patch is an attempt at getting to all that.
There are more realistic crowd behaviours - although honestly, only kind of.
The map’s a bit easier to read, in a way.
Guns are cheaper and motorbikes can now actually turn around.
But thinking about them really only gets me to one conclusion: I simply do not care.
This is, really, the entirety of what you should pay attention to in Cyberpunk.
Treat its weapons like props, its gear like costume design.
Treat everything else like noise.
The good Cyberpunk is weird and sincere and uncomfortable to be in.
It’s suffocating, oppressive, miserable, provocative.
It is (still) annoyingly loud.
It’s ugly as sin.
And it couldn’t have been made by anything but humans.
You don’t make “quality of life” improvements to art.
