Huge Cyberpunk 2077 Patch Fixed Almost Everything

CDPR has revealed and detailed a major new patch for Cyberpunk 2077 that is available now, and the studio has apparently been hard at work on this one. The list of fixes, tweaks, and additions is huge, and covers everything from AI behavior to re-balancing skills, adding new elements to the world, and overhauling the driving model. Night City is about to go through some big changes.

Perhaps the most important are those that CDPR groups under ‘Living City’, because there’s a truckload of modifications to the enemy and NPC AI. The patch notes list fixes for everything that non-player characters ever do in the game. The following is a partial list taken from the complete patch notes, and there are modifications to:

“Taking cover, positioning, reloading, equipping weapons, dodging, blocking and many others […] hit reactions and death animations […] Enemies are now much better at blocking and evading (Kerenzikov) attacks […] Further diversification of melee and ranged combat behaviors for different factions: reckless, aggressive, balanced, defensive and cautious […] Followers now contribute more in combat […] Numerous fixes and balance changes to netrunner combat.”

On a more deep level, there are also fixes to how crowds react, with certain NPCs now willing to get aggressive if you’re out of line, and generally improved reactions to the player, better pathfinding, and less obvious de-spawning. This applies to NPC vehicles also, which as well as receiving visual modifications on their turning and general movement within traffic, will now react to danger, or being bumped into, and NPC passengers can now die in car crashes. And if you’re being chased by the cops, you can opt to hide-out in the area they’re looking.

On which note the game’s driving model has a raft of improvements across-the-board, including a more in-depth clutch and gearbox simulation, as well as a new ‘Burn Out Mode’ that builds on the way you could pull donuts. “The old system only allowed rotating on the spot, now try modulating the inputs to see what you can do! Try brake stands, donuts, drifts or heat up the tires to do a drag-race style launch with a High Grip boost.” So basically you can now take corners at high speeds and drift.

Alongside these improvements, there are changes to the open-world ‘fixer’ quests. “V now has to stand with fixers throughout Night City. New fixer gigs will appear gradually in sets as your standing increases, and a fixer will offer you another set of gigs only after the previous set is completed in a given district.

There are excellent many fixes to individual quests as well as some that have been added to. Most notably, the affairs with Panam, Kerry, River, and Judy have been given a pass and now feature new messages and interactions. There are also “new interactions in the homes of love interests, including sleeping in bed with a given partner.” As Keanu himself said, it’s always nice when it’s nice.

You can now rent 4 more apartments by going to them or using the in-game EZEstates website. This option is unlocked after finishing the Playing for Time quest, and funny enough “it’s possible to rent all apartments at the same time.” Landlord of Night City! All your apartments will share the same stash, and there’s also now an option to customise V’s existing apartment.

As well as the interior decor, you can also now tweak certain features of your appearance at the mirrors in apartments and safehouses: Hair, makeup, piercings and so on. There are also additional options in the character creator.

There are a few new weapons and attachments, new poses in photo mode (including some for Johnny Silverhand), economy-related changes, a rebalance of clothing mods, tweaks to make the ‘Easy’ difficulty a little more challenging, and the introduction of two new stats for V.

This latest change goes alongside a re-balancing of the perks system and a little shuffling of the skill tree: Meaning all players essentially get a free character re-spec, because the patch will reset all skill points.

A UI overhaul sees advancements to map readability and functionality, as well as different new interfaces for things like the ‘skip time’ option, and advancements across notifications and pop-ups. There are also some PC-specific extras:

• Added a benchmark mode. You can find it in Settings > Run Benchmark.
• Added a “Toggle walking” option when playing with the keyboard. It is activated by pressing G during exploration. The key can be rebinded in Settings.
• Enabled transparent ray-traced reflections on glossy coating of some cars.
• Enabled Variable Rate Shading (VRS). This feature boosts rendering performance and visual quality by varying the shading rate for different regions of the frame. Available only on compatible hardware.
• Fixed an issue which blocked Resolution Scaling on AMD graphics cards when Ray Tracing was enabled.

This patch is huge, so we’ll end on a few of the more random additions: V can now smash bodily through the glass that has been fractured; Throwing knives are no longer lost after each throw, but return on a cooldown; Players can reject non-essential holo calls and mute the NCPD dispatcher; “Drastically reduced the amount of loot lying around as a part of an effort to allow players more breathing room to experience quest scenes and the world itself” and, finally, “Added a few secrets in Night City to be discovered by players.”

The latest patch came in at 47.09GB in size. The complete notes can be read here.