Developer CD Projekt Red announced new details on the second major update to Cyberpunk 2077 on Friday, couched as an in-fiction news broadcast.
By Charlie Hall
According to the developer, the 1.2 update for Cyberpunk 2077 will address issues related to police response to player actions, and add more nuance and control to driving and moving on foot. The patch does not have a release date.
Players who commit crimes in Night City, either purposefully or not, may have noticed the unnerving speed with which the Night City Police Department responds. CD Projekt Red says it’s aware of the situation, and is making some adjustments to where and when the cops show up with guns blazing.
Law enforcement should no longer appear directly behind the player, and will take more time to respond in general. Beat cops will also be preceded by a flying drone, a new addition to the game.
Developers admit that driving has been a little twitchy since launch, especially on PC. Turns out that the issue was complicated by the game’s frame rate.
“When experiencing lower frame rates, our cars were harder to control,” CDPR said. “We traced this to some code that wasn’t handling extreme changes in frame rate properly. The steering speed is now very consistent from 20 to 60+ FPS.”
Individual cars were also tweaked in detail, including the player’s starting vehicle. CD Projekt Red also noted that cars would sometimes get hung up on environmental details, including curbs and bollards. The 1.2 update will add an “Unstuck feature” which will allow players to rock vehicles back and forth while holding down the accelerator.
Finally, players will now have more fine control over keyboard bindings related to simple movement. That includes a rework of the game’s dodge action. You can find more details on the official blog post.
Cyberpunk 2077 was perhaps the most highly anticipated game of the last decade, but failed to meet player expectations at launch. Refunds were issued to consumers directly by the developer, and the game itself was even removed from sale at some online storefronts.
CD Projekt co-founder and co-chief executive Marcin Iwiński took the blame himself, stating in January that the company had “underestimated the task” of getting the game running at an acceptable level on last-generation consoles.
So far, the game has had multiple urgent “hotfixes” — including one to confront a security issue that could put user devices at risk. CD Projekt isn’t done yet, not by a long shot.
According to a development roadmap the studio released in January, the next phase includes the refinement and release of free downloadable content and a free update to enhance the game on current-generation consoles.
At this time, Cyberpunk 2077 is playable on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X via backward compatibility only.
Originally published at Polygon