Cyberpunk 2077’s new patch initially didn’t impress me that much. After dedicating an hour-long deep dive into what could have been a three-minute trailer, it felt like CDPR was overhyping a pretty regular patch where the biggest improvement was the new-gen availability. Considering, in a shocking display of anti-consumer hostility we had long been told not to play this PS4 game on the PS4, and I myself had played it on PS5, the game officially launching on PS5 did not seem exciting. Shiny puddles will not fix Cyberpunk. It was just about enough to pull me back in, and it’s the small things that are making the difference.
I beat Cyberpunk 2077 in about 25 hours at launch, then went back a month or so later and played at a more leisurely pace, soaking up every inch of the game in around 100 hours and change. This was a little bit of a detriment for the 1.5 update, however. When I dipped back into the game to customise my V, I had nothing to do.
If I had a few more quests leftover, then I could have taken my V out for a test drive. As it stands, all I really have left to do is snitch to the cops, buy cars I can’t afford, or play through the final mission once more. Having seen all of the endings already, I decided (against my better judgement) to help the police. With Panam still off-limits, my V is stuck in a relationship with River anyway, so I guess I can’t say “fuck the police” when I’m already, you know, fucking the police.
There isn’t much to these little missions. Part of me ignored them initially because they seemed to be contradictory to the game’s punk sensibilities, but mostly it was because they were very boring. The Cyberpsycho missions are also all about helping the police, but they’re some of the best in the game, so I swept them all up as soon as my level and equipment allowed me too. Finding the Cyberpsycho in the ice box is probably the highlight of my entire journey through Night City. The regular police missions though are filler in a game that didn’t even have time to finish its main content before launch. TLDR; they bad.
Still, with so many new games launching over the next two months, I don’t have time for another playthrough from scratch. The 1.5 patch, while underwhelming, has both my professional interest and my professional courtesy. Having written about the game extensively before it launched, during the game’s rocky arrival, and in the months since, I feel compelled to soak up the game’s biggest update so far. I’ve criticised Cyberpunk plenty, and even if the update’s reveal didn’t provide much hope, I owe it a fair shot.
Like everything in Cyberpunk 2077, update 1.5 is a dichotomy of itself. The game broke sales records and crashed stock prices. It sold a transgender character creator and trapped us in a binary world. It asked us to be a punk who helped the police. And now, in 1.5, it promises big changes but only the small ones ever land.
Changing V barely counts, it’s laughable that it didn’t exist at launch. The new apartment mechanics are meh. Ray tracing can’t help a world that feels dead. Driving is better, but still not good enough. All of the major changes miss the mark, but the smaller ones hint at how great this world could be with a little more love and a lot more time.
I always loved the rain in Cyberpunk 2077, and it’s even better in 1.5. People on the street react to you now. Since I don’t chuck away my best knives anymore, that means I can use the knife throwing perk again. I no longer feel like I’m seeing the same NPCs everywhere I go, and the clubs feel more alive, and offer a much bigger difference as you walk into one from the street. From what I’ve read, the romances feel deeper too, with flourishes being added around stories that were already some of the game’s strongest. These aren’t major upgrades, but they’re the changes that make the game feel better than it was. The bigger additions just make it feel, well, bigger.
Cyberpunk 2077 can’t be fixed at this stage. It came out with too many rips, too many holes, and they can never be patched up, or patched out. A major story DLC might turn it around, but even then too much of the foundation of what Cyberpunk 2077 could have been is missing. It will never be the game it could have been. But as more and more smaller upgrades arrive, the glimpse into what we might have played shimmers that little bit brighter.
Cyberpunk’s biggest improvements make the smallest of differences when so much of the game falls short on its potential, and always will. But those tiny tweaks, the ones that chip away at the stonework piece by piece to bring out the sculpture underneath, make the game worth revisiting. If only I had something to do…
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