Cyberpunk 2077 : As Glitchy As It Is Glorious

For what feels like the millionth time we are talking about Cyberpunk 2077, the most hyped game in history. For what feels like the millionth time we are talking about a game that has incredible hype behind it only to fall flat on release, this time do to how incredibly broken an experience many are having with this title due to it feeling unpolished, unfinished, and incredibly buggy.

To be clear there is a great game underneath all of these problems. I have not yet finished the main campaign, and this is not our first official OLIP review, but I am about 35 hours into my first playthrough and playing on my midrange pc I have not had many issues or experienced many of the reported bugs. That said, from nightmare fuel texture glitches as seen above, T-posing characters all over the place, bugged out AI not reacting to being shot, fixers appearing in front of players instead of on the phone, floating guns, floating corpses, the game is infested with bugs (I work in pest control so I should know lol).

Maybe I’m just incredibly accustomed to extremely buggy experiences, and I definitely have the benefit of playing on PC rather than on console so I am having an easier time running the game, but I haven’t found it all game ruining as yet. (Take that with a grain of salt, I still play Fallout 76.) While Cyberpunk isn’t alone in having a buggy release, few games do recover from such poor releases. When discussing it on Friday’s podcast I couldn’t name any single player games that have made dramatic improvements in terms of reception. Fallout 4 recovered, but was never really beloved. Mortal Kombat X for pc sort of recovered, but fighting games generally sell much better of console and that’s not really a single player focused game. Mass Effect Andromeda did eventually get to a much better state, and since releasing on steam has garnered very positive reviews. But none of these have made the full comeback. None of them have clawed from unplayable to wide acclaim even if the people who did stick with, or came back to those games were ultimately rewarded.

Then it hit me. One of the worst releases of all time in terms of bugs and brokeness belongs to the Dark Knight himself. Batman Arkham night originally launched in June of 2015, and was so broken on console that people couldn’t run it. Arkham Knight was the fastest selling game of 2015, beating out the Witcher 3 and had plenty of hype and build up around it. Yet when it released on June 23rd the PC version would crash, glitch out, freeze up entire systems, the game for pc was utterly unplayable, so much so that it was taken down within days. Yes, despite us not remembering this when discussing Amazon’s recent experience un-launching a game, Arkham Knight was taken down in 2015 for four months before returning to the store front in October of 2015. Since it’s return the most recent (final?) chapter of the Arkham series has garnered 37,000 reviews with an overall score of 84% (very positive) with over 1,000 of those reviews coming in the last 30 days with a score of 94%. It’s initial release on Metacritic had a Metascore of 70 and a user score of 3.5/5, so over time it’s reception has jumped significantly. No Man’s Sky is another example of a game that has vastly improved in it’s reception over time and really for a very long time was more single player focused, though I’m not sure it really draws enough parallels to be a good comparison as it is a fairly unique game.

While these overall numbers pale in comparison to Cyberpunks 160,000+ reviews with an overall steam rating of 79% it’s not an unreasonable assumption to think that as the game improves over time. But will this game ever live up to the hype? No. That’s not the games fault either. The story is great. The graphics (when working properly) are great. The guns feel good, the rpg elements feel pretty good, gameplay overall, when it’s working correctly, is extremely satisfying. As a huge Fallout fan I wish this was similar to the game I got instead of Fallout 76 on it’s release, yet another game that has improved a ton since it’s release but due to how poorly that release was handled will never recover and 76 will forever be memed and mean something is bad or broken. This game is good, arguably great, underneath all of the bugs. But if/when will it ever be the game so many built it up to be?

The short answer is, never. No game can ever live up to that level of hype. The expectations were so high, many people were taking weeks off of work for this game months in advance. The game sold 8 million copies through pre-orders alone. 8,000,000 copies. That doesn’t include day one sales. The game made it’s development costs back before day one was over, in spite of people realizing quickly many of the issues it had. To be clear, I’m not calling for Cyberpunk to un-release until it’s fixed. Cat’s out of the bag. The question is how quickly can they get it fixed. Those calling this a reason to not do cross-gen releases are mistaken in my opinion because this game has been in development for YEARS after being first announced in 2013. What feels like 2077 years later it released, in this broken state, after not allowing reviewers to test it on console as the broken mess it is. We know why they did that now, and it leads me to believe that while this game could still wind up great, it also tells me two things : I think CDPR got that “Bioware magic” level of “we can make this great game and crunch it out at the end” while focusing almost half of it’s budget on marketing and clearly didn’t come all the way through on that, and they couldn’t justify another delay. CDPR has made many consumer friendly moves including free next gen upgrades, DRM free games via their own storefront GOG, stating that they are keeping their pricing at $60, the list goes on and on. But releasing this game in this state, after delaying it 3 times, and not telling people in advance “hey just so you know we have lots of problems that will be fixed” does hurt a lot of that good will they have. Is this their Andromeda moment? Is Cyberpunk Multiplayer (releasing next year) their Anthem? Their 76 to this Fallout 4? Who knows. Only time will tell if they can get the train back on the tracks, but no game was ever going to save anyone’s shit 2020 by being a perfect magical escape. I easily will put over 100 hours into this game, I love the world, the story, the characters … if they could just get it to function properly I think many of you will love it too, or maybe it’s just the next Fallout 4. Maybe it has the bones of a game that should be really good, but is buggy, broken, and once it’s fixed only people who come to it late or could love it for the broken mess it is will get the pay off. Time will tell.

-Tim