The Cyberpunk 2077 Story: What Happened?

If you’re not new to the gaming industry and haven’t been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Cyberpunk 2077. Quite possibly the most hyped game of the decade, fans have been yearning for this coveted marvel of game development to grace their consoles/computers for 8 years. Developers CD Projekt Red are renowned for their wonderful treatment of their incredible The Witcher RPG series, the third installment of which had secured 1.5 million pre-orders, and as of April 2020, sold 28.3 million copies. Quite a success, right?

Cyberpunk 2077 absolutely smashed the pre-order record of its predecessor by securing a staggeringly gut-churning figure of 8 million pre-orders — the largest such figure in the industry. The sheer scale of the demand for this game, despite several unfortunate delays and issues, boggles the mind. And as if that wasn’t a good enough record, the game also sold 4.72 million copies on PC on its first day, making it the fastest selling PC game of all time.

…but do these numbers truly represent the quality of the game?

Unstable frame rates aside, the random texture glitches, critical crashes and freezes, audio glitches, UI issues, the weird Vaseline-smeared NPC textures, and frequent crashes make this game quite a task to even play.

Personally, I encountered 2 crashes, and was forced to reload save files at several instance because sometimes characters would freeze mid-dialogue or the sequence of events in a quest just wouldn’t progress. I’d be stuck moving my camera around with no out whatsoever. I even had a stationary car randomly launch itself into the stratosphere without prompt.

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The game feels like it is still in a beta testing stage, with the actual launch scheduled for months later. CDPR reinforced this feeling of mine with their latest statement regarding the bugs wherein they described their plan for fixing the game in the coming months, and promising refunds on all platforms.

I understand their decision to expedite the launch and meet the 2020 target given the backlash from the community for delays. However, that doesn’t justify the quality of the game they chose to publish. In my opinion, the launch could’ve been much better had it taken place in Q2/Q3 2021.

According to the investigative piece by Jason Schreier of Bloomberg, there were a lot of things that went wrong in the development cycle. The developers took to social media themselves (instead of replying to his emails for comment) to address most of the issues pointed out by Schreier. However, one thing that stuck without any proper explanation whatsoever was that the game had essentially begun development in 2016.

“Although Cyberpunk was announced in 2012, the company was then still mainly focused on its last title and full development didn’t start until late 2016, employees said. That was when CD Projekt essentially hit the reset button, according to people familiar with the project.”

In response to Schreier’s piece, CDPR head of studio Adam Badowski took to twitter with some thoughts of his own. He mentioned that the insider comments Schreier got on the record were mostly from ex-employees who don’t entirely reflect the sentiment of the 500-strong work force of the company. He also addressed other issues such as work language culture during the development stages of the game, and the accusation that the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 demo was largely fake.

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Now, the drawbacks and limitations of this game are glaringly obvious. But does it have potential, post-fixing, to be a good game? Absolutely yes, the writing of the game is fantastic.

The detail that went into making Night City a bright yet bleak environment, making it equal parts exhilarating and depressing, bring it to life in a spectacular fashion. The quest design is remarkable. Each quest features detailing to a degree that is expected of the developers – given their track record with their previous games.

The freedom of choice to approach a mission in a variety of ways is liberating. The dialogue options have actual impact on how the quest progresses and aren’t black/white choices. The options also do a great job in portraying the tone of the response, avoiding the issue of you sounding like a jerk when the response didn’t seem that snarky. Quite an underrated aspect of an RPG with choice-based dialogues.

In a video titled “Cyberpunk 2077 – Our Commitment To Quality,” CDPR co-founder Marcin Iwinski took to YouTube in order to come clean about the whole situation. This video followed talks of a class action lawsuit being filed against the company by investor Andrew Trampe over “materially false and misleading statements.”

Iwinski’s statement was met with mixed sentiments. While some were charmed by the transparency shown in the statement, others were not too pleased that the entire brunt of the blame was shifted by Iwinski on to the Quality Assurance. It may not have been intentional, Iwinski’s statements very clearly pointed out that QA is where the game failed everyone.

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While some may agree, it is very clearly far from being the company’s sole issue. There is a lot that can be said about the management of the Cyberpunk 2077 project from start till now, and none of it seems to be positive.

Aside from the apology, Iwinski outlined the future of Cyberpunk promising patches, hotfixes, and DLCs throughout the course of 2021 as they continue to improve the game and win back the trust of their player base.

Aside from that, the company opened up their refund policy and accepted any and all legitimate refunds until the game was fixed – facilitated through platforms such as PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Steam, GOG, as well as direct refunds from the company itself.

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Overall, Cyberpunk 2077 falls short of living up to expectations in the state it is in currently. Having had to force myself through a barely playable PS4 play-through, I would definitely not recommend it to anyone else at the moment.

However, CDPR have proven time and time again that they treat their games well (better than their employees). In essence, it feels like Cyberpunk 2077 has yet to show how it shines.

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