How CD Projekt Red should fix Cyberpunk 2077’s many bugs and glitches

Cyberpunk 2077, the game that millions of people had been fervently anticipating for almost a decade, is off to a rocky start. At launch, the game not only runs poorly on all but the best systems, but is plagued with bugs and glitches that tear the player out of their immersion. I’ve lost count of the number of times a civilian has struck an intimidating T-Pose at my player, or that a corpse has continued to threaten me even after losing its head. According to CD Projekt Red, fixing the game is their upmost priority with cost being no issue, so players can hopefully see the majority of these bugs being squashed over time and this is where an interesting opportunity arises.

Developers release patch notes every day, and each and every one follows the same basic premise – a list of bullet points, potentially with the occasional bit of humour thrown in to spice them up a little. Some patch notes have become so infamous that they’ve spread far outside the games audience due to their absurdity, namely and recently the patch notes from the Sims (where they had to remove the desire to become archenemies with a newborn child) and Crusader Kings II (where the Pope himself has had his levels of torture and drinking tuned down slightly).

Obviously then, there’s an opportunity here. Patch notes are an acceptance that the game has bugs, but with Cyberpunk 2077 that fact is already news worldwide. Taking a more obvious approach to fixing those bugs could be turned into a marketing opportunity that could rekindle some of the enthusiasm the fanbase has lost since the games shaky release. Obviously this is isn’t an easy thing to do, or else every early access game would be known and celebrated worldwide, but Cyberpunk 2077 has an angle that many of those games don’t have – Cybernetic Implants.

A huge amount of content in Cyberpunk 2077 revolves around the idea of technology going wrong: Parasitic Computer Chips, Unstable AI and Faulty Drones pop up continuously throughout the player’s experience. What I am suggesting is that the developers integrate the fixes into the universe with new and interesting methods, releasing additional content with the patch notes to truly fix the game in a unique way.

Say for instance, your character is disturbed by the sight of their misshapen shadow stretching across the ground like an 80’s horror remake of Peter Pan. Instead of a bullet point in a patch note, have the player receive a call from Viktor, the friendliest Ripperdoc and the man who installed and upgraded the players eyeballs at the very beginning of the game. He could say that he’s picked up on some visual disturbances, and fixed them with a quick data transfer. All the glitches that the payer has seen in the past suddenly have a real world cause, and the fixes to the game not only increase the overall enjoyment of the player but also make them feel that the world actually is alive and evolving, something that a lot of players feel is missing from Night City at the moment.

But why stop there? Players have found a multitude of unfinished locations, where you can fall through the map and into the bottomless void below. Instead of simply putting a band aid on these locations, CD Projekt Red could place NPCs and equipment to resemble a building site around them. Fix the area and make it fit into the game world by drawing as much attention to the fixes as possible. I can think of no better way for fans of the game to feel that the executives who released the game in its current state actually care about the world, and take bold and effective steps to bring it to a level nearer to what was promised.

As good an idea as I think it is, sadly I can’t say I hold much hope for it happening. It would require more time and money to be put into the game, that could be diverted into expansions or other projects. CD Projekt Red have indeed stated that money is no object when it comes to the game, but they will have to choose between fixing it to the bare minimum or truly trying to create the game that Cyberpunk 2077 has the potential to be.