I have to admit I asked for this.
On Sept. 23, I was talking to my Gizmodo colleagues about whether people have to wait to buy a next-gen console when they are released. “There’s only one thing to consider before launch: do you want to play Cyberpunk on the next-gen,” I said. “I want to play the future game on the future console.”
Like a fool, I decided I didn’t need to reserve a PS5. Cyberpunk 2077 would be playable on the PS4, and it’s a long game. I would probably start on one generation and end with the next. And if nothing else, serious PS5 deficiencies seemed unlikely. I was wrong.
On Dec. 3, after numerous major delays, the news broke Cyberpunk’s street date was broken. “Let go of the game, you cowards,” I shouted into work Slack – and meant it. I was totally prepared to deal with a buggy broken game just to have something, something to be excited about. At that point it turned out that I was right.
If you care about video games or even if you don’t, you’ve probably heard about it Cyberpunk was released in one unfinished state on consoles. Based on the early reviews, it was pretty buggy on a high-end PC too. What’s worse, the game’s developer, CD Projekt Red, has tricked the public by promising a lower-resolution version of the game that works on PS4 and Xbox One, while promoting it exclusively with PC visuals and boxing critics to only use the best hardware for their tests.
In two weeks, we’ve seen one of the most overwhelming hypomachine reversals in my life. First, we had fanboys pile on reviewers who didn’t bend the knee at the Cyberpunk alter. Then we had furious gamers demanding refunds for CDPR releases. We then agreed to CDPR to issue refunds. Then the studio turned back a bit because Sony and Microsoft did not agree to any refunds. Then, in the most unexpected turn, Sony withdrew the game completely from the online store and Microsoft agreement to refund purchases made online. And now CDPR has announced a comprehensive repayment plan aimed at getting repayment to anyone who wants it.
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Despite all this, I love playing it on the PS4.
Let me be clear, the game is broken. My console makes an effort to play within an inch of its life Cyberpunk. The graphics fidelity rotates between PS3 quality and borderline next-gen, sometimes in the same frame. There are tons of glitches and pop-ins. The frame rate is hugely inconsistent. And yes, it crashes. On a more narrow note, I’ve seen a lot of minor typos in notes and menus, while other gamers have discovered some important examples. The game is not finished, period. And users lucky enough to own a PS5 report many of the same issues minus the grubby graphics – it’s the same game, after all. (The PS5 version is expected next year.)
When I first played Cyberpunk on launch day, my excitement quickly gave way to a sense of uncomfortable compromise, before finally giving up. At the time I was the character creator out of the game, the graphics were disappointing. Two NPC bystanders drove by in a car-but there was no car, just the seated NPCs floating in the air. I ended up in a firefight that was unplayable because the frame rate was so bad that I couldn’t hit the enemies.
Video games are not my life and it wasn’t me thrown into anger. I was simply disappointed. I don’t want to lower the experience of people who invested more in the lead up to the game or for whom the purchase price was a greater sacrifice. I was just shocked that I couldn’t play it and decided to wait for the PS5 to get it right.
Unfortunately, if you think you’re playing busted Cyberpunk frustrating, you should try to buy a PS5. It’s the least fun game there is. Every time a new batch is announced, every store’s website turns into an unusable mess. I tried one morning this week to get it done and I won’t repeat the process until next year.
See that an update has been released for Cyberpunk convinced me to try again and I’ve been playing it for the past four nights. Folks, the game works and can be played. It’s almost gone to be in an acceptable condition for a day one launch.
The frame rate is still unstable, but greatly improved in my experience. The glitches are still there but are uncommon and I have grown to love them. Glitches are perfectly suited in one Cyberpunk game. The game is clearly full of stylized glitches and effects that are intentional, and it would certainly be nice if everything worked as the creators intended. But I like video game glitches and they make sense in this world. It crashed once a night after several hours of gaming, but every time it crashed it was miraculously when I should have gone to bed, and no progress was ever lost.
Before I started a game session, I saw a viral video that someone related in which their Platoon instructor the spider class took a moment to pay tribute to all the people in our lives who died this year when a pandemic ravaged the world. We live in a dystopia that makes the world out of it Cyberpunk feel like an absolute pleasure to visit.
That’s what I want out of a video game right now. I want to visit a place that is not this place because I have no other place where I can go closed. I want to have experiences that my subconscious mind can chew on because I don’t have many real experiences right now. And I just want to do something cool.
When I was playing Cyberpunk Last night something very dramatic happened, and I was completely immersed in the story and my character. Without spoiling anything, Keanu Reeves immediately made his first appearance in the match. It was the perfect time to make it happen and the way he was introduced was impeccable. My partner and I screamed at the same time: “*** ***** !!!!!!!” I have to censor the exact quote because it’s a spoiler, but suffice it to say we were very excited. That is probably a memory that I will keep.
I decided to play Skyrim for the first time, earlier this year. For the same reasons I mentioned above, Skyrim was a good game for quarantine and it has a lot in common with Cyberpunk. I remember horror stories of people who lost dozens of hours of gameplay Skyrim when it was first launched. That kept me from ever playing it and all these years later I was still saving like a maniac for fear it would happen to me. Today, Skyrim is a beloved classic, and it is still full of glitches. The game-screwing stuff is mostly fixed and the joke is strange.
I’m not saying that to defend CDPR or promote the business line, everyone will be happy after a few more patches. I think it illustrates a change in how much we charge companies when they fail to meet their own standards or mislead the public. Skyrim was not ripped from the shops and life went on.
This year’s circumstances are clearly different. CDPR scrambles to appease people, and it screwed up much more blatantly and dishonestly than the publishers of Skyrim went back in the day. It seems that the company’s executives were faced with a choice: Postpone the game again and anger everyone or leave it unfinished and only anger a few people. I’m sympathetic to the riddle but the big shots made the wrong decision and now they have to live with it.
The executives at CDPR deserve all the criticism they receive. Before Cyberpunk was released, there were numerous reports that developers working on the game were forced to put in extreme overtime – or crunch – to get it done on time. Earlier today, Bloomberg reported that executives and developers held a controversial internal meeting to discuss the fallout from Cyberpunk‘s release. Poor planning, crunch and false claims that the game was finished were reportedly at the top of the creative team’s concerns.
This is another thing that I thought about a lot while playing Cyberpunk. Other than that, these artists are clearly working at the top of their game. The storytelling is cinematic, the world is rich, the designs are incredible, the music is solid and graciously irrevocable. Those people didn’t deserve to have their work thrown into the world until it was finished and they still have a big job to do. But in recent years, the public was not even aware that crunch is a problem in the games industry, and now it is in the minds of fans who demand that companies do better.
But how do we demand that a company do better without the threat of consequences? The only way to send a message is without a doubt to refuse to buy the game or to request a refund. But that hurts the artists finishing the game and building out the multiplayer component expected next year.
Cyberpunk is likely Too big to fail, so if you want to give the money men a big middle finger by boycotting the game, that’s fine with me. But the anger I see online makes me sad and I hate the idea of it being completely out of availability. Screw CDPR, but if you can stand a little joke, don’t screw yourself out of the fun if it’s currently in short supply. And when the time comes when you can hug your friends and have a coffee at a restaurant, do so.