On January 22nd 2021 CD Projekt Red released the first major Update for Cyberpunk 2077. Patch 1.1 addresses many of the crucial bugs and glitches in the game, improves stability and prevents crashing. It lays the groundwork for future work on the game. Let’s get into the details, shall we!
Late last night (for Europe, where CD Projekt’s main offices are) the Polish studio CD Projekt Red released the first major patch for their newest game Cyberunk 2077.
The update is about 1.1 GB in size (for PC) and is available simultaneously for all gaming platforms – PC, consoles and Stadia.
The primary focus of patch 1.1 is improvements in various systems of the game including character models and animations, navigation, in-game video feeds like the advertisements on the streets, foliage, minimap, tech devices, AI, the street traffic behavior and more and more.
As you probably know Cyberpunk 2077 suffered from many crashes as you play the game. Update 1.1 fixes a huge amount of the reasons why these crashes occur. It is most likely not going to completely stop the game from crashing, but is a great step in the right direction.
My game has crashed no more than five times (on high-end PC) in my ~240 hours of playtime so far, so I could really not tell if this part has been improved. I had no crashes since I installed the update, about three hours ago, but that’s a very small window for testing.
The AI improvements mentioned in the patch notes, which you will see in full below, does not relate to the Police behavior, of course. Once you break the law, Police drones and NPCs will spawn in various weird and unexpected places, out of nowhere and out of nothing. This issue still remains to be fixed.
The pedestrians still run like crazy if you fire a shot, behave silly and robotic when you take their car or do something “scary” in front of their eyes. They also still de-spawn as soon as you turn your back at them. So, this is another old issue that was probably placed on purpose to reduce hardware strain, but it breaks immersion. And it’s still in the game.
The memory leaks seem to be patched. In these few hours since I updated my game and started testing, my system continues to behave normally and the game doesn’t become more lagy. I don’t lose FPS as I did before. In my testing the FPS counter did not actually add more to its value after the update, but did improve its stability.
In menus I still get solid 150, which is my monitor’s refresh rate and in-game it varies between 55 (night scenes in the city) and 70 or higher (the Badlands). I no longer see the occasional drop to 45 or even lower in heavy fights and while driving during during night time through heavily populated areas around Night City’s districts.
All of these are personal experience and yours may vary. I would love to hear how the game behaves on your PC or console after you update to patch 1.1. My PC hardware is very decent and this is the likely reason why I always experienced fewer of the games’ problems in general.
CD Projekt Red worked hard to fix as many of the most annoying bugs and glitches during quests and in the open world. The Patch Notes contain a long list of fixes and improvements of characters behavior, animations improvement and issues fixed that prevented you from starting, progressing or completing certain main and side jobs.
If you are a fan of Achievements in Cyberpunk 2077, and you were stuck unable to complete “The Jungle”, you would be happy to learn that the assault in progress that was bugging out and not counting towards the achievement, is now fixed.
If you are a completionist and have done all achievements on GoG, but were stuck at 98% (like I was), this issue got resolved yesterday for me. It is not related to the game patch, but kind of happened almost at the same time.
CD Projekt Red also fixed an issue where you would not be able some times to end Braindance, because the prompt for exiting it would not be available. It happened to me during one of the braindance sessions on my third playthrough and while certainly not game-breaking, it was annoying that I had to replay that scene again from my most recent save point.
Another save-related issue has been addressed, and again it’s about crafting! Ah, Crafting in Cyberpunk 2077! That crazy overpowered part of the game that most casual players (and journalists) claimed as useless and pointless.
CDPR fixed in Hotfix 1.06 the crafting issue that caused your save files to become larger than 8 MB and become corrupt. With Patch 1.1 they addressed the issue responsible for saves getting oversized (related to the modifier indicating if the item is crafted), and trimmed the excess size from already existing saves. The bad news is that this fix doesn’t apply to PC save files corrupted before 1.06.
On the consoles front specifically the devs addressed various crashing and instability issues for PlayStation and improved the memory usage for your character during creation in the beginning of the game as well as while looking at mirrors, scanning, camera control and more.
PC Players on Steam will be happy to learn that you can now obtain your achievements while in offline mode. Another PC specific fix is that your game should no longer crash at startup if you have an Nvidia GPU. I never had it happen to me in the first place, but apparently many others did.
Stadia players also receive a few fixes in this patch specifically dedicated to their platform. Some melee weapons got their textures fixed, so they should appear normally now. Another tweak is the fixed missing sound during Never Fade Away job.
I still encounter one pesky little and very frustrating bug. When running, your character would suddenly stop moving their legs and start… well.. flying. This occurs very frequently for me. It has an easy fix – simply stop for a moment or jump again. In most cases it would fix itself. I was hoping this issue would be among the fixed ones in this patch. Well, maybe in the next!
For the full details on what was changed for each of the game platforms with Cyberppunk 2077 Patch 1.1, check out the patch notes below.
Below you can read the full official patch notes, as released by CD Projekt Red on the game’s official site on January 22, 2021:
In this update we focused on various stability improvements, which you can find outlined in the patch notes below. We will continue this work in patch 1.2 and other upcoming updates. At the same time we will keep fixing the bugs you encounter and listening to your feedback on how to improve the overall game experience.
Stability
Various stability improvements including:
- Memory usage improvements in various systems within the game: characters, interactions, navigation, in-game videos (news, tv, etc.), foliage, laser effects, minimap, devices, AI, street traffic, environmental damage system, GPU-related, and more.
- Various crash fixes (related to, among others, loading saves, game opening/closing and Point of No Return).
Quests/Open World
- Fixed an issue where calls from Delamain would end immediately and seem like they cannot be picked up in Epistrophy.
- Fixed an issue where players would not receive calls from Delamain when approaching relevant vehicles in Epistrophy.
- Fixed an issue where the objective could get stuck on “Answer the call from Mr. Hands” in M’ap Tann Pèlen.
- Fixed an issue where Judy could teleport underground in Pyramid Song.
- Fixed an issue where it would be impossible to talk to Zen Master in Poem of The Atoms.
- Fixed an issue where Takemura wouldn’t call in Down on the Street.
- Fixed an issue where Jackie could disappear in The Pickup.
- Fixed an issue where it could be impossible to get out of the car in The Beast in Me: The Big Race.
- Fixed an issue where players could stop receiving calls and messages after moving too far away from A Day In The Life area.
- Fixed an issue where opening the package wouldn’t update Space Oddity.
- Retro-fixed the saves affected by a rare issue where speaking to Judy in Automatic Love would be impossible due to an invisible wall. The underlying issue is under investigation.
- Fixed an issue that prevented players from collecting the reward in Gig: Freedom of the Press. The quest will auto-complete for those who could not collect the reward previously, and the reward will be provided automatically.
- Fixed an issue where Delamain would remain silent throughout Epistrophy if the player initially refused to help him.
UI
- Fixed an issue where prompt for exiting braindance could be missing.
- Removed an invalid item from loot.
Visual
- Fixed an issue where a grenade’s trajectory could be displayed in photo mode.
- Fixed particles’ hue appearing pink when viewed close up.
- Fixed cars spawning incorrectly in Reported Crime: Welcome to Night City.
Achievements
- Fixed an issue where completing one of theassaults in progress in Santo Domingo would sometimes not contribute towards progression for The Jungle achievement, preventing its completion.
Miscellaneous
- Addressed the issue responsible for saves getting oversized (related to the modifier indicating if the item is crafted), and trimmed the excess size from already existing saves (note: this won’t fix PC save files corrupted before 1.06 update).
- Fixed an issue where input could stop registering upon opening the weapon wheel and performing an action.
- Fixed an issue where the “Continue” button in the Main Menu could load an end game save.
PlayStation-specific
- Performance optimization of crowds on PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5.
- Various crash fixes on PlayStation 4.
Xbox-specific
- Improved memory usage for character creation, mirrors, scanning, camera remote control, menus (inventory, map) on Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox One S.
PC-specific
- It will now be possible to obtain achievements while in Steam offline mode. Note: Offline mode needs to be enabled before starting the game. This change does not work retroactively.
- Addressed the game startup crashes related to loading cache on NVIDIA graphics cards.
Stadia-specific
- Concert audio should no longer be inaudible in Never Fade Away.
- Fixed corrupted textures on several melee weapons.
- Tweaked default deadzone settings to be more responsive. Note: the change will not affect settings unless they’re set to default.
CD Projekt Red delivered the Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.1 in time. Nine days ago the company’s co-founder Marcin Iwiński addressed openly and honestly the gaming community and talked about the studio’s plans for 2021.
The roadmap includes the patch we now have already (1.1), another one, labeled 1.2, in a few weeks time (probably around the end of February) and then series of patches and hotfixes as well as the launch of the Free DLC program and the Next-Gen free update.
Patch 1.2 is going to be bigger in scale and scope. There is no fixed date for it yet, but in his message Marcin said “in a few weeks”, so that places its release date somewhere around the end of February 2021.
