This article breaks down CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 RED stream from December 1st 2023, going over the changes coming with Game Update 2.1, which pertain to transportation, gameplay, and accessibility.
CD Projekt Red hosted a prerecorded “REDstream” on Twitch on December 1st, 2023, showcasing what’s coming with Update 2.1 alongside the Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition on December 5th.
Many of the new features relate to transportation in some way, including the introduction of the NCART Metro System, portable radio player, and various improvements to vehicle gameplay, though there will also be further improvements to boss fights and accessibility features.
Fully functional NCART Metro System
Cyberpunk 2077 will finally have a train network called the NCART Metro to use as an alternate form of transportation around the city!
Even if it’s hard to justify the resource investment to make a slower mode of transport, it’s clearly become increasingly hard to justify not including it.
The devs explained that this feature has been talked about for quite some time, and given that it has now shown up in several major pieces of marketing, they felt it was finally time to add it as part of the Ultimate Edition.
Furthermore, NCART Metro stations already exist in the game, but they are currently no different from other fast travel points. You also ride in a train at NCX with So Mi during the mission, The Killing Moon. After 2.1 releases, the experience of walking up to an NCART station will be different.
The NCART Metro will feature 19 stations spread across 5 lines, using the existing stations in-game. They said that they designed the experience to be flexible and very RP-friendly.
It can be immersive, so you can enjoy the ride if you want, but you’ll also be able to continue to use the stations as fast travel points and can opt to skip at any point.
The metro will only become accessible after you complete the heist at Konpeki Plaza since Watson is locked down before that.
I’m curious to see if this game’s sequel will limit instantaneous fast travel in some way, perhaps by only letting you fast-travel to a single specific location in each district. It’s strange to let players skip such a significant portion of the game, especially as they continue to spend resources developing new features that can ultimately be bypassed.
RadioPort
RadioPort is a portable music player that will let you keep listening to the radio after you step out of the car.
You’ll be able to listen to the radio while exploring the city and riding the metro, but they will turn off during story bits and turn back on automatically when it’s done. The limitations will be similar to phonecalls.
“We simply just didn’t want to make situation when [sic] you have like Ponpon Shit is blasting in your headset, and Jackie’s dying.”
Paweł Sasko
The devs clarified that you will also be able to listen to music during combat, except when the heat gets too high.
They mentioned that the automatic shutoff feature will be linked to whenever specific types of music are playing that are tied to the narrative (called diegetic quest music AKA score), so you probably won’t be able to listen to music during boss fights either.
Boss Fight Improvements
CDPR highlighted some changes coming to the Adam Smasher boss fight, and referenced small changes that came with 2.0, but were unclear if there would be any additional changes to other fights with 2.1.
The devs implied that these changes to Adam Smasher were motivated by the appearance of the Cyberpunk Edgerunners anime along with seeing footage of players creating builds to one-shot him, “sometimes with a dildo”, and expressed a desire for him to be even more of a force to be reckoned with and appear more like he did in the anime.
They wanted him to be a bit more of a force to be reckoned with and more like his anime appearance, including with the Sandevistan!
He will also be more aggressive and have minor behavioral changes depending on the player’s build, like Netrunner vs Solo. It doesn’t sound like these enemy AI build-based adaptations/reactions will be coming to other bosses if they are making any more tweaks to them at all.
I’m curious if the Sandevistan VFX will be coming to every enemy that wields the Sandy or if it will just be him. Hopefully, there will be a setting to turn that off since it’s a pretty significant departure from the hyperrealistic visuals.
If the devs don’t include such a setting with 2.1, I think there’s a pretty big chance that someone will make a mod that does it. Even though I do mod the game to alter the visual fidelity and improve QoL, I don’t really mess with the VFX, despite there being numerous mods out there that offer such changes.
Vehicle-Related Improvements
With Game Update 2.1, we’ll be getting a bunch of additional changes related to vehicles, including making Claire’s illegal street races repeatable, adding a few new vehicles, and making improvements related to motorcycle combat and car chases.
Repeatable Illegal Street Races
The 4 races you could do with Claire will soon be repeatable after completing her mission. After you complete Claire’s quest, Jim (the announcer) will contact you to let you compete in future races.
You can win money and Autofixer discounts, which you can use to buy more vehicles, though it seems there might be a small entry fee.
I wish they added the AR navigation arrows to the rest of the game if you had a vehicle mission active or manually set a waypoint, but maybe they’ll do that with the next game. I hate when I miss an exit or crash into something because I’m struggling to decipher the minimap.
New Vehicles Available
Even if you’ve already purchased every vehicle in the game, you’ll still be able to spend those autofixer discounts because there are some brand new vehicles coming with Update 2.1! Among them is a new yellow and black convertible Porche 911 Cabriolet.
The devs didn’t elaborate too much, but like the Porche 911 you can already get, it sounds as if the acquisition of the new version will also be story-based.
They also mentioned community feedback regarding the limited number of new motorcycles with Phantom Liberty and announced that 2.1 will bring 5 new motorcycles!
The clips they showed of the new bikes were brief and in a dark area, so we couldn’t get a great look. However, there did seem to be at least 1 new model, not just a reskin.
It’s unclear if they plan to add reskins of other vehicle types, though I’m surprised they still haven’t added a proper appearance editor for vehicles or at least something to change the colors. Perhaps it’s more of an undertaking than I realize.
New Motorcycle Gameplay Features
While riding a motorcycle specifically, you can already swing katanas and such, but now you’ll be able to throw knives and axes while driving too! Honestly, I’m a bit shocked by this development because, as a child, I was always told not to run while holding sharp objects, and here CDPR is enabling us to throw them at others from a moving vehicle!
Not all of the gameplay changes are directly related to combat either, you’ll also be able to lean harder to turn better and perform stunts like wheelies and flips. The devs showed off that you can even go around and around upside down inside some large pipes in the game!
Vehicle-Related Improvements in the Base Game
If you’re particularly antagonistic to one of the gangs, like by stealing a car, they’ll get mad and chase you down in their pimped-out rides the next time you set foot on their turf.
Speaking of stealing cars, 2.1 will come with improvements to related Gigs in the base game where victims of theft will attempt to chase you. It’s unclear what conditions will cause a chase in one of these Gigs. For example, if you’ve massacred everyone or taken the vehicle without noticing, who would chase you?
We don’t know for sure if they improved any of the more scripted car chases in the main story missions, like the particularly uninteractive one where the Arasaka Ninjas are chasing you and Takemura after the heist.
The devs also opted to fix a section of unfinished highway between Japantown and Wellsprings that players could access and use to evade police because traffic AI wouldn’t use it.
Hopefully, all of these vehicle-related changes will come alongside fixes to the buggy behavior associated with vehicle summons and car physics randomly going crazy, including the apparent degradation that came alongside the 2.0 update that arrived shortly before the release of Phantom Liberty.
Accessibility Settings
The final major item discussed pertains to accessibility features. Existing accessibility settings like subtitles will be combined into a new dedicated tab, accompanied by some new settings, such as changing font sizes, removing some UI VFX elements, and eliminating the breach protocol puzzle timer.
For more information, check out CDPR’s detailed showcase of all the accessibility features coming with 2.1 on cyberpunk.net, which was posted shortly after the stream was finished.
Summary and Minor Notes
The stream ended with a summary and mentioned a few other odds and ends that will be coming with 2.1 on December 5th:
- NCART Metro System
- RadioPort
- Boss fight improvements
- Expansive changes related to vehicles
- Additional and collected accessibility settings
- Full DualSense Controller support on PC for fancy triggers
- More cats in Night City
- More cutscenes with romantic partners
The romantic cutscenes sounded a bit more significant, but the devs didn’t want to spoil it.
Stay tuned for more Cyberpunk 2077 coverage! If you plan to do another playthrough once 2.1 comes out, I recommend checking out our various build guides!
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