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In 2020, I wrote a for Cyberpunk 2077 after my first playthrough, saying “It’s a shame to play the unfinished version of what could be one of the greatest games ever.“.
I can say with confidence that by 2025, Cyberpunk 2077 - one of the greatest games ever, is a real game that you can play right now.
Just a couple of years after Witcher 3's final expansion had released, at E3 2018, Cyberpunk 2077 was formally re-revealed with an in-game trailer. This trailer teased an RPG experience like no other, and the hype train was officially off. For me personally, my jaw was on the floor after witnessing that reveal live. Witcher 3 had quickly become my favorite game of all time before this, and I could not wait to experience more from the people behind that masterpiece. And just a little while later, CD Projekt Red released nearly an hour of gameplay footage. Which showed off an in-depth RPG experience that combines a Bethesda, Rockstar and CDPR's best elements into one game.
Back at launch, I got to play Cyberpunk on a brand-new PC, which meant I avoided most of the major issues people experienced. this allowed me to appreciate the good parts of Cyberpunk before most people did, I fell in love with the characters and writing. I got to romance Panam and experience one of my favorite relationships in gaming history. I was floored by the murder mystery quest and beyond creeped out by the Peralez mind control plot line. I knew I was experiencing incredible quest writing that was clearly done by the same people as The Witcher 3, but I couldn't shake the feeling that everything outside of these quests was lacking in some major way.
I explored all of Cyberpunk's cut content, datamined files, tried to figure out what exactly went wrong. I explored the open world in extreme detail. And came to the conclusion that Cyberpunk's open world was more Far Cry than Witcher/Skyrim.
And this isn't something that CD Projekt Red wasn't aware of, as mentions of Cyberpunk being called an RPG were scrubbed from its store descriptions near launch, and instead, Cyberpunk was now marketed as an action-adventure game.
The Police System was one of the most meme'd aspects. Committing a crime would have police officers suddenly spawn right on top of you. Police chases were not a thing as the AI was not intelligent enough to actually be able to chase the player or use any tactics to stop you from just running away. However at the time, this genuinely fascinated me and I started making some short YouTube videos exploring unfinished locations such as the train stations that gathered tens of thousands of viewers, sparking my passion for content creation.
Going forward from launch, it was completely unrealistic to expect CD Projekt Red to somehow turn Cyberpunk into a finished open-world RPG. I knew they would eventually fix the game, and people would come around on the story and quests as they are undoubtedly fantastic. But turning Cyberpunk into a real RPG would take years of development and investment, something that surely no studio would bother doing.
Slowly but surely, CD Projekt Red started patching Cyberpunk. I kept up consistently with each patch, reading every single patch note. The pace of release was not fast at all. It was so slow that it took many months before a bindable walk function was added for mouse and keyboard users.
Around the latter half of 2021, I moved on from Cyberpunk to other games, while still checking in to see how it is going every now and then.
An important point to make is that in video game culture, if you still played or ever praised Cyberpunk, you were seen as insane. It was the cool thing to hate Cyberpunk because why wouldn't you?
About a year and a half after launch is the point where I'd consider Cyberpunk to actually be a releaseable product. With Patch 1.5, CD Projekt Red finally got the game on new-generation consoles with a native Xbox Series X/S and PS5 versions. This meant that console users can finally play a decent version of Cyberpunk comparable to what PC users had at launch, with a ton of bug fixes. This wasn't enough to make the experience truly great as the open world still lacked that depth, and outside of quests, there was frankly nothing to do. But this update had an element that marked a major milestone as CD Projekt Red added the first piece of real new content to Cyberpunk in the form of apartments. Now, on paper, these are cool but nothing special, just new spaces to purchase and hang out in, but this is a role-playing feature in a game that seemingly wasn't too interested in being a role-playing game at launch. We didn't know it back then, but this was a huge sign of things to come.
CD Projekt Red once again went quiet after this, until September 2022 when a major milestone would once again be reached. Update 1.6 launched, and while it had a couple of cool features, such as sleep being a proper mechanic now where you get to choose how long to sleep, and there was a general re-balancing patch plus more bug fixes. The big stand-out thing here was actually not in-game; Cyberpunk Edgerunners had just released. An incredible anime that was on Netflix, the biggest, most accessible streaming service in the world. As a result of this, people outside of the dedicated small fanbase that stuck with Cyberpunk started to check out the game again, and this started a massive snowball effect.
Cyberpunk got a 300% increase in players on PC alone. Edgerunners had managed to do what seemed impossible to the fanbase that stuck around, It made enjoying Cyberpunk 2077 a socially acceptable thing to do. It was still very controversial to claim Cyberpunk was anything above a 7-8/10, but slowly, the gaming community began to turn around on it.
I personally did a replay on the PS5 version during this and fell in love with Cyberpunk 2077 again. It was much closer to that vision of "what could be one of the greatest games of all time" than I had ever imagined it getting.
Updates after Edgerunners slowed down, there was the occasional new thing added to Cyberpunk and the constant new bug fixes. But for all intents and purposes, the gaming community had mostly moved on by this point to other games. I personally also moved on to other things in life as I started university and moved on to newer games. Cyberpunk was always in the back of my mind, especially that elusive expansion pack that nobody knew what was going on with. The core Cyberpunk fanbase had grown massively thanks to Edgerunners' release, but overall, in the wider gaming community, Cyberpunk 2077 was that pretty great game that could've been way more.
In the middle of 2023, I made a decision to start making more content on social media and see where that goes. I amassed a pretty decent following of about 5K followers, mostly people who shared my passion for Cyberpunk and Rockstar Games at the time. I was one of the people that utterly loved Cyberpunk despite how flawed and unfinished it was at its core. As a result, this uniquely positioned me to be one of the biggest voices covering the game on Twitter going forward. In my eyes, though, CD Projekt Red would be better off working on a sequel rather than embarking on a fool's errand to reshape an already released game into something else, as I didn't believe it was possible to turn Cyberpunk into that RPG experience that everyone wanted.
Then June 2023 came. Previews for Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty started to release from various major news outlets. They described an incredibly in-depth spy thriller experience that took everything great about Cyberpunk's main quest and dialed it up to eleven. I was incredibly excited by this, but there was a little part that intrigued me. Something that many journalists and fans glossed over in the first hours after these articles dropped. A few outlets had noted that the Cyberpunk 2077 they played at the previews seemed... different. On a fundamental level. We couldn't get clear details, but one outlet had mentioned that the skill trees were completely different. Another mentioned vehicle combat was added into the base game, and then we got a quote from a journalist that asked a developer what was going on. That’s when it all came together: This was not Cyberpunk 2077 that we all knew. This was Cyberpunk 2.0.
I gathered all the information I could from each outlet that spoke about this and put them all in a tweet, a tweet that would go on to reach millions of impressions and propel my page into being one of the biggest sources of news for Cyberpunk around. As a result, I owe Cyberpunk and CD Projekt Red a lot for where I am today.
The closer we got to release, the more insane Cyberpunk 2.0 sounded. If you asked me what 2.0 changed, the only reasonable answer is "EVERYTHING.” This was that impossible, frankly insane undertaking that I never thought possible. Cyberpunk 2.0 completely overhauls and reshapes quite literally every aspect of Cyberpunk's gameplay.
Adding in countless new mechanics, completely re-balancing gear, open world activities, the economy, all skill trees are re-made, countless new character build possibilities, vehicle combat, weaponized vehicles, all existing builds are overhauled, even how you purchase vehicles is changed to be more immersive and interesting. New details are added across Night City to fill out the world, open world activities are overhauled to prioritize the more interesting content.
And the POLICE SYSTEM WAS FINALLY CHANGED. Police chases are now actually possible. There are so many changes that listing what wasn't changed would be an easier endeavor.
CD Projekt Red had actually done it. Cyberpunk 2.0 turned Cyberpunk 2077 from a barebones action adventure game to a real, replayable RPG. It cannot be understated how monumental this update was. In a pure gameplay perspective, it’s practically a new game. This is what CDPR was working on behind the scenes, why updates were so slow to release, and why major additions seemed non-existent. They bundled every single major change in one update.
And this is without mentioning Phantom Liberty, which over 3 years of development, had grown from being a smaller expansion to a massive, Blood & Wine-sized expansion with a new district packed with content, a ton of new side quests, activities, and an incredible main quest that overall, I found to be superior to Cyberpunk's main quest. Did I also mention that ignoring side content, Phantom Liberty was actually LONGER than Cyberpunk's main quest?
So I went ahead and did another replay, and this time I didn't just enjoy Cyberpunk. I came out of that playthrough with the impression that I had just played one of the greatest games of all time. It was my second massive review that I wrote on my account, and it garnered millions of impressions. It was surreal to see that talking positively about Cyberpunk wasn't just okay now, it was the norm.
Cyberpunk is a unique example of a redemption arc, similar to No Man’s Sky, but in my opinion, it exceeded No Man's Sky on a cultural level. Cyberpunk 2077 is extremely relevant; its player counts on Steam practically never drop, and it’s constantly on the top played lists on PlayStation and Xbox.
A sequel has been in development for a while, speculated to drop somewhere around 2029-2030. and I am sure the developers will be applying everything learned from Cyberpunk 2077's launch there. and we as fans, will be there, day one.
If you have somehow avoided Cyberpunk 2077 up until now, just give it a chance. you won't regret it.
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