Cyberpunk 2077 has received its first patch of 2021 which takes the game to version 1.1, although there are complaints of fresh gremlins in the works after the update.
The good news is that the patch promises a whole raft of stability improvements, and naturally enough contains a lot of fixes and bug squashing, as you might expect.
According to the release notes, CD Projekt Red has improved memory usage within the game, which should mean a smoother experience overall, and that includes performance with “street traffic” and the “environmental damage system”, as well as GPU-related issues.
Speaking of the latter, on PC, the developer notes that: “Addressed the game startup crashes related to loading cache on Nvidia graphics cards.” Achievements can now be obtained when in Steam offline mode, too.
PlayStation-specific fixes include resolving crashes on the PS4, and: “Performance optimization of crowds on PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 5.”
As for the Xbox, that sounds slightly less impressive, with the developer noting that it has implemented: “Improved memory usage for character creation, mirrors, scanning, camera remote control, menus (inventory, map) on Xbox One, Xbox One X and Xbox One S.”
On Stadia, the main fix is tweaking “default deadzone settings to be more responsive”, plus some problems with corrupt textures have been cured.
Further work has been done on that nasty save game corruption issue which was previously patched, with CD Projekt Red addressing the problem which was causing the file sizes of saves to get overly big (tied up in the crafting system). This excess data has been trimmed off existing saves, too. However, as the dev notes, “this won’t fix PC save files corrupted before 1.06 update” (v1.06 brought in the initial hotfix for this bug on PC).
There are also a bunch of fixes relating to problems with quests and visual glitches, as well as crashes when loading saved games.
Reaction online
As you might expect, there have been both positive and negative reactions to the release of version 1.1 of Cyberpunk 2077, although there are some slightly worrying comments which have been made on Twitter and the CD Projekt Red forums around new problems reportedly introduced.
Most noticeably, there are quite a number of complaints about issues with Takemura, on both Twitter and the developer forums, along the lines of: “I can now not continue my playthrough as Takemura calls me and doesn’t say anything or hang up. My first playthrough and cannot continue. Any known fix?” (See the below tweet for a suggested quick fix).
A quick fix would be loading a previous save (this usually solves bugs in this game). In particular, right after the initial conversation with Takamura in Jig-Jing Street. Skipping the time for 24 hours solves the issue. pic.twitter.com/p3oeS2LxKgJanuary 23, 2021
Also, some folks are complaining that the fixes for the ‘Epistrophy’ mission included with v1.1 don’t work.
Perhaps most worryingly, there are also reports of Cyberpunk 2077 failing to actually run at all after the patch: “Wait what, I can’t start the game anymore after this patch, it keeps flatlining.”
And another user adds: “Same for me. It seems that [there] are quite a few with that problem. I’m reverting to 1.06.”
Another forum denizen observes that gamers encountering this particular showstopper should remove any mods they have installed, and verify the integrity of the game files on Steam (assuming they’re playing on that platform, of course), before trying to run it again.
