Game of the month – Cyberpunk 2077

It took eight years, but now Cyberpunk 2077 is finally here.

Text:
Daniel Haaf

Published:
22 December 2020

Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person action RPG based on the board game from 1988 of the same name. The game was developed by the Polish game developer CD Project Red, best known for the Witcher series, and was first presented in 2012.

You play the character V, a mercenary living in the megacity of Night City, California. The large expanses and knight theme from The Witcher series are gone and have been replaced by neon-decorated skyscrapers, flashing screens, and flying cars.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open game world with lots of things to do. Wherever you turn, there are missions to perform, people to talk to, and places to explore.

The main story in the game revolves around a biochip embedded in your head. Something goes wrong and you have to find a way to extract the biochip to survive. And of course, it's easier said than done, and you are drawn into a web of secrets, false hopes, and violent situations.

Important facts regarding Cyberpunk 2077

Game type: Action role game
Game time: 20-40 hours
Download size: Approx. 70 GB
System: PC, Xbox, Playstation
Versions: Standard edition, Collector’s Edition
Gameworld: Open

Standard Edition

Collector’s Edition

Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t perform so well on older Xbox and Playstation consoles

Cyberpunk 2077 works well on PCs and the latest generation of game consoles, such as the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5. The lack of optimisations means that Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t run particularly well on the Xbox One and Playstation 4 series.

The latest update from december 2020 (v1.0.6) doesn’t fix these issues. We recommend that you wait for further updates before buying Cyberpunk 2077 on Xbox One or Playstation 4.

There are plenty of vehicles in Cyberpunk 2077. All with different characteristics, looks, performance and durability. The more exclusive vehicles you need to work hard to get hold of, and it’s not as easy to hijack cars as in the Grand Theft Auto series.
You can choose from three different background stories when you start the game - Nomad, Corpo, and Streetkid. What you choose influences both how and where the game starts and which dialogue choices you can choose from. The three background stories make it worthwhile restarting the game to get a whole new version of events.
There are a variety of weapon types in Cyberpunk 2077. All weapons can be changed; either by installing software mods that change their internal properties or with physical mods such as a new aim. The weapons are available in four different classes, from Uncommon to Legendary.

You can choose to take on the stories and missions in Night City in whatever way you wish. There are main assignments, side assignments, and individual activities to do. You can choose whichever you want, and get to the final part of the game without doing all the main missions.
Hacking is a big part of how you take on missions in Cyberpunk 2077. You can use hacking to get into computers, turn off security cameras, and get through doors. It’s also possible to distract enemies or even kill them by hacking.
You can change the look of your character in any way you want, right down to the smallest detail, such as the size of your cheekbones, your hair colour, and your clothes. You can also give your character various implants that increase skills in certain areas. The changes mean that other characters in the game treat you differently.

High hardware requirements if you want to play with ray tracing and 4K

At the time of writing, Cyberpunk 2077 works best if you play on a PC. The hardware requirements are high and if you want to use ray tracing, you must have a powerful Geforce RTX card in the 2000 or 3000 series from Nvidia.

For the best image quality in 4K resolution and with ray tracing and DLSS, you need an Intel Core i7-6700, 16 GB RAM, and an RTX 3080 graphics card. Still, you cannot count on stable 60 images per second.

For ray tracing and DLSS with a screen resolution of 1440p, the requirement is reduced to RTX 3070. If you manage with 1080p, RTX 2060 will suffice.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been criticised for poor optimisation, not least on older game consoles where the game in some cases is almost unplayable. At the launch, Xbox One and Playstation 4 had major problems with poor graphics and bugs that made it difficult for gamers.

If you are going to buy Cyberpunk 2077, it’s recommended to at least play on Xbox One X or Playstation 4 Pro.

No optimisation for Xbox Series X and Playstation 5

The best gaming console experience is with the Xbox Series X and Playstation 5. They have the performance needed to run Cyberpunk 2077 at 60 frames per second.

However, what they don’t have, are optimisations that make Cyberpunk 2077 take advantage of all the improvements that new generations of game consoles have over the previous game consoles.

CD Project Red already confirmed in the summer of 2020 that Cyberpunk 2077 won’t get the right optimisations until 2021. This means that you run the same version of the game on your Xbox Series X as your friend with his Xbox One.

The first major update with optimisations will be released in January and the second update in February. CD Project Red has confirmed that the optimisations don’t give PC quality to the new game consoles, but rather that the quality is a bit sharper to better match what you can expect on an Xbox Series X and Playstation 5.