CD Projekt Red devoted more than 8 years to a game that could have been the greatest the studio had ever produced. It had incredible hype, a super cool setting, a fantastic development team and all the goodwill gamers could garner upon it. Hell, it even had Keanu frickin’ Reeves.
But when it was finally released, gamers worldwide were deeply disappointed. We were collectively crushed by how poor it turned out to be, given the promise it had.
The game had a crapload of bugs and glitches. The game was so glitchy on console that not even next-gen systems like PS5 and Xbox Series X could produce a decent frame rate. CD Projekt Red had to formally apologise and refund irate early adopters for all the trouble. As a result, you can’t even buy the game digitally on console right now. Before discussing what went wrong with Cyberpunk 2077 in more detail, get our heart Bingo code to earn amazing bonuses!
So, how can a studio like CD Projekt Red which had made great titles like The Witcher 3, mess up this badly? There are many reasons, let’s take a look.
Too Ambitious
After Cyberpunk 2077 was released and gamers found an enormous number of glitches, a lot of issues came to light with the production of the game. Even the developers were not happy with how the game was produced. Perhaps, being too ambitious with the gameplay was one of the reasons for the game to fail.
The incredibly dense map of Night City, combined with the sophistication of the AI simulations, made rendering all the concurrent systems highly challenging for even high-end CPUs. As for consoles, particularly last-gen PS4 and Xbox One with their ancient Jaguar CPU cores, it was a total non-starter. Even at hideously low resolutions, the game still ran like crap.
The Witcher 3 also faced many optimisation challenges prior to launch however, unlike Geralt’s seminal adventure, Cyberpunk was just too ambitious technically to ever work properly on the console hardware that was available during its development.
In hindsight, we’re sure CD Projekt would have canned last-gen consoles altogether and held out for a full-on next-gen release instead.
As for PC? The game plays reasonably well, on a decent rig. But overall, it’s clearly an unrefined and under developed product.
Change of Plans Midway Through Development
While we were introduced to Cyberpunk 2077 as a 1st person game, the game was originally meant to be a 3rd person game. The developers started to work on it as a 3rd person game, adding features and gameplay that will only work with 3rd person interaction methods.
But in 2016, this decision was changed and as a result, developers were very upset with it. In fact, developers have been quoted saying the game pretty much started again from scratch at this point. Not at all helpful when you had already spent several years working on it in a totally different way.
There was a demo published in 2018, but this was apparently a bit of a red herring as it was quoted as being almost “entirely fake”. So we now know that developers didn’t think the game had a chance of actually being finished by 2020, and we are seeing proof of that. Cyberpunk 2077 did get launched in 2020, but it was nowhere near complete. In our opinion, this title needed at least another 18 months of development time.
Overworking
We all know the consequences of overworking. Projects don’t get finished properly and can lead to plenty of mistakes. This is exactly what happened with the development of Cyberpunk 2077.
Developers were asked to work 13 hours for five days a week continuously. The situation only got worse as initial launch windows were missed and the dreaded crunch was needed to get the game out before the end of 2020. This is despite the company claiming to have a progressive policy towards crunch, as studio co-founder Marcin Iwiński boasted that they had a “non-obligatory crunch policy” in an interview in 2019.
But if staff couldn’t meet these expectations, others had to make up for them. It’s even rumoured that managers used under-experienced developers to fill the gaps and this may be one of the prime reasons for some of the poor systems and glitches in the game.
And we hadn’t even mentioned the pandemic, which affected the development of every big game in 2020. Having to co-ordinate a chaotic and overly ambitious completion cycle on a half-baked game largely from home, only compounded the games many problems.
Gamers Not Having Patience
Yes, gamers are to blame a bit as well! CD Projekt Red was constantly saying they need more time to develop the game properly, even if they weren’t prepared to be brave enough to actually postpone the launch indefinitely until it was worthy of release.
But, impatient players just couldn’t contain themselves as they constantly pressurised the Polish studio to release the game as soon as possible. Given that most of us were stuck in lockdown due to COVID-19, it’s not surprising players were salivating for something good to sink their teeth into.
But, as a result of community impatience and some foolish optimism from CD Projekt management, we got a broken mess of a console game and a subpar PC experience. Thanks nerds, thanks a bunch.
Bottom Line
We may have all been crushed with disappointment at the mess that was Cyberpunk 2077, especially if you were one of the many who bought it on console, but there is hope for the future of the game.
CD Projekt have been humbled by their massive failure and have vowed to put things right as quickly as they can.
Fixing a game like this isn’t going to be easy, but there is a chance that with some smart work in 2021 the studio can bring this flawed release up to a standard we can all enjoy rather than resent.
A proper next-gen release on PS5 and Xbox Series systems, with all the bells and whistles graphically as well as a far more polished and beefed up gameplay experience, could just be the perfect way to redeem what could have been one of 2020s best games. Let’s hope CD Projekt can pull it off…
