CD Projekt Pink had nowhere to go however up with Cyberpunk 2077’s police. At launch, the NCPD was the laughing inventory of videogame regulation enforcement—officers would totally fail to offer chase if V hopped right into a automobile, hilariously spawn behind perpetrators as quickly as against the law was dedicated, and open hearth for easy trespassing (hm, maybe that was real looking). Launch Cyberpunk didn’t have a real police “system,” simply an phantasm of 1. The Replace 2.0 patch, releasing September 21, lastly goals to treatment this.
I spent the weekend with Replace 2.0 and the revamped NCPD, and I am blissful to report they’re so much higher at their jobs nowadays. They’re nonetheless scumbags, however not magically spawning ones.
The key change within the patch is the introduction of police chases. Choose a struggle on foot or on the street and the NCPD will reply kind of such as you’d anticipate from a GTA recreation: cops will arrive in automobiles (not by way of teleportation), get out, and begin blasting. If V drives off, extra items will arrive to fulfill them on the freeway.
I have been switching to first-person for automobile fight just because it feels cool.
Cop chases go hand-in-hand with one other 2.0 function: automobile fight. The NCPD just isn’t shy about riddling V’s bumper with lead whereas rushing down a busy avenue, and so they can struggle again with pistols or SMGs in both first-person or third. I sometimes favor to drive in third-person in Cyberpunk, and it is undeniably simpler to purpose weapons this fashion as nicely, however I have been switching to first-person for automobile fight just because it feels cool—freely aiming with my proper hand whereas my left continues to be on the wheel is a enjoyable, immersive perk of first-person video games that I often have to fireside up Far Cry to search out.
The 5-star notoriety system from launch continues to be there, however now the celebs truly imply one thing. Rack up just a few stars and the NCPD will arrange roadblocks. Escalate additional and Max-Tac brokers with beefy armor and top-notch cyberware present up. Break line-of-sight and cop automobiles will patrol the encircling streets. Like in GTA, I may reliably duck into an alley or discover an enclosed constructing to cover—so long as I stayed out of the cop imaginative and prescient cones seen on the minimap, my stars ultimately cleared.
I seen extra cops on patrol the extra stars I had, and as soon as police drones entered the combo, escaping with automobile stealth was so much tougher.
Defend and swerve
The Evening Metropolis authorities has clearly upped the NCPD’s finances, too, within the course of making town a extra plausible place in a dystopian corpo-state sorta approach. Beat cops now dynamically patrol the streets in automobiles and on foot, and so they may even provoke chases with gang autos—all of which blends properly with the stationary factors of curiosity that Cyberpunk has had since launch, like cordoned off crime scenes and scripted gang fights.
So sure, the brand new and improved NCPD is lastly an sufficient adversary for a very good old style open world rampage, although they’re nonetheless kinda janky.
Cops are so much dumber when you attain the badlands exterior Evening Metropolis.
Cops are so much dumber when you attain the badlands exterior Evening Metropolis—they will not comply with you offroad, so escaping a chase is so simple as chopping throughout a dust embankment. Additionally they nonetheless do technically teleport in, however solely within the sense that they will drive in from off-screen if you happen to go on a murdering spree in the course of nowhere. To be sincere, preventing cops or egging them on with open world hijinks has by no means been my concept of enjoyable in a recreation like Cyberpunk 2077. I have a tendency to stay to missions in Cyberpunk and RPGs prefer it, so the outdated NCPD by no means bothered me a lot.
Nonetheless, it is good that they do not suck anymore, if solely in order that the sport has a considerably real looking response after I unintentionally splatter a sidewalk’s price of civilians on my approach to purchase some pants. Even when most gamers are like me and barely decide a struggle with Cyberpunk’s cops in any case, it was nonetheless price it for CD Projekt to transform them. The studio has spent three years rightfully consuming crow for making guarantees it could not hold at launch, and I am unable to consider a greater image of Cyberpunk’s “expectations vs. actuality” backlash than its bewildering teleporting cops.
Replace 2.0 is CD Projekt’s ultimate make-good for promoting a recreation that wasn’t prepared. After spending just a few days with the brand new perk timber, cyberware rework, and automobile fight, it looks like I am lastly enjoying the sport CDPR needed to make. Higher late than by no means, I suppose.
