Cyberpunk 2077 patch promises fixes for NPCs, driving and police

UPDATE 6.23pm: Cyberpunk 2077's sizeable 1.2 update is available to download now on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC.

As detailed below (and in CD Projekt's accompanying patch notes), update 1.2 attempts to addresses a broad range of issues with Cyberpunk 2077, making adjustments to NPC behaviour, driving, game stability, and a heap more.

PC players can expect a download of around 30GB, and that goes up to 40-45GB on consoles.

Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 1.10 - PS4 + Xbox One Tested - Is It Closer To Being Fixed?

ORIGINAL STORY 12.21pm: Another sorely-needed patch for Cyberpunk 2077 is on the horizon, and the list of changes is huge: an assortment of bug fixes, changes to NPC behaviour, stability improvements to prevent crashes, and sorting out various other annoyances. Like Delamain calling you every five minutes.

The patch notes for update 1.2 are now available on the Cyberpunk website, and if you're hoping to read them all you'd best make yourself a cup of tea - you could be here a while. Alongside myriad bug fixes (everything from flying cars to teleporting characters), there are some significant changes that should make a noticeable impact in Night City. The game's infamously speedy police department have been told to take a chill pill, with an increase to their spawn radius for when a player commits a crime. Hopefully this means a whole squad will no longer appear behind your back. And if you want a speedy getaway, there are improvements to the game's driving mechanics: there's a new steering sensitivity slider in the controls settings, the steering code has been adjusted to work better for low and high frame rates (improving steering on base consoles "noticeably"), and some vehicles have been tweaked to improve their steering. Now you won't have an excuse for your bad driving.

One of the biggest criticisms of Cyberpunk 2077 at launch was NPC behaviour, and changes to the AI and NPC animations form a significant chunk of the patch notes. NPCs have been discouraged from tripping over each other too frequently, several T-posing issues have been ironed out, and friendly NPCs will take cover properly. A dead NPC will now also stay dead and stop wiggling around on the floor - something that used to freak me out quite regularly.

NPCs will also no longer cause traffic jams when scared, run away properly when hit by a car, and actually perform "different animation variations" for pedestrians running away from a vehicle. All of which, I'm hoping, will prevent scenes like this in future:

Cyberpunk 2077 also, of course, had such significant problems on base last-gen consoles that it was removed from the PlayStation Store (and remains absent to this day). The patch notes say that a range of improvements to stability are being introduced with 1.2, many of which "make a bigger difference on last generation consoles and lower performance machines". These include a reduction in the number of random crashes (through improvements to the engine, rendering engine, UI and memory management). There's a whole lot of optimisations listed there, so we'll have to see whether this makes a significant improvement for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game.

On the graphics side of things, CD Projekt says that texture rendering "from afar" has been improved, while there are also improvements to "materials details quality". There's also a bunch of inadvertently hilarious fixes in this section: Kerry's bathrobe is "no longer incorrectly attached to his lower part of the body", while "Jackie no longer shouts 'Nice shot!' when V kills enemies while in stealth mode." Thanks mate.

But perhaps most importantly of all, this patch sorts out one of the most annoying quests in the entire game: Delamain. Until now, picking up the Epistrophy quest would mean a lifetime of annoying phone calls whenever you passed near a rogue Delamain taxi - often talking over other voice calls and important quest information. Delamain will now only call once when V is close to a lost cab, as opposed to calling every damn time. Peace at last.

This is only a brief overview of the patch notes, of course, so if you're looking for something specific I'd recommend scanning through the entire page over here. Patch 1.2 was initially supposed to arrive a little earlier, but was delayed due to the disruption caused by the recent cyber attack on CD Projekt. It's worth noting this isn't the first patch to target console performance: CD Projekt released patch 1.1 in January, which ironed out some problems with game crashes and stability, but still couldn't get the game running smoothly on base consoles. When it goes live "soon", hopefully patch 1.2 will make more significant improvements to performance on last-gen platforms - and possibly open the door for a return to the PlayStation Store.