Cyberpunk is still being made apparently.

'We've got patches for days!'

People have the gall to get on Larian's case for taking their time before bringing out the 1.0 of their game in order to ensure everything works in the immediate, meanwhile they're more than happy to celebrate the fact that Cyberpunk 2077 seems to still be in it's beta stage almost a year after release and with everyone already having combed the game dry of story and secrets. (There really ain't no justice in this world.) And so CDPR, deep in their endless apology tour for the absolute state of their latest flagship, has bought the community their brand new heap of content in the biggest update yet; Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.5. And with that came the exceedingly bold claim that the game was now worthy of being called an 'RPG'. There's a larger discussion to be had there about exactly what constitutes an 'RPG', although wherever we fall on that matter I think it's hard to insist that Patch 1.5 in particular added that special spark which pushed the gameplay other the edge. (Either Cyberpunk was a true RPG before the patch, or it still isn't.)

And though the elitist's RPG is still something that paupers like me can only watch from the sidelines and go 'huh, that looks cool. Wish I could play something like that', even from afar I can recognise cool steps of progress being made that I honestly wasn't expecting. We're seeing stuff like multiple apartments being added into the game so that V can go shopping for major home upgrades, although there still isn't really a reason to visit your home so the functionality of that is questionable, but the thought it nice. There's a few more customisation options in the game allowing players to change up some decorations in their apartment or fix up their character's appearance mid-game, although this is customisation for a first person character, not for the many vehicles and guns that feature much more prominently in gameplay, so again: not exactly world changing. And now there are honest to goodness reaction splashes when you shoot at water! No drawback here, this is something that was honestly, deeply missed from the original and it's just a joy to have it here and looking half-decently implemented too.

CDPR have sort of taken an approach to patch delivery that is reminiscent of a company slapping down their brand new 'full release' or DLC package, in that they've laid out the broad strokes of what has changed but left the community to figure-out the specifics. In principle I understand why; they want people to dive in and play the thing for themselves rather than breeze through patch notes and go 'Huh, that's cool. I'm come back when it's finished.' but it does make me wonder if this is going to be the journey of Cyberpunk forever more. I mean sure, there's going to be actual DLC added to the game eventually, that much is a given; but for now the team seem content in providing technical fix updates (with a few snuck in tangible surprises in there too) as the content updates, in a manner one would expect from, again, an indie beta project chugging along it's roadmap. I'm not opposed to this approach per se, at least not yet whilst we're all still untangling what this means for the relationship between CDPR players and the company, but it feels atypical for the moment. For whatever that's worth.

One effect has been that this 1.5 update has stretched out the renewed spark of interest in the brand, so kudos to the team there for nailing their marketing. Although this has dropped in between the release of Elden Ring and... other developments... so maybe a bit of wider spatial awareness should be accounted for in the future from these guys. Heck, just earlier today I heard about even more perfunctory little addendums into the update that snuck under the radar, such as the apparent inclusion of the 2018 E3 trailer's female V face, which many preferred over the redesigned face that ended up in the full release. And, of course, the team even added in the aerial take-down for the Mantis Blades that featured in that trailer all the way back when the ability to crawl across walls like a spider was still in the game. (Still can't figure out why they cut that; it's not as though this neatly constructed world would have exploded with it.) All of which are exciting, they're little gifts from the mouths of community directly back into their pockets.

And I think that's the keyword to take away from this update; the community. Just about everything we've seen added for the 1.5 patch has been responding to complaints from the community. Complaints about housing, the lack of mid-game customisation, water physics, car AI, and missing stuff from 2018. Now in a way it would almost be impossible for CDPR to create a patch that addressed something not mentioned by the community, because the profile of the release coupled with the ferocity of the backlash meant that just about every shortcoming Cybperunk had was blasted on the jumbo screen for all to see, but there's something excessively 'for the community' driving this bunch of content in particular. A lot of it, customisation in particular, is decently immaterial to the meat of the game, but people asked for it so the team worked on it. That's a lot of power to give to the community and I hope CDPR know what they're doing by going this route, because this method of crowd appeasement will not end until the game lives up to the promises it made before release, and considering how lofty those promises were I don't think that will ever be feasibly possible.

So now I think the question that we're all going to be coming back to is quite simply; where are we heading to with all of this? What is the state of quality that CDPR wants to achieve before they deem the game built-up enough to move on? Because we're at the point now that those who gave up on Cyberpunk not too long after launch, deeming it not worthy of repeat playthroughs in order to witness all that they missed out on the first time, are getting anxious for that two DLCs we were promised, or heck even Ciri's debut in 'The Witcher 4' on the distant horizon. We've moved past fundamental fixes being the main draw of these patches and onto extremely lightweight features- (the dynamic map icon function is pretty cool but I'm not doing front-flips about it) so then where is the cut off? Is it here? Patch 2.0? Patch 3.0? When is it finally; Good enough?

To which I suppose the answer is: when the game is decent enough to support whatever wild DLC plans that CDPR are working on; because I can just about guarantee that whatever ideas the team were playing around with before launch have been drastically reworked and scaled-up in a hail-mary attempt to win back that reputation for quality which was decidedly lost in the whole debacle. Does that mean coding into the game the ability for NPCs to enter cars outside of scripted interactions? Or putting in systems resembling an honest-to-goodness police system rather than the placeholder scaffolding that the game has featured since launch? How about car chases? Pedestrian AI improvements? Or does that literally just mean getting the game stable enough and decent enough to support a new content drop for a vastly different DLC area to be added in? There really is no telling at this point.

With all this I have to ask myself, as I do every update, if now is the time to finally pick up Cyberpunk 2077. And this time I have to admit that I am a little tempted, and maybe if everything else happening around the industry and outside it wasn't going on right now, and the game was seeing a steep discount, (no, the current Steam discount doesn't even nearly cut it) I'd take the plunge. But I can't see the fervour which the game demands being met anytime soon, not until we officially enter that new chapter of the life cycle with that DLC launch. And some love to the world simulation elements would be cool as well, but each to their own on that regard. I suppose it's gratifying to see CDPR stick to their guns and work upon the game until they're blue-in-the-face, and I'm starting to come back around to hoping everything works out for them in the long run. Hoping that the game magically slots into place and earns back all the cred it lost out in in December 2020. But just when I get to wanting to route for them, I turn around and remember that Elden Ring is out, and it becomes hard not to loss interest, just shrug my shoulders and say that maybe it's all just too little too late.