One of the most hyped game titles that came out in 2020 is Cyberpunk 2077. It’s an action role-playing game that’s developed and published by CD Projekt, the company that created The Witcher series. The game was announced in 2012 and it was promised to be an immersive game set in a sci-fi universe.
After that announcement, the developers released teaser trailers that gave players a glimpse of what to expect about the game. Adding well-known actor Keanu Reeves as a familiar character in the game, adding more to the game’s hype and excitement. Millions of players pre-ordered the game as they want to get their hands on it the moment it becomes available.
But when it finally arrived, it failed to live up to the hype and excitement. It was full of bugs and glitches, and many of the things that were promised weren’t delivered. But it was worse for console players, as the game kept on crashing on the PlayStation 5 and the new Xbox device. So, what happened? Let’s discuss this in this article.
A Delay On The Game’s Release
The game was announced in 2012 and was slated to be originally released in April 2020. With that amount of time to develop the game, you’d think there wouldn’t be any delays with its release. But in January 2020 CD Projekt tweeted that the game’s release was delayed to September 17. Then it was again delayed to November 19, until it was finally pushed further to December 10, 2020.
The delays already signaled that there’s something wrong with the game’s development. Considering that there was ample time to properly develop it. The delays were already a bit concerning, especially since there were multiple adjustments to its release date. An article from The New York Times shed some light on what likely happened.
Difficulty in Developing The Game
The article mentioned that developers were already getting concerned with grand promises being shown on the game’s promotional materials. The immersive, and explorable world that the game promised was still not available far into the game’s development. It may be due to several factors that a Reddit user shared in a post.
Cyberpunk 2077’s story and background were completed in 2018, six years after it was announced. It was a huge step in the game’s development, even if everything else was still barebones. But the user said that the developers screwed up when they wanted to include celebrities in the game. They succeeded in luring Keanu Reeves, who enjoyed the game and would like to have a bigger role in it.
This is a problem considering the game’s storyline was already completed. They had to rewrite everything to integrate Keanu’s character and give it a bigger role in the game. So, when they hired Keanu Reeves in 2019, they had to rewrite the story. The team shifted focus from working on gameplay to reworking the story. This is likely why the game felt rushed when it was released in December.
This is why there were still many bugs and glitches, and that includes the console issue. It was so bad that thousands of people demanded a refund. Sony even pulled out the game from its online store. PC players didn’t have much of an issue, but they did experience some bugs and glitches as well. The majority of the backlash was from console players, who can’t properly play the game without crashes.
Final Thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be one of the best games for the year 2020. Instead, it became one of the biggest disappointments. It failed to live up to expectations as the developers focused too much on hyping it up instead of delivering on all its promises. This is not new for CD Projekt, as the first Witcher game also came out with a lot of glitches. But they redeemed themselves later on. So here’s hoping that they fix Cyberpunk 2077 and finally deliver the game that everyone is waiting for.
