Is Cyberpunk 2077 Worth Playing in 2026?
CD Projekt Red fixed Cyberpunk 2077. We review the state of the game, what it means to, "Digital Loiter", and the essential mods you need to install today.
Pre-Launch Hype
If you follow gaming you will no doubt have heard about the Cyberpunk 2077 disaster. If you haven’t, or you’ve forgotten you can start here.
I’ll set you up.
Imagine you are CD Projekt Red. You’re a small company from Poland who is known for many things. You created the second most popular gaming store that is not Steam: GOG.com. GOG is special because it has no digital security on its games. When you buy a game you own the entire thing. Meaning you can copy the files, give them to someone else, and the program can never be taken away.
You’ve also created a gaming arm which worked it’s way up over many games to creating The Witcher 3, one of the greatest open world games of all time. The Witcher is a sleeper hit. It may not have been the most popular at launch, but it’s sales continued to grow over time buffed by a Netflix series starring Henry Cavil.
Your next game, with the right amount of love, is guaranteed to be a smash hit.
So you put out this trailer on Jan 10th, 2013
People went nuts.
A cyberpunk game based on the TTRPG (Table Top Role Playing Game) Cyberpunk 2020 by Mike Pondsmith
Years pass, Cyberpunk gets closer to release, and you reveal that your lead actor is Keanu Reeves. Keanu also mints his status as the most wholesome celebrity on the internet.
Speaking from personal experience, I could not wait for this game to come out.
How it Launched
Early reviews for the game started trickling in, and as the sun rose the red sky revealed itself.
Cyberpunk was… undercooked, and fans were not about to tolerate such a mess from a highly regarded developer such as CD Projekt Red.
Personally I didn’t care much. Sure the game ran awful, and was really buggy, but as we all have learned I love bugs and glitches so I was having a great time.
See my article about breaking games here:
I completed the game and even went back for a second playthrough. My opinion of the game and it’s story was positive, but that’s not without the obvious caveats.
Features were missing, such as the metro, and the game ran extremely poorly.
After the smoke settled CD Projekt emerged from the wreckage committed to changing their game for the better.
Between then and now the game has seen small resurgences of players during key updates, and from the Cyberpunk: Edgrunners Anime which was also great!
Cyberpunk’s State in 2026
Cutting to the chase here: 2026 is absolutely the best year to pick up Cyberpunk.
With the release of the recent 2.3 update Cyberpunk finally has enough features to meet it’s original expectations.
Now you can:
Ride the metro
Buy apartments
Customize your car
Run the game
Drive cars (without getting catapulted across the map)
Engage autopilot
Ray tracing and path tracing greatly improve the games visual quality far beyond what was possible at launch.
Additionally the entire skill tree has been overhauled to make combat strategies more engaging. Personally I’ve been using the crap out of the mantis blades.
The story for the game has not changed much, and that’s largely ok. The original story was solid, and Keanu’s performance is very Keanu.
Phantom Liberty DLC
What I’ve yet to mention is Cyberpunk’s only paid DLC Phantom Liberty.
Phantom Liberty is the game that Cyberpunk wished it could be. The developers have all the experience from fixing the base game, and learning from what worked about their original storytelling.
Not to mention the inclusion of a new celebrity cameo Idris Elba. I love Keanu’s performance in Cyberpunk, don’t get me wrong, but he can be kinda… one note.
Idris Elba brings such depth and complexity to his character that I genuinely haven’t seen in a game before. Its breathtaking.
His character has motivation, regret, sadness, remorse, but also a cold hearted government spy side that he uses to cover up all the other emotions when he needs to.
The DLC is a huge reason to pick up the game on it’s own.
See a snippet (spoilers) from one of my favorite conversations here:
People Watching
I’ve recently discovered a term that speaks to me. A genre for games that I’ve yet to hear until not, but it makes so much sense.
Digital Loitering
It perfectly describes how I play games, and what I love to do in Cyberpunk. I can hardly complete the main story because I get too distracted wandering around, and role playing living in the city. I take public transit, I walk, and I take in the sights and sounds of the different districts.
This effect is helped even more by the recent inclusion of autopilot on cars. I’ll set the destination to the other side of the map and enjoy my digital road trip wallpaper. It’s great.
Essential Mods for Immersion
It wouldn’t be a Cyberpunk review if I wasn’t talking about mods. Mods take the base game from something fun and interesting to next level immersive. Add more clothes, more apartments, more cars, reduce the amount of repeating npc’s and many more.
Some Mods I Recommend
I won’t go into the nitty gritty of how to install or all the little utilities these mods require. I just want to highlight some of my favorite feature mods.
Auto Loot
Looting is cumbersome with the amount of things you need to loot. Trust me.
Improved Autopilot
Better driving AI
Say Something Dammit
Adds more immersive dialogue to V when entering and leaving stores
Immersive Food Vendors
Fighting Gangs Allowed
Stops cops from attacking you when fighting gang activity
Map Search
Metro Guide
Vendor Search
Immersive Time-skip
Among many hundreds of others
In Conclusion
Cyberpunk is alum to the prestigious club of most complete and engaging interactive worlds. cough IMMERSIVE cough. I can’t physically beg you to pick up the game, but I can get on my knees and say, “You should give it another shot.”
That’s all from me this week. I hope you enjoyed it.
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