My first experience of Cyberpunk 2077, nearly three years ago, was rocky. I poured 120 hours into it across the first month, becoming smitten with its cast of rebellious crooks and corpo sleazebags, as well as Night City itself, but I couldn't even walk down the street without encountering a barrage of bugs and oddities. Some hilarious, others borderline game-breaking.
Things have changed dramatically since then. Years of meaty patches, capped off by the impressive 2.0 update, which overhauls entire systems and revitalises the game, mean that my second playthrough is significantly smoother. It's a much better RPG, and a much more polished one—for the most part.
I was not, then, prepared to deal with a quest-halting bug that had confounded me way back in 2020. The quest in question was Violence, which sees V taking on a job for chromed-up musician Lizzy Wizzy, played by a very disinterested Grimes. She's suspicious of her manager-turned-beau, sending V to a club he frequents: Riot. And that's where the quest decided to shit the bed, just like it did three years ago.
The task should have been simple: get into the club, head to the VIP area, spy on the manager. But things immediately went wonky. I approached the club, where punters were lined up to get inside. After scanning me, the doors immediately opened, but the bouncer outside rudely informed me that it was closed. The quest was still directing me to ask around about the manager, so I interrogated him, using the intimidation option that my very high Body ability offered me. No dice.
Since Riot was definitely open regardless of what the bouncer thought, I still managed to get inside. I took a selfie with a discount Daft Punk act and then headed upstairs, where I knew the bartender would be able to tell me more about the manager. But nope! The bar was busy, but unattended. He was actually outside smoking, and while he agreed to help me, he also seemed to think the club was closed, telling me to come back later. I impotently shouted at him, or more specifically my monitor, but to no avail.
Fine, I thought, if nobody was going to help me, I'd just make my own way to the VIP area where the manager was meant to be. I stole an access card, took a ride on a lift, and then reached the terminal where I could hack the cameras, allowing me to spy on the manager's clandestine meeting. But I was once again foiled. The VIP area I was spying on was empty. Probably because, like the bouncer and bartender, the manager was also under the incorrect impression that Riot was closed.
No amount of reloading or waiting made any difference. Just like it didn't make any difference in 2020. And it looks like this is just one of several bugs players have encountered while attempting to help out Lizzy. I suspect they are still causing problems now, too. I guess that's me done with that quest, then. Granted, it's not a huge loss. It's not a critical quest, Grimes is awful, and I have plenty of other things to do, especially now that I'm mucking around in Phantom Liberty's Dogtown. And it's worth noting that the expansion also solves the main issue with this quest not working. The reward is a pretty nifty tech pistol, named after the musician, but like a bunch of other iconic weapons this can now be purchased from a vendor in Dogtown's black market. Thanks, buddy!
Still, it's weird to see that the issue hasn't been fixed after all this time, especially when it's a quest that CDPR plugged quite a bit thanks to its (disappointing) celebrity cameo. It's far from the only bug to have persevered, however, though most of the other ones I've encountered are hilarious—to the point where I'm actually glad they've stuck around.
The quirk that I encounter the most involves my vehicles; specifically when they are being dropped off by the onboard AI. Most of the time my rides pull up next to me, if I'm standing by a road, and I just hop in. But every now and again, their arrival will cause absolute carnage on the street, slamming into stationary vehicles, causing pile-ups, blowing shit up, murdering pedestrians—my bike once managed to get on top of a van, which was a very inconvenient place to park.
I genuinely think I'd be disappointed if that ever got fixed. It's definitely a bug rather than a feature, but it also perfectly skewers things like automated vehicles and, more broadly, technology that's marketed as making our lives easier while it actually just causes nothing but hassle. One of my hopes for Cyberpunk 2077 was that it would spit out more satire, the way that 2000AD and Judge Dredd started doing 40 years ago, but it ended up being a little too broad for that, even if it does make some attempts. In its absence, I'll take accidental jabs created by bugs.
Anyway! Cyberpunk 2077 really has been improved so much over the last three years. I have absolutely no qualms about recommending it now. But like every massive open-world romp, you'll still encounter some issues, so don't go in expecting flawlessness.
