One clingy Cyberpunk 2077 NPC is following players through the game

Cyberpunk 2077 Militech Datashard
(Image credit: CD Projekt Red)

As we all know by now, the day one patch did not perform the expected miracle, and Cyberpunk 2077 is a good but very buggy game indeed. Some are just amusing, like folk walking around with their junk poking out of their trousers, while others genuinely detract from the experience. This one... it's a bit of both.

"This is absolutely driving me nuts," writes player Staiger89, "but an NPC by the name of Hwangbo has been following me since some early side mission. Anyone else have this issue??? Fast travel will get rid of him for a few minutes, but then I see the green icon appear on my radar and sure enough he is following me all through night city. It’s the adoring fan all over again! But you can’t kill this one!"

Player Staigerd89 was doing an early mission that involves escorting this character called Hwangbo to his car. There's a shootout at one point but, after dispatching of the bad guys, the mission didn't seem to have a way to progress. V and Hwangbo were left in limbo, and now Hwangbo follows V everywhere.

With his bright blue combover and yellow trousers, Hwangbo doesn't exactly blend into the background, and Staiger's been posting shots of the NPC following them around Night City. My favourite is either the blank-faced look he gives while standing outside an elevator, or when the player enters a meeting room and he crouches outside, cowering, until they re-emerge.

Hwangbo the merciless stalks a player in the elevator.

(Image credit: CD Projekt)

Various other players responded saying they'd experienced the same issue, and some but not all had been able to get the game to 'fix' itself by re-spawning Hwangbo at the mission start, whereupon he won't speak to the player any further but will accept a silent ride to his final destination.

Another earlygame NPC that displays aspects of this behaviour is DumDum, who does seem to have a much more menacing air. Whereas Hwangbo... this dude's got something about him. He may not survive past the next bug patch, but at least there's one NPC determined Night City won't pass them by.

Rich Stanton
Senior Editor

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."

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