Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t just redeem itself — it pushed open worlds further

polygon.com:

It wasn’t long into Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference that Cyberpunk 2077 was showcased alongside the famously “breathtaking” Keanu Reeves. Excitement pulsed through my body and poached my brain to an internal temperature of 170 degrees Fahrenheit. All other thoughts, goals, and desires melted away like tender meat falling from the bone. Playing this game became a singular concern in my life, a climactic mountain that stood unmoving in the horizon, cloaking everything else in shadow.

After all, Cyberpunk 2077 was being developed by CD Projekt Red, the studio responsible for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. The Witcher 3 was appointment gaming, with its botchlings and sorceress impalement. Now came the devs’ treatment of an open-world dystopian future. With Cyberpunk, CDPR was trading a stuffed unicorn for Blade Runner’s origami unicorn. What’s more, its first-person perspective drew obvious parallels to the Bethesda RPGs occupying a permanent residence in my heart; to say I was excited would be an understatement. The ensuing string of delays left me concerned but nonetheless optimistic. And then, in December 2020, the game launched.

Cyberpunk 2077 became a punchline in the weeks that followed. Bugs were common, if not pervasive — one week after its release, it was pulled from the PlayStation Store. Despite its issues, my experience with the game at launch was generally positive. Playing on PC spared me from the debilitating performance issues that plagued the console version. I invested well over 100 hours, every mission complete except for a single bugged side job about a guy with a malfunctioning penis implant.

In December 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 felt like a phenomenal game that was still a few years away from launch. There