Side Quests: Cyberpunk 2077 Remains Unrivaled

mmorpg.com:

“Aged like fine wine” is an overused cliche, I think. I think this phrase gets tossed around too casually where the actual intended effect is no longer...um...effective. Instead, I prefer to be direct. If something is still pretty some period of time later, just say so.

Cyberpunk 2077 is just that. It’s still pretty more than two years removed from release. In fact, I would say it’s even prettier today than it was at launch. In case you need a bit of a refresher, here’s my technical analysis of Cyberpunk 2077 as part of my review.

I praised the game for its groundbreaking technical achievement in its thorough implementation of real-time ray tracing for global illumination, indirect lighting, shadows, emissives, reflections, and more. Additionally, CDPR implemented DLSS to offset this ray tracing cost. In a word, the technical vision was holistically considered.

Since then, Cyberpunk 2077 has received several updates--both large and small--to address bugs, performance, and, in one instance, add yet another ray tracing effect to the game. RT local shadows were added to the PC version, increasing the total number of RT effects in the game. Just recently, the PC version was graced with the truly paradigm-shifting DLSS 3 to accelerate performance even more.

I have been there since the beginning. And, as the unabashed ray tracing and graphics enthusiast amongst my friends, I have been consistently amazed every single time I boot up the game.

Let’s start with some numbers for context. My gaming PC comprises an i7-12700k, RTX 4090, with 32 GB DDR5 RAM. I include these specs to transparently convey my experience is not--nor should not--be taken as “the norm.” This is an extreme edge case, concordantly resulting in extreme results.

And,