While CD Projekt Red is sadly moving on from Cyberpunk 2077 to focus on the sequel, meaning we won’t be getting any more expansions or significant updates, there’s still a wee bit of polishing to do. Update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty arrived in a good state, but there’s still some room for improvement, which is what patch 2.01 is focused on, squashing some bugs—including a particularly annoying one that’s been around for years—and buffing the game’s performance, particularly in Dogtown.
Players who encountered the visual bug where the glitchy blue effect that briefly occurs during scripted story moments persists forever have finally been given a reprieve that doesn’t require the installation of a mod. These glitches are meant to reinforce the effect of the Relic in V’s noggin, which is killing them, but are only meant to last for a few seconds. In some cases, however, after experiencing this during the Automatic Love quest, players have reported it never going away.
The bug has been causing problems since launch, three years ago, and our own Wes ran afoul of it when he started playing only recently, which forced him to install a mod to counter it—the only solution at the time. CDPR said it was looking into it, and has thankfully addressed it in the patch. “The distortion effect caused by talking to Johnny and selecting a specific dialogue option at the end of the quest will no longer persist on the screen.”
Quite a few vanilla bugs have been resolved, but Phantom Liberty has also been given some attention, which means Idris Elba’s Solomon Reed won’t show up to a party underdressed anymore. This bug was specific to the You Know My Name quest, during which Reed swaps his cool but scruffy look for a sequined party outfit. Very dapper. But during a dialogue sequence with Songbird he’s not wearing it—a fashion faux pas that is no longer an issue. In the same quest, V would sometimes get stuck in a sniper’s nest, too, which has also been fixed.
A variety of performance improvements have also been included, the biggest impact of which should be seen in Dogtown. This is along with “visual fixes for animations, lighting, scenes, VFX, and more”. Those of you using Ultra Performance mode should also see improved image quality of DLSS Ray Construction.
Beyond bugs and performance fixes, there’s something for the modders too: Phantom Liberty support for REDmod has now been added.
You can check out the rest of the patch’s main improvements on the update page.