Cyberpunk 2077 first impressions: Glitches of the future

Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out. I played it on the PS4 Pro and lemme tell you, I have seen the future and… it is not what I expected. At all.

Yesterday I got my physical copy of Cyberpunk 2077 for my PS4 Pro. It’s two discs, something I thought I’d never see again in my lifetime but there it was. The dreaded disc flap. Getting it installed was surprisingly quick for something that required a data disc so that was at least cool.

Getting in I started customizing my character and… my goodness. There were so many choices I was ready for and not all at once. The first thing you do is start off with your “Lifepath.” The Lifepath is one of three story starters. There’s the Nomad, who is sort of like a roving drifter who comes to town trying to make a buck. The Streetkid, who grew up on the streets of the big city in a gang. And then there’s the Corpo, who spent their life moving up in a major corporation in a life of luxury.

When you pick your character your story starts differently until you eventually meet someone named Jackie and then everything changes and the stories mesh. The main difference in picking a type means your character has different experiences leading to different dialogue options. I, personally, started with Corpo just because I wanted to slightly have a Johnny Mnemonic type character.

From there you make your character look how you want and this is where the choices get bizarre. I’m not talking about the genital thing either. If you didn’t know you can pick between two different penises or a vagina. You see it. It’s there. I’m not talking about that, I’m German, that sort of thing isn’t all that bizarre to me. What I’m talking about is the weird lack of options in some regards.

For example, there’s a remarkable amount of facial piercings. But instead of having separate categories for nose piercing, brow piercing, ear piercing, etc… there are just different combinations. Do you want a gauge in your ear? Cool, hope you want that with like six different other facial piercings.

Eventually, I made a lime green gentleman who looked like a handsome corporate asshole and started the game, finding myself looking in a mirror in an office bathroom. Seconds late my character was leaning forward in the sink vomiting. I know this is a bizarre takeaway but the vomit looked horrible. Not like “vomit is gross” but it just looked like someone dropped a fake vomit toy in the sink.

I also noticed a weird clipping glitch on my character’s pants. Wasn’t sure what that was but I’m sure this won’t come back later to horrifying me. It just happened for a split second. (Spoiler: It comes back and horrifies me)

Heading out of the bathroom I walk through the massive, pointlessly high ceilinged, offices I worked at making my way to my boss. Everything was Cyberpunk up to 11. People have narrow offices with clear walls behind them so everyone can see what they’re doing and the clear wall has blindingly red accents because, in Cyberpunk, the future is glowing.

Without spoiling too much of the story, my company is involved in some shady stuff and, eventually, ironically after talking about how I understand how cutthroat the industry is, I’m betrayed and I lose my job and access to certain upgrades my character has turning him to a life of street crime.

I’m then treated to a very worrying cut scene/montage where my character gets back on his feet while a very excitable gentleman tells me all about the city like it’s an advertisement for someone considering moving there. The part that worried me was that the entire time the cut scene was playing it was skipping. It stuttered like crazy to the point where I felt like I was just drunkenly trying to use a flipbook.

Performance issues became more and more apparent. Many vehicles never loaded their shaders correctly leaving me with ugly polygonal messes. Clothing would appear, disappear and clip through other clothes. Eventually, I realized what the pants problem I saw earlier was too. As I exited a car, I realized what I saw. My character’s penis was sticking out of their pants. If that sentence made you double-take, imagine me realizing I was going to have to write that sentence but there it was. My character left his vehicle to go on a mission literally AND figuratively “whole hog”.

I entered a nightclub. I was stunned to see the nightclub looked like something out of Mass Effect. It was just very poorly lit, with lots of purple and a generic base beat playing which I described to my wife by saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, DJ Washing Machine.” Then, from across the floor, I saw her. Our eyes locked. I had heard she was in this game but I didn’t expect to see her on a PS4 Pro but there she was.

A character just standing there in t-pose. If you don’t know, a t-pose is a character who didn’t load their animation. By default, character files are normally saved in this pose with their arms out like an airplane. Then the animation files tell them how to stand and where to move. She did not get the memo. I actually found several in the club like this but she was my first.

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I fought through it, the story was genuinely compelling so I still wanted to see where it was going. And then I got sent on a mission where I had to recover a missing woman from someone who steals cybernetic parks and sells them on the black market. I found her, she could be saved as she was in a tub of ice and still breathing. As I pulled her out of the tub I linked up with her to read her vitals, her head resting against my lap as I sat on the edge of the tub.

While my character was concerned and trying to make sure she was safe, my body seemed to be very bored. His leg started tapping and clipping through the other leg faster and faster until the poor woman’s head started shaking around violently. My leg was kicking her head around.

I didn’t realize this at first, I legit thought she was having a seizure and didn’t realize my legs were the cause but it became impossible to ignore as I literally just started kneeing this barely alive woman. When my character called help for her I had to carry her to the balcony. Things got real bad here.

I picked her up and at first, I was cradling a weakened naked woman in my arms. Then I turned the camera and she started to rotate. Her body hovered in front of me, rotating wildly whenever I’d turn. Eventually, my screen was literally filled with a naked butt practically blinding me as I tried to make my way to the balcony to get her help.

This was about all I could tolerate for the day. With all the clipping, t-posing, butt blindness, and wayward genitals I think I can just chill and wait for the next patch. As I went to my room in the game to end my day, I looked in my bathroom mirror to find all my hair and my hat have all disappeared from my body. I started laughing, and my character? My character smiled. The future is wild y’all.