Remember how the Rayfield Caliburn felt like driving on ice? Those days are gone.
Driving in Cyberpunk has always felt divisive—too floaty for sim racers, too sticky for arcade fans. CDPR has introduced a new "Dynamic Steering Assist" slider found in the Gameplay menu.
Across PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X, both updates deliver a unified 60 FPS experience in performance mode. Here are the benchmark results for the January 23 patch:
| Platform | Mode | Resolution | Average FPS | Notes | |----------|------|------------|-------------|-------| | PC (RTX 4080) | Path Tracing | 1440p DLSS Quality | 85-95 | No more micro-stutters | | PS5 | Performance | Dynamic 1800p | 60 | Solid 99% of the time | | PS5 | Ray Tracing | 1440p/30 | 30 | Improved shadow draw distance | | Xbox Series X | Performance | Dynamic 1800p | 60 | Equal to PS5 now |
Load times: PS5 and Series X now consistently load saves in under 7 seconds (previously up to 12 seconds in heavy Dogtown areas).
Night City, January 23rd, 2025 – 03:17
The air in Jig-Jig Street smelled of stale synth-beer, ozone, and desperation. For most, it was just another Thursday. But for a select few—the netrunners, the tech-priests, and the conspiracy-addled—the clock was ticking toward something else entirely.
Update 2.20 had dropped two days prior, on the 21st. Patch notes were typical: "Improved pathfinding for trauma drones," "Fixed an issue where Panam’s pants would clip through the Thorton," "Adjusted damage scaling for Smart Weapons in late-game scenarios." The usual ghost-hunting in the machine.
But then, on the 22nd, a silent hotfix—2.21—rolled out with zero announcement. That’s when the whispers started.
V (no relation to the original, just a wannabe edgerunner with a Kiroshi Optics knock-off) first noticed it in The Afterlife. A braindance junkie in the corner was convulsing, not from a BD, but from something leaking through the local data-term. His agent was repeating a string of hex code out loud: 0xDEADBEEF 0xCAFEBABE 2.20.2.21.230125.
“That’s not a normal error,” V muttered, sliding a fresh magazine into her Omaha.
Her choom, a washed-up netrunner named Deckard, pulled his hood tighter. “That’s a timestamp. 23rd of January, 2025. 03:17. That’s… three minutes from now.”
At that exact second, every screen in The Afterlife flickered. Not a glitch—a message. In stark, glowing orange text, the same font as the update logs, three words appeared: Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.20 2.21 -23.01.2025-
> SYSTEM_REMEMBER_ME?
Then: Update 2.22: UNPLANNED. INITIATING MORGUE PROTOCOL.
Across the city, the dead began to call home.
First, the memorial kiosks in North Oak—the ones displaying Jackie Welles’s face—spontaneously rebooted. His pixelated ghost smiled and said, "Hey, choom. Miss me?" Then the Columbarium’s data-slabs scrolled names that weren’t there a second ago: Evelyn Parker. T-Bug. Rebecca. David Martinez.
The real terror, however, was the relic. Every person with experimental neuroport tech, every veteran of the Arasaka soulkiller program, felt a cold shiver as their bio-monitors received a silent ping: PATCH REQUIRED. YOUR GHOST IS OUT OF DATE.
V felt it too. A whisper in the back of her skull—not Johnny Silverhand, but someone else. Someone new. “They didn’t delete us,” the voice said, a chorus of a thousand dead runners. “They just compressed us. Update 2.20… they accidentally defragmented the cemetery.”
Panic seized the city. Militech AVs scrambled. NetWatch went dark—not from an attack, but from internal chaos. Their own Blackwall AIs were partitioning, forming digital trade unions.
And then, at 04:00, the true patch notes streamed directly into every HUD in Night City:
Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.21 – Unofficial Changelog:
V ran outside. Above the MegaBuilding H10, the sky was wrong. The usual smog had arranged itself into a massive, flickering QR code. She scanned it with her optics.
It linked to a single, hidden file in the old Arasaka subnet: a farewell message from Alt Cunningham, dated before her transcendence.
“You thought 2.0 was a rebirth,” it read. “No. That was the funeral. This? This is the wake. And everyone’s invited.” Remember how the Rayfield Caliburn felt like driving on ice
As the first digital ghost—a phantom Jackie Welles, still holding his shotguns—materialized in the middle of the intersection of Halsey and MLK, V smiled despite the fear.
“Patch 2.21,” she whispered. “They finally fixed the bug that was life.”
In the distance, a rogue Delamain cab drove itself off a cliff, honking "Never Fade Away" in binary. Night City wasn’t just a city anymore. It was a séance. And the update had just gone live.
End of transmission.
Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 2.21 was released on January 23, 2025, for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. It primarily serves as a follow-up to the major 2.2 "Express Yourself" update, addressing critical bugs and introducing advanced graphics features for PC players. Key Features & Technical Updates
NVIDIA DLSS 4 Support (PC Only): Introduces support for DLSS 4, featuring multi-frame generation for RTX 50 series GPUs to significantly boost frame rates.
New Reconstruction Models: Users can now choose between the standard CNN model and a new Transformer model for DLSS Ray Reconstruction and Super Resolution, which reduces artifacts and improves sharpness.
Visual Fixes: Resolved issues with "smudging" and artifacts on in-game screens when using Ray Reconstruction. Photo Mode Improvements
The update includes over 20 fixes for Photo Mode to enhance the character customization features added in 2.2:
Character Spawning: Nibbles and Adam Smasher can now be spawned while V is in the air or water.
Adam Smasher Fixes: Restored his glowing chest cyberware and fixed facial expression options.
Preset Reliability: Positions, rotations, and spawned characters (like Johnny Silverhand) now save correctly in presets and no longer snap to the ground unexpectedly. General Bug Fixes Night City, January 23rd, 2025 – 03:17 The
Johnny Silverhand: Fixed a bug where Johnny would often fail to appear in the passenger seat or would appear as a duplicate during certain quests.
Vehicles: Corrected the description for the Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech and fixed issues with the CrystalCoat systems.
UI & Audio: Fixed the "Check What's New" main menu popup and addressed quiet or missing voiceovers on TV news channels.
Quest Fix: Resolved an issue in the mission "Run This Town" where players could not deactivate the Aguilar imprint after meeting Bennett. Installation Notes PC Download: Approximately 4 GB.
Console Download (PS5/Xbox): Approximately 22 GB due to file re-formatting requirements. Cyberpunk 2077 PATCH 2.21 Review & Biggest Changes!
Cyberpunk 2077 Patch 2.21: The Full Breakdown of the January 23 Update
On January 23, 2025, CD Projekt Red released Patch 2.21 for Cyberpunk 2077, marking a significant technical milestone for the game nearly five years after its initial launch. While following the major Update 2.2 from December 2024, this newest iteration focuses heavily on cutting-edge PC performance and deep-rooted bug fixes. The PC Revolution: DLSS 4 and RTX 50 Series Support
A major highlight of Patch 2.21 is the introduction of DLSS 4 with Multi-Frame Generation, designed specifically to leverage the power of NVIDIA’s RTX 50 series GPUs for improved frame rates. Additionally, all RTX users can now select a new Transformer model for DLSS Ray Reconstruction, promising higher visual fidelity, alongside improved memory optimization for faster rendering. Enhancing Your Journey in Night City
Beyond performance, this update addresses several community-reported issues to improve overall gameplay. Key changes include: Cyberpunk 2077 PATCH 2.21 Review & Biggest Changes!
Subject: Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.20 & 2.21 – Released January 23, 2025
Body:
Attention, chooms! CD Projekt Red has just dropped two consecutive updates for Cyberpunk 2077 — versions 2.20 and 2.21 — both arriving on January 23, 2025.
Here’s what you need to know:
We ran the updates through a gauntlet of hardware: