Not a while ago, CDPR finally released Next generation update alongside with patch 1.52 for PC, Stadia and consoles. As we all know that the release didn’t go as planned for CDPR and it was quite a bumpy ride for not only the gamers but the developers, investors and everyone interested in the game. Not only they faced the backlash by the community but also had to pay $1.85 million to the investors as they stated that the game was “virtually unplayable” in the class action lawsuit. The launch was such a disaster that they had to pull the game back from the console Stores and had to refund everyone on the consoles for the game as well.
Gameplay and Performance Changes
Personally, I felt that the patch made some impact considering the changes & improvements introduced by the CDPR. The very last time I experienced the game, it left me with nothing but exasperated and enraged reactions as it was just simply awful. The gameplay was full of bugs, broken NPCs, unfinished interactive objects, Characters Body Mesh and the list just goes on. Beside all this the performance was so awful and I could not do anything about it & had to sleep on it. I tested the new patch on a GTX 1650 & an RTX 3060 and compared to the previous patches and I would say that it did and didn’t meet my exceptions both at the same time as the quality was significantly improved but performance wasn’t much differentiable. I tested the game on patch 1.5 and 1.52 separately but decided to write on them altogether. According the patch notes, major Stability and performance changes are as follows:
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- HDD Mode has now an auto-detection option. When enabled, it automatically detects which drive the game is installed on, and, if necessary, boosts data loading and crowd activity at the expense of crowd variety, extra loading screens, and less detail in the streets when driving fast.
- Added AMD FidelityFX™ Super Resolution (FSR) 1.0 algorithm, replacing Contrast Adaptive Sharpening (CAS). On PC it can be enabled in Settings > Graphics > Resolution Scaling. The option is not configurable on consoles.
- Multiple fixes and improvements related to stability, NPCs, In game interactions, mechanisms, quick hacks and optimisation.
To keep up with the fixes and improvements mentioned above, Nvidia 700 series graphics cards, which were previously part of the minimum system requirements, are no longer supported. According to the official list of changes you are necessarily not out of luck if you happen to have one, the game won’t exactly just stop working, it’s just that the team is no longer testing it on the 700 series.
Next-Gen Exclusives and Updates
Patch 1.5 contains the next-generation update which allows the game to take advantage of the Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 hardware. The in-game performance mode ensures smooth 60fps gameplay with potential for dynamic 4k scaling, and players also get the option for Ray-Tracing mode which provides photorealistic shadow rendering on the consoles.
Another joyous change for Playstation users is that CDPR has implemented transferring of save from PS4 to PS5. Even though patch 1.5 allowed the uses to use the feature but there was an issue where a corrupted save was created when player tried to import a PlayStation 4 save when no saves were exported. However it was fixed in patch 1.52.
Even though Xbox users never had to face such inconvenience however a specific number of users faced a bug on Xbox One and Xbox Series X where disconnecting the controller and entering the pause menu at the same time will no longer result in player being stuck which was also fixed in patch 1.52.
Community Backlash & Conclusion
Even though plenty of bugs and noticeable changes are now taken care of by the devs, community still feels like that the game is still gonna down in abyss as a hefty number of players not only complained about the instability and worsened experience in the game in the forum but detected some new bugs that weren’t there when compared with the previous patches of the game. Now, the scope of these bugs and experiences in not scoped and limited to the gamers on a specific platform. PC and Console users both got specific set of problems that made the game literally unplayable according to them.It includes but not limited to the Stuttering on the Map, Quest Prompts, no official un-track Quest options, Underground Teleportation and Clipping, foliage not affected by weather, inability to loot drones, Place GPS on car objectives and the list goes on and on and on.
It’s just not that CDPR knows about the issues and thinks, that they have improved the Quality of life in the game compared to the previous patches, but the ignorance and apathy which is tunneling their vision and ability to understand that the game is in such a state that it’s not only unplayable but now frustrating as well.