Cyberpunk 2077’s Surprise Last Update Is Finally Bringing a Huge Quality-of-Life Feature
Get in choom.
If you thought Cyberpunk 2077 was finished and done, well, you thought wrong. It turns out CD Projekt Red has one final update under its belt, and it’s a surprisingly big one, bringing a host of photo mode updates, new vehicles, new quests, a variety of fixes, and more. But perhaps the biggest addition is a feature that, gun to my head, I would have told you was already in the game — the ability to make your car AutoDrive. It seems a bit silly that, in a world filled with smart weapons and cyberpsychos, it’s taken this long to get self-driving cars, but here we are.
Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.3 update was originally supposed to launch in June, but it was delayed as the studio needed more time to polish it. Now we know the new content will launch on July 17 for Xbox, PlayStation, and PC — but the Nintendo Switch 2 version will need a little more time to cook. While we’ll cover the highlights, you can head to the official website for the full patch notes.
Phantom Liberty added some big improvements to vehicles, including the Stunt Jock perk that lets you perform flashy attacks to exit your vehicle.
In general, this patch largely focuses on vehicles and player customization, particularly in the quality-of-life arena. The AutoDrive feature is a legitimate game-changer, and like I said before, something that feels like it should have been in the game long ago.
Night City is an absolutely gorgeous location, a bustling future city realized in excruciating detail — especially with all the post-launch fixes and updates. On my replays of the game, I still find myself stalling out while driving, staring at beautiful sunsets or vistas, or trying to soak in all the neon advertisements. This provides the perfect chance to take in the atmosphere of Night City, which is arguably one of the things that the game excels at most.
AutoDrive will take you to any job objective or pin you drop, or if you don’t have either, your vehicle will simply free-roam around the city. The only catch is that AutoDrive will disengage when you enter combat or the vehicle is heavily damaged.
To coincide with AutoDrive, there are now four new vehicles added to the game — each of which comes with its own brand-new quest. These vehicles are the Yaiba ARV-Q340 Semimaru, Rayfield Caliburn “Mordred,” Yaiba ASM-R250 Muramasa, and Chevillon Legatus 450 Aquila. And, yes, those names won’t mean anything to you unless you already know Cyberpunk. That’s to be expected.
Delemain cabs now finally have more of a use after completing Delemain’s quest.
Another nifty feature is that the self-driving Delamain cabs can now be called on command, letting you hitch a ride anywhere. To get this feature, you’ll need to play through the Don’t Lose Your Mina quest, which is one of the best quests in the entire game, so you should probably be doing it anyway.
All of this would be enough to warrant an update, but 2.3 also makes some massive additions to the game’s photo mode. There are 27 new NPCs added to the mode, from Rita Wheeler to the iguana from the beginning of the game. You can also swap between V’s wardrobe outfits at will, and play around with a ton of new stickers, frames, improved Depth of Field, Color Balance, and more.
Of course, on top of all this, there’s a host of new gameplay fixes and tweaks. It’s a surprisingly massive patch for a game that, two months ago, we thought was done for good. But that brings up an interesting point: is this really the end for Cyberpunk 2077?
Cyberpunk’s photo mode was already exceptionally detailed before the 2.3 update.
With The Witcher 4 and the Witcher Remake now in active development, we shouldn’t expect the next Cyberpunk game until likely 2029 at the earliest. Cyberpunk 2 associate game director, Pawel Sasko, also wouldn’t fully commit to 2.3 being the last update for Cyberpunk 2077, at the end of CD Projekt’s official stream. Considering the studio reversed course for this update and added a new quest for The Witcher 3’s next-gen update, who knows?
