Okay, chooms, gather 'round! Just when you thought the devs were out of the game, CD Projekt Red hits us with another substantial update for Cyberpunk 2077. It's like finding a perfectly preserved, legendary-tier chrome mod in a back-alley junk pile—unexpected but oh-so-sweet. Patch 2.21 is live right now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC, and while it's not the major content drop of last December, it's packed with crucial fixes and a massive PC boost that's got me buzzing.
Remember the glorious chaos of patch 2.2? New car paints, that wild Balatro secret quest, and a photo mode that got a complete neural-rewire? It was a gift that kept on giving. This new update, version 2.21, is the meticulous cleanup crew that follows the epic party. No new customization bling this time, but it's laser-focused on polishing the gems we already have to a mirror sheen. For us PC players, the headline act is the official support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation for the beastly GeForce RTX 50 Series cards. This isn't just a performance tweak; it's like upgrading your Kiroshi optics to see the world in a completely new, buttery-smooth framerate. AI is now generating up to three times more frames per traditionally rendered one. Night City has never looked or felt this fluid. And for all RTX card users, you can now swap between AI models for Ray Reconstruction—the new Transformer model makes lighting and detail in motion so stable, it's like watching a BD on the highest-grade braindance wreath.
But let's dive into the nitty-gritty, because the devil (and the fun) is in the details.
📸 Photo Mode Gets a Major Tune-Up
The revamped photo mode from December was a game-changer, but it had a few gremlins in the system. Patch 2.21 is here to exorcise them. Think of it as giving your in-game camera a professional-grade calibration.
- Spawn Anyone, Anywhere: Remember trying to get the perfect shot with Nibbles the cat or the terrifying Adam Smasher, only for the game to say "nope" if V was jumping or swimming? Fixed! You can now spawn characters while V is mid-air or underwater. Finally, that action shot of V leaping from a building with Adam Smasher photobombing is possible.
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Johnny's Identity Crisis Solved: There was a bug where if you had Johnny's alternate appearance enabled, spawning him would always give you the alt look, even if you selected the default. Now the game correctly remembers which rockerboy you want in your frame.
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Preset Perfection: Character positions, V's pose and rotation—all of it is now properly saved in your presets. No more spending 10 minutes recreating that perfect shot you saved yesterday.
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Camera & UI Glitches Smashed: A whole list of camera stickiness, UI inconsistencies, and weird lighting bugs have been flatlined. The rule of thirds grid now correctly adapts to your chosen aspect ratio, which is a godsend for us composition nerds.
🚗 Vehicle Customization: Color Me Consistent
Applied that expensive CrystalCoat paint to your Quadra only for it to look slightly... off in certain lights? This patch addresses several texture and color inconsistencies for customized vehicles. It's the difference between a factory-fresh coat and a back-alley respray.
👤 Character Creation: No More Randomizer Regrets
Creating your perfect V just got smoother. The randomizer settings you pick will now be preserved when you move on to the "Customize Attributes" step. No more losing that perfectly randomized face when you're tweaking your stats. Also fixed: the piercing color option now correctly appears if you decide to add piercings after the fact.
🐛 Miscellaneous Mayhem Contained
This update is like a precision-targeted MaxTac squad for bugs.
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Johnny Duplication Glitch: Ever looked over in the passenger seat and seen two Johnny Silverhands staring back? Under certain quest conditions, this bizarre duplication event could occur. It's now fixed. One existential crisis at a time, please.
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The Quiet News: Some TV news broadcasts in Night City were missing their voiceovers or were whisper-quiet. The volume (and the dystopian commentary) has been restored.
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Quest Fixes: Specific issues, like one in the "Run This Town" quest involving the Aguilar imprint, have been resolved.
🎮 Console & PC Specific Tweaks
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Xbox Gallery Fix: If you took HDR10 screenshots on Xbox, they might have appeared blank in the Gallery. That's been corrected.
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PC Visuals: Artifacts and smudging on in-game screens (like those on computers within the game world) when using DLSS Ray Reconstruction have been cleaned up.
🚀 The Big Picture in 2026
It's wild to think about how far Cyberpunk 2077 has come since its launch. Selling over 30 million copies and its Phantom Liberty expansion hitting 8 million is no small feat. While CDPR's main teams are now deep in the code for The Witcher 4 and the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (and that mysterious new IP, Project Hader), they're still sending these meaningful updates our way. It shows a commitment to the world they built that goes beyond the initial hype cycle. For me, Night City in 2026 feels more alive, stable, and visually stunning than ever. This patch might be a list of fixes, but together, they make the experience of just existing in this neon-drenched world smoother and more immersive. So boot it up, test that new DLSS 4, and go take some flawless photos. The city's waiting, and it's never looked better. ✨