Cyberpunk 2077’s new patch arrives the day after I finally finished the game, and of course it fixes the one late-game bug that really annoyed me

I finally finished Cyberpunk 2077 last night, and so today’s 2.21 patch is just a wee little bit annoying because CD Projekt has finally fixed a small but irritating bug in the Phantom Liberty expansion that forced me into a fight I really didn’t want.

Minor spoiler follows, so skip this bit and scroll straight down the patch notes if you’re concerned about such things. The bug occurs fairly late into Phantom Liberty, when V dresses up as a notorious Cuban hitman for a little tête-à-tête with an NPC. You can talk it out or shoot it out—but talking it out exposes you to a bug that prevents you from changing out of the disguise at the end of the encounter. Worse, the game refuses to let you leave the area until you do, so you’re stuck in a grungy back alley until the end of time. It’s a fairly common bug, going by the number of complaints on Reddit and elsewhere, and the only surefire workaround is to load an older save and start blasting.

It’s not an especially difficult fight, but it pulled me out of the story because the rush to violence is not how my V rolls. There’s no meaningful impact on the game—everything resolves the same way whether you fight or not—but it’s the principle of the thing that bothered me: I negotiated a deal and now all I want to do is change my outfit! (I also sunk a stupid amount of time into trying to figure some other way out before I finally gave up and started spitting lead.)

Anyway, that’s not the most important fix in this patch, but it is fixed and that’s good news for anyone who’s hit the bug and hasn’t yet finished the game. Bigger news is the addition of DLSS 4 support with multiframe generation for Nvidia RTX 50-series GPUs, which promises to use the magic of AI to boost framerates significantly. Those cards won’t be available for purchase until January 30, but RTX 40-series cards will also see an improvement through faster single Frame Generation with reduced memory usage.

On top of that, there’s a slew of fixes and adjustments to the game’s photo mode, character creation and vehicle customization fixes, a couple tweaks to Johnny Shotgun (which honestly is my favorite late-stage addition to Cyberpunk 2077—I never get tired of him yelling at me to slow down), and a whole bunch more.

Cyberpunk 2077’s 2.21 patch is out now, and the full patch notes are below.

Photo Mode

• Nibbles and Adam Smasher can now be spawned while V is in the air or in water.
• Fixed the Facial Expression option for Adam Smasher.
• Fixed an issue where Adam Smasher’s glowing chest cyberware was missing.
• Fixed an issue where, if Johnny’s Alternate Appearance was enabled, both options to spawn him (default and alternate) resulted in the alternate look.
• Characters spawned while V is in the air or in water will no longer snap to the ground.
• Characters will now be properly saved in presets.
• Spawned characters will now be visible after adding a background.
• V’s rotation and position will now be properly saved in presets.
• Fixed an issue where adjusting the Up/Down slider for V wouldn’t change their position between certain values.
• NPCs that turn invisible after disabling the Surrounding NPCs option will no longer have collision.
• Fixed an issue where loading a preset could cause additional light sources to appear even when disabled, or spawn them in incorrect positions.
• Fixed an issue where the camera could get stuck on walls after setting Full Collision to ON.
• Fixed an issue where camera settings would only apply after loading a saved preset twice.
• Enabling a background will no longer change camera position.
• Rotating the camera will now work properly with a background enabled.
• Fixed an issue where the prompts for Move Camera and Rotate Camera would appear when the camera cannot be moved (e.g. when using the First-Person Perspective camera).
• Fixed an issue where it wasn’t possible to move the camera after spawning a character while highlighting the Edit Character option.
• Disabling Chromatic Aberration in the Graphics settings will no longer affect the ability to adjust it.
• Fixed an issue where some items in scenes disappeared after setting the Surrounding NPCs option to OFF.
• Fixed an issue where enabling PhysX Cloth would unfreeze NCPD vehicles.
• The rule of thirds grid will now properly adapt to the selected aspect ratio.
• Fixed an issue where the image in a SmartFrame wouldn’t be visible if accessed while V was not facing it.
• Fixed an issue where opening Photo Mode simultaneously with Wardrobe or Stash caused the game to become unresponsive.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to access Photo Mode before a save file fully loaded, causing it to open without UI and block any further action.
• Fixed other minor Photo Mode issues related to spawned characters, camera movement, controls, and more.
• Fixed various UI issues in Photo Mode, SmartFrames and Gallery menus, including slider inconsistencies, localization errors, missing sound effects, incorrect behavior when interacting with certain features, and more.

Vehicle Color Customization

• Fixed several texture and color inconsistencies for vehicles that have CrystalCoat applied.
• Fixed an issue where the explanation of the spray paint icon was missing in the Autofixer tutorial pop-up after a vehicle contract was completed.
• Fixed several minor UI issues in the CrystalCoat and TwinTone menus.

Character Creation

• Randomizer settings in Character Creation will now be preserved after advancing to the Customize Attributes step.
• Fixed an issue where the Piercing Color option would not be available in Character Creation after enabling piercings if V initially had none.
• Fixed other minor issues in Character Creation, including appearance options not applying correctly, visual clipping, inconsistent UI behavior, functionality issues after using the randomizer, and more.

Miscellaneous

• Run This Town – Fixed an issue where, under certain circumstances, it wasn’t possible to deactivate the Aguilar imprint after meeting with Bennett.
• Fixed several instances where Johnny could appear duplicated in the passenger seat during some quests when he was already present in the scene.
• Fixed an issue where Johnny did not appear as a passenger often enough.
• Introduced several fixes to NPC and vehicle behavior for various small events throughout Night City.
• Fixed an issue where some vendors were not interactable as intended.
• Fixed an issue where voiceovers on TV news channels could be missing or too quiet.
• Fixed an issue where the Quadra Turbo-R V-Tech used a description of Quadra Turbo-R 740 instead of its own unique one.
• Fixed the missing 2.2 “check what’s new” pop-up in the main menu.

Console-specific

• Fixed an issue where screenshots appeared as blank in the Gallery on Xbox if they were taken with HDR10 enabled.
• Added a pop-up in the Gallery to notify players when access to screenshots is blocked by the console’s privacy settings on Xbox.
• Screenshots deleted on Xbox outside the Gallery UI will now be correctly marked in the Gallery and will disappear from occupied slots after reopening the Gallery.
• Fixed an issue where the Graphics Mode on Xbox Series S could be set to Quality instead of Performance by default.

PC-specific

• Added support for DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation for GeForce RTX 50 Series graphics cards, which boosts FPS by using AI to generate up to three times per traditionally rendered frame – enabled with GeForce RTX 50 Series on January 30th. DLSS 4 also introduces faster single Frame Generation with reduced memory usage for RTX 50 and 40 Series. Additionally, you can now choose between the CNN model or the new Transformer model for DLSS Ray Reconstruction, DLSS Super Resolution, and DLAA on all GeForce RTX graphics cards today. The new Transformer model enhances stability, lighting, and detail in motion.
• Fixed artifacts and smudging on in-game screens when using DLSS Ray Reconstruction.
• The Frame Generation field in Graphics settings will now properly reset after switching Resolution Scaling to OFF.