Cyberpunk 2077 is, without any doubt, one of the most hyped games of all time and for good reason. The dystopian Cyberpunk future action-RPG game is being developed by CD Projekt Red, the developer of the critically acclaimed The Witcher series. However, Cyberpunk’s story goes much further back to the time of Witcher 2 as the game was unveiled way back in May 2012. The open world action RPG game has been in development for almost a decade now and to see such an ambitious project come to fruition is definitely exciting.
Cyberpunk 2077 pairs a vast and detailed open world with an intricate RPG decision making system, the consequences of which will ripple through the entire game. The world or Cyberpunk is incredibly detailed with each character having a separate personality and each building being different from the one next to it. The verticality of the map and the variety of tools and choices at the player’s disposal is what sets Cyberpunk 2077 apart from everything else. The whole concept and the universe of the game is also just super cool and it also has Keanu Reeves in it. I mean, who wouldn’t like that?
Raytracing Comes to Cyberpunk 2077
We’ve had many gameplay and story related trailers now that show off the game’s impressive visuals and environments. However, if you weren’t already impressed by what CD Projekt Red has achieved with Cyberpunk 2077 in terms of a technological marvel, prepare to have your jaws dropped. NVIDIA has announced that it is partnering with CD Projekt Red to bring official RTX real-time Raytracing support to Cyberpunk 2077.
“Cyberpunk 2077 is an incredibly ambitious game, mixing first person perspective and deep role-playing, while also creating an intricate and immersive world in which to tell this story. We believe the world of Cyberpunk will greatly benefit from the realistic lighting that ray tracing delivers,” said Matt Wuebbling, head of GeForce marketing in the official blogpost by NVIDIA.
We also have some 4K screenshots of what the game would look like with real-time raytracing turned on using the NVIDIA RTX Graphics Cards. “Ray tracing allows us to realistically portray how light behaves in a crowded urban environment,” said Adam Badowski, Head of Studio, CD PROJEKT RED. “Thanks to this technology, we can add another layer of depth and verticality to the already impressive megacity the game takes place in.”
How Does Raytracing Affect the Experience?
Raytracing has been a thing for almost a year now. However, we haven’t had many games that have taken full advantage of the technology. Battlefield V, for example, only used raytracing to simulate reflections and while it did make the game look better, the difference was not noticeable enough to warrant an upgrade to RTX cards. However, with Metro Exodus, thing started to look a lot better for raytracing as the game used RTX for illumination of environments and it did actually make a big difference to the whole experience. Real-time raytracing is still a relatively young technology and it was obviously going to take some time until developers got to grips with it but it seems like things are on the up now.
Cyberpunk 2077 also uses full raytracing illumination much like Metro: Exodus. However, the effect of that would be much more noticeable here. You see, the world of Cyberpunk 2077 is littered with bright neon lights while still having plenty of dark shadowy alleys and corners. The impact raytracing would make on making these pink neon lights even more vibrant and realistic will most definitely improve the whole experience. In something like Metro Exodus, most of the light is coming from lightbulbs or the outside. Watching so many futuristic lights interact and bounce-off surfaces creating realistic reflections would be pretty cool to see.
Moreover, implementing real-time raytracing also cuts off a lot of effort for the developers as they don’t have to simulate every individual light source and its reflections. So, it is a win-win situation for both the developers and the players. However, if you do want to get the full RTX real-time raytracing experience, you’d ideally need to spend some cash on one of the RTX cards like the NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2080, RTX 2070 or RTX 2060. While other NVIDIA cards do support raytracing as well, the dip in performance when you actually turn it on is too much and is not worth the visual improvement. Addition of DLSS would certainly help the performance though.
Cyberpunk 2077 is coming to PC, Xbox One and PS4 on April 16, 2020.