By this point, with roughly a week left before D-Day, most readers grow weary of any mention of Cyberpunk 2077. And that is completely understandable. After the game received a formal announcement back in 2013, the seven years in between carried only slow trickles of information. Even up until last year, the game barely had much to discuss aside from a brief E3 trailer and several disjointed details. We knew the setting of the game, and that it would feature a first-person RPG open world. That was it.
Then CD Projekt Red, the game’s developer (and studio behind the smash hit, the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), deliberately built up tremendous hype. With a formal release date of early 2020 provided, Hollywood icon Keanu Reeves revealed his involvement in the game. Then, due to the pandemic, the developers postponed the game till September. September became November (reportedly to iron out bugs), and November became December 10 (to optimize it for previous-gen consoles). Now, however, it looks like this date is final.
The official CD Projekt Red social media accounts revealed one minor but relieving feature
Unlike many other major gaming companies, the Poland-based CD Projekt Red caters to and interacts with fans directly. If you consider the cancellation of E3 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it’s obvious why. Each of the highly-anticipated game’s features only became revealed through gradual Tweets, livestream demos and interviews with developers. That is how we now know about the game’s recently unveiled Photography Mode, the game’s branching questlines and the ability to fully customize the character’s genitals. Yes, you read that right.
However, one Tweet in particular stands out. It doesn’t talk about Cyberpunk 2077’s implementation of raytracing, or the game’s combat system. No, it confirms that the game will keep the motion blur setting off by default.
It happened…
It FINALLY happened…
For years, gamers have asked for this… yearned for this… NEEDED this…
I am delighted to confirm to you, dear reader…@CyberpunkGame TURNS OFF MOTION BLUR BY DEFAULT!
— Cohh Carnage (@CohhCarnage) December 3, 2020
Why is that so unusual, but also so sorely needed? Because no self-respecting gamer wants motion blur on. And, because it’ll be off right from the start, no need to sit through opening cutscenes, desperately waiting to turn it off. In fact, motion blur is one of several developer enabled options that most players never even want to use. Looking at you as well, ‘vignetting’ and ‘chromatic aberration’.
Motion blur is usually implemented to dramatize high-speed racing games, but the inclusion in other genres is pointless
Motion blur essentially applies to non-stationary objects, and the camera effect following them. That means when you’re contesting 1st place in Forza Horizon 4, enabling this option will provide a distortion of camera around your speeding vehicle. This can add a sense of exhilarating speed to your vehicle or body, making small increments in velocity even more cinematic. The problem arise when you blanket-apply that effect onto character models, relatively slow moving bodies and even the user’s camera.
It certainly suits racecars or fighter jets, as you watch the world and scenery around you whiz past. However, when you are trying to play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and every turn of the 3rd person camera causes the otherwise beautiful environmental textures to blur, this gets annoying very quickly. Furthermore, if you try to play a competitive first-person shooter like Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, you lose visibility at every turn of your camera. That can cost you a sudden gunfight, and generally disorient you.
As most games have this setting on by default, Cyberpunk 2077 thankfully breaks the mold
Too many games have motion blur on until you manage to access and search the settings for a way to disable it. The fact that Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t just proves CD Projekt Red have taken the time out to consider what players really like and dislike in modern games. Oh, sorry, I meant absolutely despise in modern games.
Stay tuned for more on Cyberpunk 2077, gaming effects and the latest!