The Persistent Glitch: Cyberpunk 2077's NPCs in Late 2025 - Still Phoning It In

Night City was sold as a living, breathing megacity: a dense sprawl where over 100,000 unique NPCs hustled with daily routines, reacted to your chaos, and made every street corner feel alive. CD Projekt RED promised emergent stories amid the neon haze: pedestrians dodging bullets, crowds gossiping about your rep, traffic snarls turning into gang wars. Five years post-launch, with Update 2.0's overhaul, Phantom Liberty's Dogtown grit, and Patch 2.31's tweaks, V's backup crew is better. But "terrible" lingers like bad chrome. As of this December anniversary, generic NPCs clip, float, conga-line around corners, and ignore Armageddon with the indifference of braindance addicts. Let's dissect the chrome under the skin.

From T-Pose Hell to Tolerable: The NPC Evolution

Launch 2020: NPCs were a meme factory. T-poses, pop-in hordes, invincible husks blocking doorways. Consoles crawled at sub-20 FPS, amplifying the farce.

Update 2.0 (September 2023) + Phantom Liberty: Game-changer. Police AI got teeth: dynamic pursuits, wanted levels. Crowds flee gunfire smarter, call out bodies, denser traffic. Vehicle combat shines; pedestrians scatter like roaches. Story NPCs (Reed, Songbird) remain peak: voiced, reactive, memorable.

Update 2.3 (July 17, 2025): Focused on vehicles, AutoDrive, Photo Mode expansions (27 new spawnable NPCs, outfit swaps), and platform support (Mac debut). No core crowd AI changes.

Patch 2.31 (September 11, 2025): AutoDrive polish, Photo Mode tweaks (NPC collision disabled for posing), quest fixes. No NPC behavior overhauls. No updates since; fifth anniversary (December 10, 2025) brought a trailer and merch, no patch.

CDPR's focus shifted: most devs on Project Orion (sequel), base game in maintenance mode via partners like Virtuos.

The Jank Persists: A 2025 Bug Autopsy

Players are not hallucinating. Forums and Reddit light up with clips into late 2025:

Issue	Description	Frequency (Recent Reports)
Floating/Clip Hell	NPCs hover mid-air, phase through cars/walls. Spikes noted post-2.3.	High: Reports of floating NPCs persisting into September-October 2025.
Pathfinding Fails	Conga lines around obstacles; NPCs warp, block doors eternally.	Common: Classic complaints ongoing.
Dumb Reactions	Ignore gunfights next door; eternal phone loops; blame V for their wrecks.	Persistent: "Lifeless husks" in player feedback.
T-Posing/Despawns	Sudden freezes, vanishing crowds.	Occasional but immersion-killers.

Procedural generation scales crowds (denser post-2.0), but base AI (behavior trees, A* pathing) creaks under density. No ML smarts; scripted loops rule.

Stacking the Deck: How Night City Lags the Pack

Game	Crowd Density	Reactivity	Pathfinding	Immersion Score (Player Consensus)
CP2077 (2.31)	High (100k+ variants)	Basic flee/callouts	Wonky congas	6/10: Pretty but puppet-like
RDR2	Medium	Emergent (gossip, revenge, ecosystems)	Fluid organic	10/10: Living world gold standard
GTA V	High	Chaotic wrecks, chases	Solid traffic	9/10: Budget GTA feel persists
GTA VI (Tease)	?	Hyper-reactive crowds	Advanced	Hyped 11/10

CP's visuals pop (RT Overdrive), but brains flop. RDR2 NPCs remember you; CP extras reset.

Mods: Fixers in the Shadows

PC players have options on NexusMods:

Alternate Crowd Behavior: Denser, smarter spawning/traffic.
Combat Revolution: AI overhaul for fights.
ChatGPT NPCs: LLM convos: talk to randos, they respond contextually.

Many 2025 mods aim for "true immersion." Console players wait for ports.

Orion: Brains in the Sequel?

CDPR job ads hint at redemption: "Most realistic crowds ever" via UE5: hyper-reactive, faction-aware swarms. Team growing, 2028+ launch likely.

Flatline Verdict

CP2077 is a banger story/RPG: 9/10 peaks. But NPCs? 4/10 filler. Improved from launch sludge, yet the "living city" dream glitches on. Irony: a cyberpunk tale of flawed tech, starring flawed sims. Replay Dogtown, mod up, await Orion. Or laugh at the absurdity: V's got real chooms anyway.

What's your glitchiest encounter? Spill in replies, choom.