Since developer CD Projekt Red released its latest title, Cyberpunk 2077, reports surfaced online about numerous issues in-game. Those issues included NPCs just standing in front of moving cars or wandering into parts of the Cyberpunk 2077 world it appears they weren’t ever supposed to venture.
Thankfully, a new Cyberpunk 2077 PC mod sharpens the game's pedestrians’ sense of awareness and makes other tweaks that have the background NPCs seem a bit more realistic. In reality, the Alternate Crowd Behavior mod by TemplarGFX for Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t a full-on mod but a tweaked .ini file.
The modder’s adjustments change some of the distance thresholds for background NPCs, among other tweaks. One specific change in this Cyberpunk 2077 mod is that it increases the distances that pedestrians are able to notice obstacles in their path including the main character V. That means the crowd will actually veer away from players when they are driving their car, or just walking down the street.
User-made mods are nothing new for PC games in general. Sites like Nexusmods exist for people to show off their creations in some of the gaming world’s most popular games. The Alternate Crowd Behavior mod is just one of several Cyberpunk 2077 mods that have surfaced in the last few weeks. Some of the newest tweaks offered up for the game make it take on entirely different cosmetic looks. That includes a mod that makes it look like players can take on the role of the Doom Slayer.
Another mod gave Cyberpunk 2077 the third-person perspective several of CD Projekt Red’s fans asked for early on in the game’s development. Another tweak that TemplarGFX’s work made is that Night City’s NPCs don’t need as much “personal space” as they did before. The tweak means background characters cluster up more naturally when they are walking around town. It also changes portions of the crowd so they apparently don’t disappear into thin air anymore, when a player isn’t looking directly at them.
However, there are still instances of background characters suddenly blinking out of existence. They’ll reportedly still vanish should V do something that scares them. Despite that, the mod apparently fixes quite a few of the complaints people have had since Cyberpunk 2077 first launched, especially when it comes to background characters’ behavior and there are two file versions available for anyone who wants to try them. Depending on how much load someone wants to put on their PC they can get either the “full,” or “lite” version.
Cyberpunk 2077 is currently available on PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions coming in 2021.