Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition coming next month with DLC and path tracing goodies

CD Projekt Red has announced that Cyberpunk 2077 will be getting a new Ultimate Edition in the next few weeks. The Ultimate Edition will come with the base game and Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty DLC expansion pack, as well as other upgrades including the 2.0 update that features the game's new reworked gameplay mechanics and DLSS 3.5 path-tracing graphics. Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition will arrive on December 5 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

We expect CD Projekt Red's new Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition should bring the price down compared to what the game costs at present. On Steam, the Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty bundle costs $82.78, and that's with an 8% discount applied. The Ultimate Edition should be priced closer to the base game's current price of $59.99 once it goes on sale, though it could also be even cheaper with Steam's Winter Sale just around the corner.

The Ultimate Edition comes with every single piece of content made for Cyberpunk 2077, including the base game, Update 2.0, and the DLC update. Update 2.0 included the majority of the gameplay/graphics updates, with massive updates brought in for the game's combat AI, police system, vehicle combat, and more. Graphics-wise, we got to see Nvidia's DLSS 3.5 Ray Reconstruction in action, which improved the performance and quality of ray-traced effects in games, particularly reflections — at least on Nvidia RTX GPUs.

Path tracing was added in an earlier update, patch 1.62, in the form of a new graphical setting called RT Overdrive that incorporated full path-traced lighting, including path-traced/ray-traced reflections, ambient occlusion, shadows, and more. Compared to the game's normal ray-traced modes, RT Overdrive processes every single light source through ray tracing, making it one of the most realistic-looking games we've ever seen.

But with quality comes cost. If you want to play Cyberpunk 2077 with the RT Overdrive setting, you'll need one of the best graphics cards for gaming to achieve good frame rates. We found that you need an RTX 3070 at the bare minimum hit 60 fps at 1080p with RT overdrive active — and that's with DLSS performance upscaling in mind. Things are much worse for AMD GPUs. If you want to approach 60 fps at 1080p, you'll need a Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which is the fastest consumer gaming GPU AMD makes. Even then, with FSR2 Performance upscaling, you'll only get around 52 fps.

If you still haven't purchased Cyberpunk 2077, or you're looking for the perfect Christmas gift, picking up the Ultimate Edition when it drops on December 5 could be the perfect time to see what the fuss is about. Much has changed, in both the software and hardware, since the game first debuted back in late 2020.

Naturally, Nvidia was also keen to hype the pending launch of Cyberpunk 2077 Ultimate Edition. Team Green has worked extensively with CD Projekt Red on incorporating ray tracing and path tracing effects since before the initial release, and it's been a showcase of things to come. Nvidia also announced that Boti: Byteland Overclocked and Ranch Simulator are both now available with DLSS2 upscaling.