With Cyberpunk 2077 reviews dropping yesterday, people were finally able to experience the game and let fans know their thoughts on CD Projekt RED’s sprawling RPG. According to Liana Ruppert at Game Informer, her time reviewing the game led to a major epileptic seizure. In her PSA warning about several scenes that could trigger those with epilepsy, she noted a troubling common occurrence in the game.
“Due to the nature of interfacing, there is a lot of red glitching animations seen throughout the game’s progression,” Ruppert wrote. “My monitor has an ‘eye-saving mode’ that dims the blue light in my screen that I often use to help with things like this, and that has helped immensely. During my time with Night City, there were moments when walking into clubs and bars that were immediate ‘danger zones’ for epileptics. While I would never recommend someone push past their limits, especially with something as serious as epilepsy, I do know how excitement can push that desire so if it’s going to happen, I want you to be as safe as possible.”
Even more concerning are the game’s Braindance scenes, which feature “a rapid onslaught of white and red blinking LEDs, much like the actual device neurologists use in real life to trigger a seizure when they need to trigger one for diagnosis purposes.”
It appears to be an unfortunate coincidence, but this mimics a pattern of lights designed to induce seizures. As Braindances are an important aspect of the game that need to be completed in order to progress through the story, you’d need to either shield your eyes during the initial sequence of putting on the Braindance headset or forego playing entirely. These sequences last for a few seconds each time you start Braindancing when V (your character) is given the headset to put on.
We’ve reached out to CD Projekt RED to see if the studio is aware of these issues and if they intend to fix them before Cyberpunk 2077 launches on December 10. We will update this story once we learn more.
