Cyberpunk 2077’s Adam Smasher May Finally Live Up To His Reputation

Adam Smasher is supposed to be a near-legendary threat to Night City itself, built up through in-game and out-of-game lore. As the final boss of Cyberpunk 2077 and a memorable character in the anime Cyberpunk 2077: Edgerunners, he should have been an epic battle that players made it through by the barest of margins. Instead, he was a relative weakling and a huge letdown for players once they went toe-to-toe with him as V. After patch 2.1, however, he is much closer to the reputation that precedes him.

[Warning: This article contains spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.]Patch 2.1 for Cyberpunk 2077 contains a lot of updates for the game, from accessibility features to boss-fight tweaks. One of the primary fights that was adjusted is Adam Smasher, though he is not the only one being updated. The developers at CD PROJEKT RED want players to experience the menace Smasher was supposed to be all along. They also wanted to remove some of the cheesy builds people would make specifically to take down the final boss in just a handful of seconds.

What Was Wrong With Adam Smasher Pre-2.1?

Adam Smasher has been notoriously weak and ineffective as a final boss in such a massive game as Cyberpunk 2077. Players have posted videos on Reddit, YouTube, and numerous social media sites with strategies of how they were able to defeat Adam Smasher, the massively cybernetically enhanced enforcer, in under 5 seconds. For a character who has killed some of the most well-known figures in Night City, including Johnny Silverhand, that’s pitiful.

In previous versions of the fight, Adam Smasher was not relentless, nor as hard-hitting as he was in the Edgerunners anime or said to be throughout 2077. Players have found ways to hack his cyberware and pummel him to death with items that were never even intended to be used as weapons — at least not against monstrosities like Adam Smasher. Being able to use and defeat the final boss with joke, non-weapon items is not only insulting to Adam Smasher himself, but also an indication that more tuning needs to be done on the encounter to make it fit within the lore and narrative of the game itself.

How Does Patch 2.1 Fix Adam Smasher?

More machine than man, Adam Smasher will finally live up to his brutal history, according to the developers. Most boss fights will be changed says quest director Paweł Sasko in a live stream on the company’s Twitch channel. Members of CD PROJEKT RED’s team sat down to discuss the array changes being made in the update, but Sasko spoke at length about the changes coming for Adam Smasher specifically that would make him a more formidable opponent and finally earn his spot as the final boss of the open-world RPG.

According to Sasko, they might be “smaller improvements, I would say, and those we will leave you to find. However, there is one that we really wanted to highlight, I would say, and this is Adam Smasher.”

After mentioning seeing players doing one-shot builds, Sasko went on to discuss how they were working diligently to increase his threat level. They have made it so that his in-game incarnation is much closer to what is seen in the anime, Edgerunners. He goes on to say that they have tried to match the fighting style and frenetic aesthetic seen in the anime with what the players experience when they fight him as V.

Adam Smasher Finally Lives Up To His Legacy

When asked about the specifics of what will change in the fight, Sasko says that he wants the players to discover most of the changes and experience it firsthand for themselves. However, he does open up about some of the changes in the fight that players can look forward to.

Sasko goes on to say that the behavior AI for Adam Smasher has changed, too. The boss will now act differently based on the perks that V uses. He will now use different tactics depending on whether the player is a netrunner or a solo, for instance.

Will The Adam Smasher Changes Be Enough For Challenge Seekers?

In the three years since Cyberpunk 2077‘s initial release, Adam Smasher’s difficulty has been a point of contention. He has certainly been weaker than his reputation would make him out to be. He is terrifying in the first braindance players get to see him in during the game, and his presence is certainly threatening in his other scenes. He even killed Johnny Silverhand in a single shot, which proves just how deadly he is, especially considering what a pro Silverhand was.

However, when the player base can create one-shot-kill builds and take advantage of Adam Smasher’s vulnerabilities, such as chemical damage and the location of his heart on his chest, to defeat him in seconds, the challenge comes from the game systems and not from the boss fight itself. Cyberpunk 2077 developers hope this new update to the fight will change that, and not only for Smasher. The team has updated other boss fights in the game so that players seeking the hardest fights possible won’t have to wait until the very end to test their mettle against enemy metal.