it was definitely overhyped and there's a lot of lost potential. I was disappointed how little the background mattered, I played all three and ultimately just stuck with nomad because I like the nomad car
this game specifically is why I wish game studios would keep working in the same world instead of dropping it and starting over; if they just made another game in night city with mostly the same assets they would save themselves a hell of a lot of work and could maybe actually implement more immersion and more choice
it's not like the witcher where it's all about this one special guy, so following someone else doesn't really make sense. they could easily have another protagonist in the same setting because V is, ultimately, still a relatively minor player in the grand scheme
@deprecated_ii they put out an entire video on fashion and how it belongs to different lifepaths and establishing lore that you'd get beaten up wearing corpo clothes in slums or whatever, and then the actual game has ZERO of that characterization. for example.
they had this whole marketing thing of like "be whoever you want in night city" but the game is pretty damn linear and you cannot be whoever you want, and the life paths barely affect jack shit. when i saw the cutscene where you let johnny take over your body and play a samurai show in one of those trailers, i was like, "oh shit we can play in a band, that's awesome!" then it's literally relegated to just one cutscene. there should have been way more weird and wacky shit to do and definitely way more emergent gameplay.
it's not a bad game, i just think it's not at all what anyone expected it would be.