Been playing this game for weeks. I completed it and then started a new game.
The game's story is excellent, but it absolutely does not justify the tedium it makes you endure to experience it.
In a 40 minute sitting, I'd spend the entire thing simply having characters dialogue at me. What's the point of the open world then? Car chases are scripted so that you don't even have to fire a single shot. The enemies will just eventually blow up. 70% of dialogue choices are just for roleplay and don't change a thing or make extremely minor changes. The combat and shootouts are mid.
Act 1 is a chore to get through on replay. There are so many touches they could have added to make it interactive. The Flathead robot mission... why not let us pilot the bot in first-person to do all the tasks, like a stealth minigame? I can think of a few games that let you do something similar. Instead, it is 20 or more steps that are essentially "look at this object and wait."
The best part of the game for me was the middle, where the plot becomes more elaborate, evocative and the relationships with Judy, Panam, Johnny etc develop. But even there the game was navigating me through a seedy open world in order to show me glorified cutscene after cutscene. Then shootouts that were really nothing special.
Witcher 3 was dialogue heavy, nuanced and compelling. It had tedium, but I never felt like the open world was superficial or that the tedium overshadowed the rest of the game. Side tasks like Gwent or contracts were fun and absorbing. The most boring expositional bit was using Witcher sense to explore, but even then at least you were interacting with your surroundings more, not just sitting there being talked at.
Did anyone else feel this way?
The two things that pissed me off:
Cars in the distance aren't real. Get a scoped weapon and shoot they don't react, just fade in and out.
No subway system. I was so hyped to life sim cyberpunk, get on a train like in the promotional material but nope.
Essential the set dressing is a mile wide and an inch deep. Unlike other open world games where I can see someone living a life, instead cars are boring no personality behind the ai, same with crowds.
"Mile wide and inch deep" is a great way to put it.
I'm playing through the game right now, and there's a bunch of small annoyances (like getting stuck on invisible terrain while walking/driving), but I can overlook those. But so many things are lifeless beyond the basic game mechanics.
As an example, I just bought an expensive apartment. I didn't expect a crazy cutscene or anything, but at least the person I bought it from should have shown some kind of reaction, maybe a short dialogue. But no, nothing. I pressed the button, money was subtracted, and I can enter the elevator. The person I bought it from didn't even look up.
Compare that to something like Baldurs Gate 3, where even small unlikely interactions have surprising amounts of interactivity. The game oozes life out of every pore.
It's depressing that this is the final state after so many updates.
Man did I love clicking on 8000 book shelves in baldurs gate