Thats why I actually like that Cyberpunk 2077 seems to have a fairly focused mission structure. (I haven't played very far, mind you). It always bothered me in e.g. Bethesda's games that I was supposed to be on some all-important world-saving quest, but it's no problem if I want to just spelunk in ancient dwarves ruins for a few months instead.

Yes, playing it as anything but a rails game seems to be wildly out of character once the story has progressed beyond the initial handshake. The open world backdrop makes the railed story far more immersive than an actual rails tunnel that you cannot leave could ever be, but only if you mostly ignore it. And the main story track is pulling much stronger than in something like Skyrim.

With this game it's probably a generational thing on more than one level: not only do most people tend to grow out of side quest competitionism at some point, I suspect that older parts of the audience are also drawn into this particular main story stronger than their younger peers. It's just so perfectly 1990ies vibe that you almost forget that people did not in fact have mind machine interfaces and fancy prosthetic limbs when they sent their first email on AOL. The game represents exactly how people born around 1977 remember the movies of their youth (entirely unlike how you'd perceive them if you'd see them today).

> but it's no problem if I want to just spelunk in ancient dwarves ruins for a few months instead

And that's exactly why I loved it haha, but I do understand the grievance with it

Never bothered me in Skyrim though, nobody has mobile phones there.

Sure, but cyberpunk is based on a pen and paper RPG so I really hoped it had a little more.

But yeah your description is pretty good.

For me it was great on the beginning, the mood and the graphics are pretty good. Some missions are great as well. But now I’m not really sure if I will even finish it. It doesn’t really feel meaningful.

Also even though there are some explicit sex scenes (but so few I’m not sure why they are there), it is really not edgy at all. It’s like a corporation designed the game which is everything cyberpunk is not supposed to be.

There are a ton of great ideas in there, but then someone realized it would take too long so they half assed everything.

If you role-play your character there is zero room for toying around with side missions once the story kicks in. cp77 simply isn't a do whatever you like game, it's a story game with a backdrop of a somewhat interactive surrounding. Compared to earlier cityscape story backdrops like e.g. in Deus Ex series games or the endless iterations of Assassins Creeds the backdrop is far more interactive and even a little gamified. But it shouldn't be considered the game, it's a backdrop.

> There are a ton of great ideas in there, but then someone realized it would take too long so they half assed everything.

Totally agree. Take for example character backgrounds. They are meaningless. You have a custom 5 min introduction for that background and then you are playing the same game as everybody with the addition of just a few dialogs.

They could have just focused on one background and make the side quests more relevant to that background.

Not sure of that. The most critically acclaimed games e.g. RDR2, Horizon Zero Dawn etc. have very deep and intriguing stories while maintaining the world as “open” as possible. Even the Witcher is another example. Cyberpunk sounds like a case of massive overhyping and under delivering. Some fanboys here and there are unwilling to face the reality, but most reviews I’ve read seem to be sober and corroborate the above point.