My biggest problem with the game is that it's not an RPG. It's a choose your own adventure book with a pre-defined protagonist and a skill system that seems to mostly make you better at the things that you can already do.
V and Johnny are both sides of the broad dichotomy the game presents. One is a materialistic moron who just wants to "make it big" - the other detests the degeneracy and lifestyle inherent to Night City and wants to burn it down. I wish they would have scrapped the whole dynamic and allowed us to form our own opinions about Night City and, more importantly, act on them.
I'll see where they're taking it, but the potential for real, meaningful roleplaying seems very limited going forward. I already know who V is - and I don't like him. Real bummer. I would be able to forgive the poorly thought out open world elements if I felt like this was in any way my story. For now it's just a nice looking hub between fun missions for a character I feel no authorship over or connection to.
I'm enjoying it for what it is, but it's not the game I was hoping for so far.
This is my main issue with the game, too. For people who are really in to RPGs the little details are exceptionally important.
All the game had to tell me to know I wasn't really going to mesh with V's provided character was the item "V's favorite shirt" you receive right in the beginning. You get this completely gross, dumb shirt and are immediately told this is
your favorite. That speaks volumes to what kind of kind of character the game has decided V is already, without your input and that pretty much killed any expectation I had to role play from the get-go.
I mean, this is fine. It's a minor deal unless you somehow thought the game was going to be this pinnacle of role play. CDPR aren't known for Bethesda's strong suit of giving you a blank-slate character to do anything you'd like with. Chances are if you loved The Witcher 3, Geralt really resonated with you as a character.
Cyberpunk does something kind of in between the Bethesda school of thought and the rigid, set-character in The Witcher and I think it suffers for it both from a writing standpoint and a mechanical one.
But again, given all the marketing material, I wasn't going into this game with assumptions it was going to be GTA meets Baldur's Gate meets DOOM. It's a minor gripe from an RPG-diehard is all.
