It is a great game, but marketed incorrectly. It isn't an open world game. It is a narrative driven looter shooter with amazing visuals. It isn't the game I wanted. I have zero desire the replay it (and you can't really play past the 'end'). It is worth the price of admission IF you have a computer to run it, which is a significant hurdle.
Interestingly I played Psychonauts 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 back to back, both at times felt like playing a movie rendered into video game form.
Any game with voiced dialogue is either going to have one single story, a bunch of little threads that don't interact much, or both. Some games might give you a bit of wiggle room to get most or all of the content in a single playthrough; but usually that's going to be a fairly rigid solution since any slack time translates to a slowed narrative pace for casual players. It will likely look like a movie, but with some choose your own adventure cutting-room-floor edits and maybe player controlled pacing.
The latest Elder scrolls games, Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, all had voiced dialogue and didn't feel as "on rails" as Cyberpunk did. None of those games are recent.
The way the core narrative is structured is one of the core problems with Cyberpunk, the games mcguffin implying an artificial time constraint to drive the narrative to resolution. Except driving the narrative to resolution ends the game.
Those games all spent their budgets better and had better planning. They were still on rails, just the core story was better planned and there were many more fulfilling side quests (extra threads) that stood on their own for players to organically experience. TES is infamous for players wandering off and almost entirely ignoring the primary story to instead enjoy all of the dungeons and side quests.
I never read any hype about games and was perfectly happy with CP2077. Granted, I played it on an Xbox One X, which had enough power to actually run it.
Ran into a good dozen crashes during my 40hour+ playthrough and one bug that affected my playing in any way (some quest-related audio didn't play and missed some stuff).
From what I've gathered there was a massive group of people, bolstered by what the Witcher 3 had become after years of development and multiple DLCs, who believed and took to heart every single word from the marketing department about three separate plotlines and AI NPCs with full lives etc.
While in actuality the "separate plots" were three short intros and a few background-specific discussion options.
This might be the worst case of mismanaged expectations in the history of gaming. CDPR shot for the moon, said they were gonna get to the moon and the result was a sparkler thrown off a roof. It was the prettiest sparkler in a long time, but that's not what the crowd was expecting.
The best way to foster and learn about a hobby is reading its subreddit. Also, the quickest and surest way to kill your love for a hobby.. is reading its subreddit.
Amen. There's so much bashing going around but when i played it, it blew my mind, the setting and athmosphere is phenomenal, the soundtrack is insane and i just want more of it, thats my only issue. The main story should be longer.
Interestingly I played Psychonauts 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 back to back, both at times felt like playing a movie rendered into video game form.