But I've also said that the people who want a longer story are the people heavily invested in video games versus casual gamers who make up the vast majority of gamers. There's plenty of people who buy video games, play a few hours of them, and then move on.
That's actually very easy to support by achievement stats: The Lovers: Steal the Relic 71,21% of players has that (on Xbox).
The thing that bothers me is that I can't come up with anything to measure what captured players who completed the story. It's kinda like Stephen King back in the day had this tone and perspective that really spoke to generation x, he's horror author, but there was really much more going on in his novels. Over time we noticed that he books got thicker but that really wasn't doing any favors for his stories. Yet even today anything Stephen King writes will sell ridiculous amount of copies. That's because he is familiar, it's something in us humans. We may have our doubts but at least it's something familiar so we may feel like we have some control, maybe it's shit again but at least I can tell after first hundred of pages, or something like that. And for me CP 2077 is (and The Outer Worlds I mentioned earlier in topic) is like some sort of anomaly, like Stephen King went and wrote something worthwhile again. LOL
Say compared to the Outer Worlds which imo is really fine game, 15,88% of players completed that vs. 26,16% for CP 2077. Say I like racing games, there are different kinds of cars but tracks stays the same, you learn tricks you can play couple of hours in a week, forget it for weeks or even months but it's easy to get back.
So the quality aspect. Say something in game, is like Freudian take on something that goes way back, famous stage play from 1591 probably (exact date in unknow) I mean Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare. Game takes that and it comes to show yet another idea, ideal, that can turn very toxic if we simply can't accept certain things that are very human. That was the problem Shakespeare faced back in the day, people wanted plays about passion of first love, that moment and stage of life and more and more of that. Shakespeare realized that this demand was impossibility, banality of life comes in the play at some point, people get sick, they get old. So he killed Romeo and Juliet before they got there, that solved the problem.
So someone at CDPR had brains and threw Freud at that, and we see via Johnny and Rogue, who becomes this silly girl when Johnny comes into picture that there's nothing romantic in what follows. More could be said, but perhaps not in scope of this topic. But it's important to note, player doesn't need to know about Romeo and Juliet and its background but what CDPR did stands by on its own for theme to work out.
There are quite a few things in game and it makes me wonder how many of that 26.16% percent are casuals, who started at some point noticing things and sticked with it, because it actually has something relevant to say?
CDPR set up some high standards here. I don't think more content, especially more story content is negative feedback at all, but in the end I'm here for me. For a very long time there is a single players game I'm still going get back to, but for me and people who come to game for a first time, it really comes a matter of time and it would feel like terrible waste if people couldn't make these discoveries, simply because there isn't time.