DISCLAIMER: This is all my opinion even though much of it may come across factual. I'm merely explaining from my point of view as to why I believe I'm right. This is also a continuation of an old post about why character creation served no purpose other than being a visual self-insert fanfic, so take it with a grain of salt.
Before I continue, I'll quickly go over the two different genres of RPGs:
Traditional RPGs have the blankest of slate protagonist that is completely silent and, generally, their appearance, gender, or race can be altered so the player can project their own vision of their character. The strengths to this type of system is complete ownership and player expression, because the player can act anyway they want and the world will respond to the player's actions, but the shortcomings is the player's character serves a minimal or no role in character relationships and is generally pushed into the background with poor facial animations while the real characters tell the story.
Non-Traditional RPGs have a predefined protagonist with core character traits, tailored appearance, and fully voiced. The strengths to this system is the protagonist has a defined role in the story and has their own subjective relationships with characters which allows the story to discover more in-depth relationships and the choices have more weight as they directly effect the protagonist, but the shortcomings of this system is the player's choices are limited to the protagonist's own moral dilemma and ambiguity.
When you combine these you run into issues. Cyberpunk went with this system.
V is a voiced, predefined protagonist that can have an edited gender, appearance, and background. The first issue is V is predefined, so you already run into issues. There's no ownership over your character, because regardless of the player's changes, they're still playing as V from the trailers and demos. I know people will start drawing comparisons to Mass Effect, Saints Row, and other games that may or may not be that similar to Cyberpunk's style of protagonists, but those games have many of the same issues.
Cmdr. Shepard, Mass Effect, and Hawke, Dragon Age 2, are still the protagonists of their games, not the player's made up character, so similar to V, their stories are their own, not the player's. The player can murder as many people as they want, but V still acts like nothing happened, because the game is designed around V acting a certain way. This extends to appearance as well.
V can look like fingers and characters won't react any differently. It's an illusion when characters react the exact same way regardless of V's appearance, because the game was designed around the canonized appearance so the world of Cyberpunk only sees V as the canonized appearance while the player sees a simulated illusion to hide the real character, and it's pretty obvious when V is lower resolution and deformed when placed next to the more realistic characters. Appearance may seem like a little thing, but to me it matters, because they market a character, but the player can change them to something completely different. The player is given the illusion they made their own character, but they didn't. This harms a player's experience, because the game is trying to get the audience to care about the protagonist, but when you can change them into your own vision, player's won't grow an emotional attachment to a character they think is theirs. It's especially evident since the industry only recognizes V as his canon appearance.
This final argument may seem like a strange one, but gender options are an issue too. Similar to Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and many other games, the opposite gender is just a gender bend of the same protagonist. Games like AC: Odyssey actually tried to do something different with its different gender options. The options were separate characters in the same story, but at different points. The only issue was that Cassandra and Alexios act exactly the same, but newsflash: men and women do have different personality traits regardless if they act similarly. Both Male and Female V can have their own unique traits that gives them advantages with their gender. Cyberpunk could've done something interesting as Male V and Female V could've been twin siblings. On top of that, the lifepaths could've created a much bigger extension to the characters, because I thought the lifepaths were just going to be What If? scenarios for the same characters. Wolverine, my favorite comic book character, has multiple versions of the same character: Old Man Logan, Hydra Wolverine, and many more with their own backgrounds and personalities with slight appearance changes.
This is why games like Fallout (New Vegas) and The Witcher games excel at their RPG systems. Fallout focuses more on in-depth character building and the Courier has such a vague past which allows the player to project themselves into the character and create their own backstory for the character. The Witcher is more focused on telling Geralt's story. While being preestablished, Geralt still fits in perfectly to an RPG setting, because of his morally ambiguous personality has many different interpretations. Even Red Dead Redemption 2, a sandbox game, handles its protagonist, Arthur Morgan, like Geralt perfectly in a non-RPG game. Making protagonists like Geralt of Rivia and Arthur Morgan will cause players to grow an emotional attachment to these characters. That's a pretty rare achievement in a game where the player controls the protagonist's actions in the story.
These were all issues I saw coming from a mile away before the game released. I saw these issues at the 2018 E3 demo. I'm still surprised many were hyping character creation like it was going to be a Fallout lovers dream. I do think character creation does have a place in the multiplayer mode since RPGs were traditionally always a social experience.
Before I continue, I'll quickly go over the two different genres of RPGs:
Traditional RPGs have the blankest of slate protagonist that is completely silent and, generally, their appearance, gender, or race can be altered so the player can project their own vision of their character. The strengths to this type of system is complete ownership and player expression, because the player can act anyway they want and the world will respond to the player's actions, but the shortcomings is the player's character serves a minimal or no role in character relationships and is generally pushed into the background with poor facial animations while the real characters tell the story.
Non-Traditional RPGs have a predefined protagonist with core character traits, tailored appearance, and fully voiced. The strengths to this system is the protagonist has a defined role in the story and has their own subjective relationships with characters which allows the story to discover more in-depth relationships and the choices have more weight as they directly effect the protagonist, but the shortcomings of this system is the player's choices are limited to the protagonist's own moral dilemma and ambiguity.
When you combine these you run into issues. Cyberpunk went with this system.
V is a voiced, predefined protagonist that can have an edited gender, appearance, and background. The first issue is V is predefined, so you already run into issues. There's no ownership over your character, because regardless of the player's changes, they're still playing as V from the trailers and demos. I know people will start drawing comparisons to Mass Effect, Saints Row, and other games that may or may not be that similar to Cyberpunk's style of protagonists, but those games have many of the same issues.
Cmdr. Shepard, Mass Effect, and Hawke, Dragon Age 2, are still the protagonists of their games, not the player's made up character, so similar to V, their stories are their own, not the player's. The player can murder as many people as they want, but V still acts like nothing happened, because the game is designed around V acting a certain way. This extends to appearance as well.
V can look like fingers and characters won't react any differently. It's an illusion when characters react the exact same way regardless of V's appearance, because the game was designed around the canonized appearance so the world of Cyberpunk only sees V as the canonized appearance while the player sees a simulated illusion to hide the real character, and it's pretty obvious when V is lower resolution and deformed when placed next to the more realistic characters. Appearance may seem like a little thing, but to me it matters, because they market a character, but the player can change them to something completely different. The player is given the illusion they made their own character, but they didn't. This harms a player's experience, because the game is trying to get the audience to care about the protagonist, but when you can change them into your own vision, player's won't grow an emotional attachment to a character they think is theirs. It's especially evident since the industry only recognizes V as his canon appearance.
This final argument may seem like a strange one, but gender options are an issue too. Similar to Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and many other games, the opposite gender is just a gender bend of the same protagonist. Games like AC: Odyssey actually tried to do something different with its different gender options. The options were separate characters in the same story, but at different points. The only issue was that Cassandra and Alexios act exactly the same, but newsflash: men and women do have different personality traits regardless if they act similarly. Both Male and Female V can have their own unique traits that gives them advantages with their gender. Cyberpunk could've done something interesting as Male V and Female V could've been twin siblings. On top of that, the lifepaths could've created a much bigger extension to the characters, because I thought the lifepaths were just going to be What If? scenarios for the same characters. Wolverine, my favorite comic book character, has multiple versions of the same character: Old Man Logan, Hydra Wolverine, and many more with their own backgrounds and personalities with slight appearance changes.
This is why games like Fallout (New Vegas) and The Witcher games excel at their RPG systems. Fallout focuses more on in-depth character building and the Courier has such a vague past which allows the player to project themselves into the character and create their own backstory for the character. The Witcher is more focused on telling Geralt's story. While being preestablished, Geralt still fits in perfectly to an RPG setting, because of his morally ambiguous personality has many different interpretations. Even Red Dead Redemption 2, a sandbox game, handles its protagonist, Arthur Morgan, like Geralt perfectly in a non-RPG game. Making protagonists like Geralt of Rivia and Arthur Morgan will cause players to grow an emotional attachment to these characters. That's a pretty rare achievement in a game where the player controls the protagonist's actions in the story.
These were all issues I saw coming from a mile away before the game released. I saw these issues at the 2018 E3 demo. I'm still surprised many were hyping character creation like it was going to be a Fallout lovers dream. I do think character creation does have a place in the multiplayer mode since RPGs were traditionally always a social experience.