I can't get into replays because the game doesn't care about my character

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My original character in this game was a sword-wielding blade/body/tech basically setup to 1-shot gods with Satori's strong attack headshots. It was a lot of fun for the first playthrough. Although I realized at level 50, he had level 17 blades and level 6 athletics because the auto-kill blade attacks he so-frequently got did not grant blades xp, and his reduced stamina attacking meant he never got athletics xp. Kind of strange. But I digress...

Now with 1.5, I've tried building two new characters, but I just can't get into either of them because this game has exactly 0 interest in how my character is built. I have no agency regarding the 6 months my character spent with Jackie after the prologue cinematic. For example, let's say you build a character to be a shotgun master. At level 1, you are full body, tech, and cool. You get a shotgun from the scavs in the first mission. Then, on the ride home with Jackie driving, what does the game do? It will force you to use a pistol. If you've disassembled your pistol, it will literally give you another rather than let you use a shotgun.

I also wanted to try building a ninja who never uses guns, just throwing knives/etc. Same issue, but this is even worse because the game forces me to get a ballistics hand. What if I don't want a cyber hand? I can understand that replacement eyes are kind of required for the game to function at a basic level, so that's fine. However, requiring players to get hand modification ignores a large number of possible play styles, be they hacker, ninja, or even someone that just wants to wait for smart weapons.

What if there was a shop that opened after the prologue where V got to spend, say, $1000 bucks. He could have a choice of archetypal items, each costing $1000, one for each "attack style" the game promotes: Slightly improved cyberdeck, melee non-lethal weapon, bladed weapon, shotgun, pistol, submachine gun, etc. It could even just be a prompt added to character creation that says, "what item do you want to start with?", and those items would have minimum stat requirements (i.e. you'd have to have int 6 to choose the improved cyberdeck, etc).

Also, it would be wonderful if V was allowed to pick his weapon for all car-chase combat. It really sucks to be forced into using a pistol.

Just my $0.02
 
In cyberpunk worlds, melee combat is usually secondary. Even street samurai (too many seem to take the "samurai" part a little too literally) of Shadowrun specialize in firearms, quite often something rapid-fire. One also should almost never be in combat in their vehicle outside scripted events, which keep you at a fair distance, necessitating the use of firearms.
 
What if there was a shop that opened after the prologue where V got to spend, say, $1000 bucks. He could have a choice of archetypal items, each costing $1000, one for each "attack style" the game promotes: Slightly improved cyberdeck, melee non-lethal weapon, bladed weapon, shotgun, pistol, submachine gun, etc. It could even just be a prompt added to character creation that says, "what item do you want to start with?", and those items would have minimum stat requirements (i.e. you'd have to have int 6 to choose the improved cyberdeck, etc).
Doing repeated playthroughs does make it even more obvious how little the lifepaths matter. Your character basically starts the same, same basic chrome from Vik (it's a 'gift' from him on credit so I'm not complaning.) I know the player can totally choose how to progress but it seems natural that a corpo-turned-merc would have a different start-point to a street kid. So yeah I like the idea of some variety in the basic gear, maybe depending on you being corpo/street/nomad, can always change it later as your character develops.
 
Then, on the ride home with Jackie driving, what does the game do? It will force you to use a pistol. If you've disassembled your pistol, it will literally give you another rather than let you use a shotgun.
In any case, it's new, I remember to use a shotgun during the car chase with scavs with Jackie (quite useless... but I did it^^).
And now, since a while, I craft my own revolver (NOVA), better than anything in this case and the game let me use it :)
 
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