I'm not entirely sure what this thread is about. I know what it started with, but it has morphed.
If we're back to 1st vs 3rd person, that ship has sailed, returned, and then sailed out again. It is what it is. As to the difficulty of presentation, I don't see why 1st person would be any easier or harder than 3rd person. The biggest problem with the perspective in the game isn't that it's mostly locked to 1st person. The problem is that 1st person was done without taking the time to properly implement a skeletal structure for 3rd person, which is what causes shadows to be screwed up, among other things.
Or is it about cut-scenes? Those are what they are. It looks like CDPR tried to implement them in a way that remained immersive. Sometimes that succeeded, sometimes not. But I like the idea of them trying it.
Or is it about the vignette between the character's background path introduction, and the first mission with Jackie, who is suddenly your best friend, with no context for it except the Corpo path? I understand the story telling framework that they're trying to sell. However, the implementation smacks of "we ran out of time". The prologue is long enough that Jackie could have been part of some of those prologue side missions, the friendship with the character could have evolved organically in that manner (and I still think that was the original intent), and then the heist trauma could have been more salient (again, like I suspect it was originally intended to be). For me, the gold standard in emotional identification with a character who gets lost somewhere along the way is Gears of War 3, with Dom.