It's complicated (which I voted), but I want to say NO, for one simple reason: No matter how much you immerse yourself into side quests and gigs, the actual world around you does not respond, change, or adapt to your actions. It always stays in a static time bubble where you're the only part moving. The WORLD is not immersive at all, your actions have no reactions, especially long term. I never feel like I am a part of the city, I just feel like the world is a hollywood backdrop and I'm just walking in front of massive green screens - where the pre-planned gigs and events are what post production cooks together. In other words, what actually has depth and quality, is outside of my own hands to influence. I can't control them, and the limited dialogue options always lead to the same core outcome.
So no, the game is actually the opposite of immersive. It feels like you're just an actor playing out an act that a producer has already planned out for you. You are not able to tell your own story, with the way the limited AI and world interaction system (or lack thereof) is set up in the game's current state.
This is what I so dearly hope will be overhauled in the future. Let NC become the interactive and soulful world that it deserves to be, and has the potential to live up to. It's the most vivid and beautifully designed open world I've ever seen, but it is also equally soulless once you step out of the pre-planned quests and events.
Suggestions for improvement:
1. Competent and alive AI. Yea, the thing we were actually promised back when. An example could be going in the direction of AC:Origins, where AI npcs actually have daily lives and goals they carry out, and are not just portrayed to fill out blank space in the open world (at least to a degree). I'd gladly take half the density, if that density had the collective IQ of more than 1.
2. Let our choises matter. In side quests, if we take the cheap routes in quests too often, let it have a consequence. Instead of just withholding out bonus reward for a job that wasn't well done, if it happens too frequently make it harder for us to secure similar jobs in the future. Give personal relations that are fluent, where we as players may have to take responsibility for our decisions down the road we chose to walk.
3. Allow us to interact with NPC/AI characters on a level beyond a simple auto-generated one-liner response. Let us have a conversation that is relevant to the situation/context of when/where/how we approach them. Perhaps even let us get a personal relation with some of them, let us help them out with some daily tasks they may be struggling with, etc. Or let us just buy a cute girl coffee and evolve her from "simple npc" to "side quest npc" and maybe even add the potential to get that character as a love interest or something. Of course this would have to be limited, but hey, in real life most people don't have 100s of friends anyways so it wouldn't be a problem to put such limitations on how many npc relations one could have. Etc.
4. Create more progressively generated open-world events such as heists, bank/corpo robberies, car chases, illegal street races, casino gambling, drug deals, etc. Things that aren't pre scripted, while also allowing for more complex immersion than the standard "X people shooting at Y people on Z street corner for the 100th time today". The diversity in events, and their progressive generation, is key to making a city feel alive and immersive. Take RUST for example, with a progressively generated map that has the same core building blocks, but is never structured quite the same way whenever you start on a new map. Events should be just like that, progressive, and pulling from a lot of variables to form more complex non-scripted scenarios with unique outcomes and interactions. Just like real life.
5. Allow us to play a bigger role in the faction system outside of quests and gigs. We have a background, and we have experience from quests and open-world encounters. We have "Street Cred". Let us use this to form deeper bonds with various organizations. Let us become a corpo associate if we want to, and get the opportunity to play in the big league and call our own shots.
Let us ally with a local street gang and rise to the top to challenge other gangs in an attempt to spread our influence in the street environment of NC.
Let us live out the NOMAD lifestyle to the fullest, taking a complete distance to NC and fight the regime that is trying to outlaw us.
And let all of this happen at a much more in-depth scale. Let us be able to take charge of an entire NOMAD settlement, appoint NPC roles, secure weaponry to arm your people, etc. As a Corpo, let us buy into massive Corpo buildinsg with penthouses and job certain industry specialisms such as weapons manufacturing, cyber enhancement, law enforcement, etc. And let this trickle into our in-game benefits as a character and the opportunities we have available to us. Let it influence who we can talk to, who we can make deals with, and who will try to oppose us. Not just oppose us on a random street corner, but instead in terms of hacking, stealing, fighting, outbidding, espionaging, where we can shop, which gigs are presented to us, prices of items in certain areas, etc. Everything is open for you to pick and chose from. In the end, what it offers is diversity, and something to grind for. The sacred replay value that is so important for big AAA titles like CP77.
Let me just create an imaginative scenario based on the suggestions above:
Walking around the world is a journey - I never know what to encounter. Sometimes my reputation catches up to me, and people in the crowd realize who I am and either take an offensive stance, while other times they come over to praise my work. This spreads ripples through the crowds depending on where I go.
One day I was approached by this npc girl, she had heard of some of my work and nervously asked if I had a minute. In a small alleyway, with a hesitant voice, she asked if it was true that I had hunted down and killed a Cyberpsycho. I replied yes, and not just one. She hinted a smile of relief. Apparently her brother had gotten himself into a bad spot with some shady people, and was being blackmailed by such a Cyberpsycho. She hadn't heard from her brother in days, and got nervous. The police apparently were too busy to look into the matter, and she was left with no options. She didn't have much to offer in return for me seeing to her brother's safety, except her gratitude, and the promise to spread a good word about me.
A good word was just what I needed right now, as a local street gang had been spreading rumors lately about some of my gigs that happened to cross their turfs a few times.
These gigs also had a tendency to get unnecessarily violent, which my fixer wasn't too happy about. In fact, she hadn't been providing me with new gigs in this area in a while, so spreading a positive word might help fix my reputation and get me back on the scene again.
Alright, that settles it then. I accepted the girl's offer, and went to check on things.
My first approach was to head back to my associate corporation's local HQ. The one with the great penthouse I had been scoping out for months. Always felt nice going back there, however this time with more urgent matter at hand. This associate corporation specializes in intel gathering, and since I am on good stanting with the higher ups, perhaps I can ask them for a favor and look into the location of this girl's brother.
However, before I could even reach the corpo building, fate would have it another way. Out of nowhere a gang of armed street punks came running out of a nearby building - guns blazing. At second glance I see the Arasaka nametag above one of the main entrances, realizing it was a biotech robbery. Some big cojones on those people going after an Arasaka facility in broad daylight. I'd better avoid a confrontation, in case they call in their backup that are surely waiting around nearby.
I already had a task set in motion, laying low right now served me better.
- - - In the end, the rest of the story can be up to the player's decisions along the way, but you get the overall idea. Let the world be like a fluid, flowing in whichever direction you lead it - instead of being solid like ice, where everything is decided and nothing can meaningfully adapt to your inputs.
Just my two cents (or maybe 2 dollars, as it ended up being quite a bit of storytelling and writing. Oh well, if you read this far, thanks for your time.)