My feeling about CP2077 are very mixed.
I love the setting and the artwork we've seen, I'm very disappointed it's not an RPG.
Ok I'll try to understand what you said below. I'm basically going to (for the sake of attempting to understand every single word at its deepest level) just try and deconstruct everything you said, so I can grasp it better, and maybe even challenge it just a little bit to see your responses to my logic's attempt at understanding yours. I eagerly await your response. This is bound to be a very interesting conversation.
Please understand that I may misunderstand, and that my opinions are just opinions. All my text toward you is in 100% good will only and has no bad intentions, and is not meant to offend. No matter how analytical or even interrogative my words seem, Please always assume that they are always in a kind and polite tone.
I'll elaborate slightly on that.
The character you create is an avatar, not a character.
Beside what you wrote below, can you in more simple or basic terms (I'm having trouble understanding) explain why you feel that the players ability to create what will become their own V makes V an avatar instead of a character, and takes away from or diminishes the potential "character-ness" of V? Honestly, for me, deep customization and the ability to create my V helps me feel more immersed because the more personalized I can make my V, the more I care about them and their choices, which in turn helps define them in a certain way and speaks out saying "I'm V and this is who I am, and these are the choices I make" which is a strong "Character/ Character building" effect in a certain way. I feel like I'm having trouble finding the right words to describe what I mean so I'm just trying my best. There may possibly be a better way to say what I'm trying to say.
While character stats may somewhat limit what skills you can select they have little to no bearing on the execution of those skills,
Please forgive me, since I'm getting a little bit lost here, But what do you mean by that, and furthermore- how do you know that is true? As a small side comment, I usually feel very bored or frustrated and find very little to no enjoyment in games that limit the player (just my opinion). I will now go back to the main point of your specific sentence here. If I understand correctly, in simple terms you say that stats don't effect what your character does, or how they do it. Which stats exactly? I definitely need more context and detail to understand.
thus you're not playing a character with their own abilities, strengths, weaknesses but merely an avatar for the players abilities, strengths, weaknesses.
But I can't make swords come out of my arms in real life, or hack computers with my brain. The only reason I'm able to do this things is because I would be playing a video game (when it releases in 2020). Being able to do things like that in the video game has no connection to my abilities in real life other than my ability to try to be smart and play the video game in a way that I believe will lead to my characters/V's victory, victory being defined by a combination of win conditions set by CDProjektRed and myself and what I hope my personal V character to achieve.
The whole point of an RPG is the character.
I agree that the character is an extremely important point/part of an RPG, but I would argue that the story and the setting are just as important, maybe they are all even evenly in cooperation just as important as each other. RPG=Role Play Game. (I know that you know, I'm just deconstructing it for logic sake)
So we take "Role-Play" out of that, and we see we are playing a role, but playing a role in what exactly? a game? and a game is basically a story telling device as to movie, as movie is as to book, as book is as to ancestral camp fire legends. So we're playing a role of a character, and that character is within or is that role inside of what we can generally say counts as a story.
By removing character agency a game, any game, is by definition not an RPG regardless of whatever other elements it may have. Character agency is the core concept of an RPG.
Why do you say that? I'm curious because I don't know what you mean by removing character agency. When was character agency removed, and by who or what? Also, technically speaking, it could be argued that within "canonicallity" or "plot armor" there is no such thing as a characters free will. For example, a character that does not know they are in a story that is yet to be told (like a person in real life that did not know that people would make legends of them later in the future) Has the free will to do all kinds of things that they are able to do, but whatever it is that is in the story or legend that was told later (assuming that story or legend remained accurate and honest, even through translation) is what that character was destined/had to have done in order for that story to exist, just like an actor in a movie technically has free will, but it is really the director that controlled everything, and/or people watching the movie later are witnessing the final events locked in time as the movie was recorded. If I play the entire Cyberpunk2077 game from the perspective of my head cannon of my personally customized V as being "the real way the story went" then technically speaking there was never any character agency or free will, and yet it was still a role play game, since V still had to play a role, but had no freedom other than what the player forced them to do as an actor. Deep...
