Everyone going with 'you don't seem to understand the cyberpunk genre'... What are you implying? That the cyberpunk genre automatically translates to doom, gloom, certain defeat? As someone actually very familiar with the cyberpunk genre, it seems that everyone here who thinks they 'understand' it, actually don't.
Cyberpunk as a genre has a few themes that it relies on, which are how tech and AI change society, loss of humanity, the abuse of nature and people by the ultra rich, corporations becoming the de-facto governments, class division to the point where there are only ultra poor and ultra rich people. Drugs, sex, identity and loss of it through technology. All recurring themes in the cyberpunk genre. It generally paints a picture of a bleak, dark neo-tech/neo-corporate world, where hopes and ideals of utopias are something long gone and there is no more 'saving the world'. This also automatically implies there are no more 'heroes', the all-important person who will fix everything. This is why cyberpunk tells 'small', personal stories. A good, simple example is that, overall, cyberpunk is the exact opposite of classic fantasy like Lord of the Rings, and the catchphrase used in marketing describes it perfectly - 'you can't save the world, you can only save yourself'. Yet it ends up being just 'you can't save yourself, ever'. If you assume this was an artistic decision, it means that CDPR deliberately cherry-picked only the darkest themes from the genre on purpose, and by extension, this means that the story was always pre-written, and you were meant to not have a choice, because the choice was made by the writes. This is what everyone's issue is - if they wanted to tell that specific story, and let people just experience it, fine. But then why repeat, year after year, that we would have deep, meaningful choices that would drastically impact the ending? A predefined story and deep, complex choices are almost complete opposites. People were promised the latter - an RPG, and supposedly a ground-breaking one.
Assuming that cyberpunk always means 'no way out, no way to win, you're always screwed' is plain wrong and a misunderstanding of the genre. Cyberpunk is NOT doomer culture. Cyberpunk DOES allow for small, personal victories, usually this is clearly the best you can hope for, but it is not straight up impossible. That's the whole point - there is still small hope here and there. That is what makes those small personal victories all the more meaningful, because a brutal, merciless world that is out to get you is the context. Nobody every said that the world always crushes you, though. That is not an intrinsic part of the genre. Applying the theme of 'absolute hopelessness/guaranteed defeat' to this genre is a mischaracterization and misunderstanding of it. If that were true, there would practically be no point in telling any stories in that setting, as any character, their struggles, hopes and dreams, would always be pointless and would have no value.
So trying to justify the looming theme of doom and gloom that spans across all the endings, in varying degrees, by saying 'this is cyberpunk, you just don't understand it' is just weird. Yes, this is cyberpunk, and that's why there should be a 'happy ending' in some form, perhaps along the line of 'you fought the world, and you lost, but at least you got out alive, which was the best you could hope for anyway'. Cyberpunk, as a genre, allows that. So denying this option to players, as it's quite obvious by the reactions of people, is wrong, considering that this was an RPG. We don't want a guaranteed happy ending, we want it to just be an option. Otherwise, just call it Doomer 2077 and be done with it.
