I think CDPR couldn’t decide if players were meant to place their own persona in V’s character or not. I agree with what you’re saying, but compared to other games where your character is preconceived I don’t think V holds up. I got attached to the characters in the game, which made the endings more difficult, but that was my own judgement from my own point of view, rather than adopting whatever opinions V provides, does that make any sense?
Sometimes it was irritating that you were forced into voicing V’s more aggressive opinions against characters (e.g. Johnny or Goro) whereas with other characters you were free to make up your mind yourself.
This is the Mass Effect (the third more specifically) dilemma all over again, yes you can chose Shepard's back story (which surmounts to a quantifiable bucket of nothing except a minor side quest and a few text messages) and somewhat shape his personality (quite comically so when you go full renegade and he becomes a jerk) throughout the game.
No one went into Mass Effect expecting to be their own character, or even more so expecting to get Fallout: New Vegas type of game.
The way I see Cyberpunk is somewhat similar with arguably more RPG elements than a straight up linear third person shooter with minor to non-existent RPG mechanics (which is Mass Effect 2 and 3 regardless of how you look at things).
In every trailer after 2018 they specifically said you will be playing the mercenary V, that you can customize his or her appearance and chose a life path that has an effect on the branching narrative and the game is first and foremost an RPG.
I really do not see how that resembles the concept of getting New Vegas type of branching dialogue and decisions, which, arguably, a heck of a lot of games fail to do, especially on the AAA mainstream A list (which needs to appeal to the lowest common denominator, for better or for worse).
Don't get me wrong, I would have loved for it to be like that, I really would have.
But the fact that we got something else is what it is, and we can either accept it or move on, I don't think the concept of the game will ever change.
We do have options to play V in a certain way, undoubtedly, now to what extent one expects to mold their V is arguably a direct correlation with their level of enjoyment of both the narrative and the endings to an extent.
My major problem is, just like in every other cinematic RPG, the response options displayed on the screen are not entirely what we're getting when they're spoken out loud, they don't explain the tone or the extent which V will go to with the chosen dialogue option - which in certain scenes will create a disconnect.
But in the end it's an open world video game, things will not always gel as well as in a linear game or a book, or a film.
Bottom line is, one can either chose to ignore the inconsistencies or dwell on them until ''the cows come home'' (loving this saying
), the latter of which I believe is unhealthy and one should sometimes chose to move on.
But that's just me.
I think a big factor is every one of us is jumping to conclusions, some think V certainly died in the end and that's sad and everything sucks and/or doesn't make sense, others think V is still fighting to find a cure and so the endings are hopeful and a beacon of shining light.
Both those scenarios are fictitious as we do not know.
I'm also guilty of it.
