The game's cause and effect lies beyond just the endings. You should know this if you played the game, which I know you didn't because you refunded the game and watched the endings on YouTube.
Off the top of my head:
- If you flat out ignore Riders on the Storm for 24 hours Saul dies and you are completely locked out of an entire quest line and an ending.
- If you rat out Panam to Saul you get a car but also lock yourself out of the entire questline (and the ending path).
- One of the few games I've played that allows you to play a straight edge character (no forced drugs or alcohol).
- You can reject Johnny's desire to take control briefly for Chippin' In. This also locks you out of two endings (including the secret one - which is dependent on how you talk to him).
- There are 2 Ripperdocs you can lock yourself from based on how you react to them.
- Whether you dealt with Jotaro (or several other quests) influences your approach to Woodman. Corpos in particular can intimidate Woodman by default without needing to deal with Jotaro.
- I believe only Nomads can peacefully resolve Anna Miller's case (where she doesn't go out and kill 2 cops before getting killed herself).
- The amount of people that didn't even realize you could save Takemura because it didn't explicitly tell them.
- Randy dies if you guess the wrong farm. River can also die if you just outright ditch him during his search (he gets killed by the traps).
- How you handled the AllFoods Militech purchase influences whether you leave the Totentanz (the Bel isis quest) peacefully or through a shootout. It can also directly effect Stout during the AllFoods quest in general.
- If you let the corpo QA guy go during Olive Tree, Sergei ends up dying.
- How you approach the Clouds questline (Judy's stuff) affects what happens to the Dolls, and/or whether you can continue Judy's questline (killing Maiko or accepting her bribe).
- Ignoring the Monk's wishes and just killing the Maelstrom gangoons locks you out of an entire conversation with them on the nature of the biochip and Johnny's construct.
- Streetkids can peacefully walk through the front door of Gustavo Orta's apartment and talk to him directly. Other paths have to take a stealth approach to his office in order to talk to him.
- Streetkids can only peacefully resolve the quest where the NCPD are beating a corpo. They are also the only ones that can find out why exactly they are beating him.
- What you say to Claire one mission prior to the final race will influence whether she spares the driver.
- If you kill Joanne Koch (Gig: Guinea Pig) before doing Gig: Olive Branch, you get an additional branch of dialogue from the guy in the trunk which can influence your decision on letting him go.
- You have the option to not only kill the VDBs, but you can side with Netwatch, forcing Alt to destroy the BBS and kill Brigitte and the runners. You can alternatively go with the plan (don't side with Netwatch) and still kill the VDBs.
Some of them I didn't know, so a great find, could use a list of something like this ;D You can save Bricks by the way with this mission with jackie ;]
But to many of them you really need to dig deep to find a choice and the changes are like lifepaths a dialogue line or two. No lasting effect on gameplay or story further down the line. Like with Stout if she can live you have one encounter with her, if not only email from the guy? There was never a mention of her again, that she came back , or had more troubles. None of this things that you mention besides Panam offer a different option in the main story. The same with any LI. It's more do quest or do not. Not that there are that many differences (Only notable is with river if you can find the correct farm and takamura). Because if we are talking about choices i want to see the consequences a little further than the end of current side gig. Examples: takamura and Saul. The choices i was expecting to have was for example to save Evelyn,pay for treatment, get info from her, get call in the ending, maybe see her getting better? Or when i didn't save takemura and i killed every arasaka soldier i could find during missions hanako would screw me over? Or when i get blueprints for Biochip from hellman before meeting Alt, she can later prepare better when i plug to mikoshi? If I did quest with panam and chose arasaka ending maybe put aldecaldos under their protection? This kind of things, I wanted something that stays relevant.
But back to topic:
Right know it's pretty hard to tell what CDPR will do. Taking into account responses that we have from head manager etc that they think game's only issues are bugs, gliches,performance but without these game is easly 10/10 or 9/10 then (I hope i'm wrong) i lean towards mid game DLC with playing as different character(Morgan maybe?) or just some more V tortures.
