I'd say the stuff that holds the game back the most (besides bugs, of course) is small and could've been patched in way back in 1.2 or should've shipped with the game to begin with:
- An option to consume the food or drink you just bought straight from the vendor, so you don't need to open an entirely separate menu screen immediately after leaving the previous one when having a drink at the bar or eating in a restaurant;
- A reverse camera option while driving in first person, so I don't have to switch into third person just so I don't take the street lamp with me (or kill someone) whenever I'm backing out of that tight parking position I found;
- Walking speed as the default on PC; and a toggle that actually respects/remembers your preference when using a keyboard instead of shifting V back to jogging whenever a first person cutscene plays or I enter a small building interior;
- Have at least some NPC's driving bikes around town, since it's not like the third person animations aren't mostly there. Even if repetitive, that's still less jarring than being the only person actually driving a bike in Night City;
- If you're gonna lock me into a conversation with an NPC while we're walking somewhere, you might as well take movement away from me and leave me just controlling the camera. That way you can actually place me beside the character, so I can alternate between looking at where I'm going and the NPC's face. It's not like we're not on rails already anyway...
- Don't map the dialogue skip to the stance button: there're lots of times when changing your stance mid conversation enhances roleplaying. For example, when talking about a corpse lying next to you or when a conversation is triggered while you're crouched.
- Crafting (dismantling, creating and upgrading) should require you to be at one of your apartment's stashes. V's not improvising a quick Molotov in the apocalypse, they're casing shells, building precision weaponry, handling delicate medicine. That would also give the player more of an incentive to use the home's facilities and even go to sleep;
- Bikes shouldn't have gotten stashes: they're already super useful for other reasons, the benefit of space should be reserved to cars;
- While still on the topic of stashes: split the home and the vehicle stashes. They don't need sizes, but there's no reason something in my car should teleport to my home as in Resident Evil's special chests. That way you can actually forget something in the car when you get home;
- I can understand escorted NPC's hanging back when in hostile areas: the AI's not that good at moving and staying out of sight. So it's that old question of leaving them out of the picture or breaking immersion by not making the NPC trigger guards. But once I'm outside of a hostile area, make sure the escorted NPC is following me closely. It looks ridiculous that the escorted NPC just stares at me walk away before starting to walk again once the maximum distance is reached;
- Delay the police! I can understand not wanting Cyberpunk 2077 on TV being accused of letting young children massacre virtual people on the street, but the game has a rating and the NCPD doesn't have time to respond to every single small crime: if the player has 1 star, then the police should take a long time to respond. If the player keeps killing civilians, then you increase the stars and drastically decrease the response time. This would've prevented a great deal of backlash from the immediately spawning police during the launch of the game;
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