I'm gonna be honest, the lifepath/backstory thing was always going to be somewhat superfluous in the grand scheme of things. I know a lot of people were going into this game with the expectation that choices and the like would lead to RADICALLY different outcomes and branching narratives, but that wasn't going to happen. The backstory had very little impact in Mass Effect outside of dialogue, and it was the same story with the first Dragon Age (besides the opening, which, similar to this game, was different depending on what you chose) despite the fact that the subtitle of that game was literally ORIGINS.
And to dig even deeper into branching narratives and the impact of player choice, an RPG like Divinity: OS2, which is more reactive than most RPGs, I, having played multiple times, didn't have a DRASTICALLY different experience from playthrough to playthrough, despite trying pretty much every choice option I was given.
A AAA RPG with the level of production values as this game wasn't going to be that malleable of an experience, it just isn't feasible, and I'm sure CDPR realized that as well, which is why over time they slowly whittled down their ambitions.
I mean, if people had to be crunched in order to get the game in the state we have it now, people probably straight up would have had to have DIED in order to get the game that some of you were building up in your heads lol which sure, CDPR pushed for, but it was pretty clear that over the years their ambitions started to shrink as the reality of what was actually feasible became more and more apparent, and the level of polish and balance that many here (and on reddit) were expecting of all of these systems would have required a degree of finesse beyond even that of a studio like Rockstar, which, I'll be frank, was borderline delusional.