The thing with Sinnerman is multilayered.
Producer is the best example of corpo mindset and values outside of corpo lifepath prologue. It doesn't replace it but adds to that in terms of what kind of city the Night City is.
Joshua himself, nobody gives a damn about him.
Person who wants him dead is under impression Stephenson is going to walk, when he isn't, method of execution is changed.
For producer he is a mean to an end.
For security guard it's just another job.
Family Joshua visits, it's a disaster they don't want anything to do with him
Protesters are against producing BD, they see that as sacrilege and are outraged that it's being made to begin with
Audience, we get very good view for that demand for more and more outrageous content, market that black market BD's meet with their super freaky stuff, they don't gave about Joshua, they care about access to outrageous shit in legal ways.
So Joshua himself, deluded or not does that even matter?
Religion, sacrifice, this idea in his mind, in world like that, artificial construct in his head?
Edit: Just to be clear, I don't see anything half haphazardly placed what comes to writing.
You're right about the bigger picture. I think the sinnerman story itself is very
damn brilliant. And it shows the dark undertone of the city that's only interested in profit making with the expense of someone who's become religious in his final hours.
The final act is well executed and all the steps leading into it. You get to know the person and his own doubts.
But when you finally finish the quest chain, there might be
a little too much left for just player to interpret what had just happened and you don't have conversation with Johnny about it. You can't call lets say Misty and tell about your experience and get her reaction. You don't hear about Panam calling "WTF V? I just saw you in TV ad about some virtu about guy getting nailed down?" you know... some kind of consequence would be welcome there.
Just a little bit extra touch to truly soak in what had just happened instead of trying to make all these seem less relevant by giving players quick out from the scene.
Just my personal feeling.
Same goes with the River Ward mission quest line where you hunt down someone who's kidnapped kids. The journey to the ending is amazing, but when it ends, everyone just quickly takes off. You barely get to talk to anyone in that scene.
At least that's my memory of the missions. Maybe I'll need to refresh my memory a bit.
Just adding a tiny bit of polish in the end of these quest (and of course along the way) would make this game so amazing.
Also there's a ton of interesting emails in game, but it's only plain text. You could add few images when someone is marketing you a scam that you'll look some successful people waving money around or something like that, which has become very typical phenomenon in the current crypto boom. And when reading shards, the experience would be many times greater if you don't only read what's happened, but maybe get something else on top of it. Maybe a short cinematic of a guy who gets lost in wrong neighborhood and gets shot. Maybe you get some conversations voice narrated. Maybe when you read an email on computer that says "BOOM, you're hacked" instead just the text, the whole computer goes dark and shuts down. When you try to log in it again the whole computer is infected by virus.
I know CDPR has a ton of talented artists making all these scenes like the briefing about Maelstrom having Flathead. There's like a zillion walls all over the Night City with ton of artwork added there. The NCPD ads are funny and well crafted (maybe slightly too low resolution but still). They just need to focus their talent into making what now exists greater.
There's a ton of unique items in the game yet there's no ability to inspect them closer. Maybe they could have some unique story behind them. Maybe reserving an entire item tab to these unique items. Maybe making Johnny's albums unique collectable and ability to listen them when you go to visit Kerry.
To condense everything I said: You don't need to add much of new mechanics, but just improve on already existing content.
There already exists images in very few selected emails, and even video (the kidnapping quest line) and all you need to do is have more of it.
To throw completely new idea, here's a wildcard: Give V chance to get in front of TV and accuse Yorinobu of what he did or maybe not directly accuse him, and have some consequences with the TV hosts.
Maybe Adam Smasher is going to charge at the studio and execute Ziggy Q (the TV guy). Or maybe you attempt to talk to the press about what happened anonymously, and Adam Smasher gets a whiff about your location, and that resorts in an escape sequence. If you try call to Ziggy he's going to say "Don't you remember what happened? It was a complete bloodbath. I'm staying the hell out of this. If you call me, I'll personally inform your location."
And maybe with exactly right choices, you get to finish your message, and Yorinobu has to show up in TV to call these accusations completely ridiculous, and then show an edited footage of his father's "assassination", where he just falls down and there's a needle in his neck.
Of course generally, the game just needs a working open world mechanics. Maybe some randomly occurring events based on who you've been hostile to. Having some Adam Smasher chase sequences would be pretty wild, where you're forced to run out of situation. Attempting to kill Adam Smasher would have him press self destruction button which'd always kill you and have him remain as only beatable in final stage. Maybe have him be generally just far more stronger and indestructible and get weakened by Alt's hacking.
If not Adam Smasher himself, maybe have mercenaries to attack you, similar to how in Star Wars Fallen Order you get mercenaries spawning in specific locations and fighting you.
Adding 1 extra layer of difficulty and maybe a permadeath mode would also be sweet. That could maybe even enhance the spawn rate of these mercenaries by 2-3 times the other difficulties. Maybe having a TV advertisement showing your bounty, doesn't even necessarily have to show your face (since I'm not sure if it's harder to do) but some kind of TV programs and ads talking about you.
Make a challenge to the player community to be the first to finish the game on nightmare difficulty in a permadeath mode or generally just reward the players with cool new character creation option. Maybe you get to put chrome on your body of a specific color. Maybe you get to carry that necklace that V's holding in his pocket, as someone who's proudly survived the hardest difficulty without dying.
Just throwing out some ideas here... pretty much any of these would be great addition.