1. Bland game that fails to make me invested in it.
Highly unlikely to happen, but its a fear. There have been games that almost everyone else seemd to be hyping, but I didn't get excited about. Like pillars of eternity for example.. Having a detailed open world, fun and immersive game mechanics and charismatic characters counters this. I use Assassin's creed odyssey as an example of things done right, as its one of my most favorite games ever. Also an example that even with 'grindy' progression you can have a fun game, if the world is detailed, beautiful and interesting enough. Masterpieces comprise of small details.
"Direct hit! ... No effect."
-Worf, every other episode of ST:NG
2. Too much bullet-sponginess.
Certain amount is expected since the characters are likely to be cyborgs with enhanced skin and whatnot, but too much can become jarring and immersionbreaking. Particularly easy to happen with boss characters. This is an unfortunate side-effect of having a RPG style character progression, and is related to combat system also. Being one-shotted is un-fun, and enemies have to pose a threat, but emptying entire clips for no effect breaks the immersion, unless the target is like a tank. Perhaps an answer might be to have extra durability act like armor, that gets removed as character is shot at. Ie. Its of limited supply rather than a flat -% off of all incoming damage. Then it might need to be fixed/repaired afterwards.
3. Voice actors being bland
Voice actors can make or break a game imo. They are rarely blamed for it, but poor voiceacting can make a video RPG uninteresting. I believe hefty amount of AC:Odyssey's awesomeness is behind Kassandra's voice actor, who with small nuances puts personality into everything the character says. On the other hand, Adam Jensen's monotone grunting with hoarse voice fails to impress me. If you can choose the gender of the main character, you at least get two shots at success. Chances are that one of the two voice actors doesn't suck.
4. Character not feeling special enough
In Deus Ex: MD, practically every passer-by has cybernetics. This in my opinion undermines how 'special' Adam Jensen's own cybernetics are. If everyone is like Jensen, whats the point? It's also immersion breaking when you start to question why did those people get cybernetics in the first place? For cyberpunk protagonists, usually something happened to their body that forced a synthetic body to save them from dying (Robocop, Adam Jensen). But why would a normal 8-to-5 person get invasive body surgery? Some stuff like datajacks are believable, but not limb replacement.. In Cyberpunk 2077 the ones who have cybernetics probably have it in order to be more combat-worthy, and thats fine.
5. Too much railroading.
I think open-world, multiple story choice ARPGs are the ultimate game. They are also super difficult to pull off successfully. I hope CDPR delivers in this sense. One thing that easily gets let by the wayside is the story, and whether it has branches. I love the idea of character choices making a difference in the world, but obviously the amount of resources invested for something that player may not even utilize can grow exponentially. One can still hope.
Of I think the character will have a level. We can see at least in the demo that there are levels for Street Cred. Also it's been confirmed there is traditional XP ... so I would assume (there's that word) it means levels too. There was a
Twitter Post Regarding Stats & Skills that indicated stats would be impacted by levels (and cyber-ware), skills by successfully performing actions, and perks which can be obtained with either XP or Street Cred.
Street cred afaik is like reputation, it opens up new contacts and missions to you?
(an idea about street cred). This would be supercool and not something thats common in video RPGs.