Actually the quote in the article is "To all of you asking - you’ll have many opportunities to see your character. It’s going to be First Person RPG, not a FPS." https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-is-an-fps/ That is not "RPG comes first."They did that exactly in answer to the "Cyberpunk is a FPS"
And yeah, because it's not a FPS, which is a game fully centered around gun and other weapon-based combat in a first person perspective. Between FPS and RPG, it's definitely an RPG first with some FPS elements.
That same article did some heavy hedging on the use of the term FPS:
It is somewhat a semantic dispute—'FPS' can describe a certain style of game (eg, Wolfenstein), or literally mean 'you shoot from a first-person view.' The latter is absolutely the case, and what we mean. There are lots of guns, there's cover, sliding, wall-runs, all the sorts of things we've seen in recent first-person shooters like Titanfall 2. At the same time, it is open world with the storytelling, dialogue, exploration, and progression associated with RPGs, as opposed to the linear progression sometimes associated with FPSes (but that has not defined them for a long time).
The distinction between genres is so blurred, with many 'shooters' having adopted RPG elements, and RPGs likewise taking on action game traits, that the important thing to take away is not so much any genre categorization, but the simple fact that you'll be running, taking cover, aiming, and shooting in a first-person view. That's not everyone's cup of tea, though we are very excited about what we've seen.
You cant always trust what you see paraphrased in wiki.