The very linear storyline kills it for me. I've tried three separate playthroughs using different dialogue options, etc. and aside from the opening sections and the ending mission there is not a whole lot of difference happening in this game. So much of this games interactions are hard-coded it is ridiculous. Even those police markers that pop-up on the minimap but not on the world map. I rolled past the exact same one in all three playthroughs and the damned thing was exactly the same scripted encounter every time. Even worse, you can roll past one of those, come back hours later and they are still involved in a shootout! This leads into my main fix for this game which is AI, AI, AI.
Anyone who uses the term AI when it comes to this game is not using the correct and current definition but rather the age old definition from decades old games which includes pre-scripted, pre-programmed actions and calls it AI (when in fact if it is anything would be considered low level AI, but I digress). This game doesn't need an AI revamp, because in my mind there is literally no real AI going on here. What it needs is to have all the hard-coded, scripted pieces gutted and allow for procedurally generated encounters, actual AI that makes its own decisions, not pre-scripted as such. The cars in this game utilize such basic pathing programming I'm surprised it's not a troll by the developers (including all the other failed features of this game). Making NPCs and cars appear and disappear within visual range is a close second and I include it because it seems to be caused by a limitation of not being able to support objects existence outside of a specific range (most likely a processing limitation brought on by PS4/Xbox support).
With that said, first things first... toss out PS4/Xbox support completely. Only support on PS5, PC and game-streaming platforms like Stadia. Now that we can move beyond last-gen tech limitations, reprogram a much better AI for NPCs, vehicles and even for things like wanted levels (which I'll expand on below).
As for the wanted system, scrap it entirely. This isn't GTA where it's just cops and robbers and there is such a better opportunity made available by the existence of all these different corpo factions, gangs and NCPD. Instead, create a favor/trust/respect system in which you gain or lose favor based on your in-game interactions with the different factions. Kill too many of a certain faction without a high respect value (based either on fear or trust) and they'll start coming after you or maybe even help defend you in certain situations if they favor you. Ripperdocs and other businesses that work for these goons and corps will ACTUALLY charge you more or flat out refuse service based on your favor level (instead of just saying they will in the empty dialogue you engage in with NPCs). Then, go ahead and increase in-game events between gangs and corpo factions and police, making them both procedurally generated and randomly occurring. As it currently stands all of these in-game events are completely scripted and have absolutely no tangible impact on gameplay or storyline which entirely destroys replays of the game.
Lastly, they really need to fix the difficulty system. The way they've set it up so that hit points and damage scale inappropriately is so lazy I can't believe they went that route. Of course these values should scale (properly) depending on what kind of equipment and cyberware your baddies are sporting but as it stands you can one shot a moderate threat enemy but need to put 50 bullets into a high threat individual (not the bosses specifically, I'm talking about just regular baddies that happen to be higher level than you.) Ultimately they should have done things like increase accuracy, tactics, teamwork and equipment for higher difficulties, instead of just making the baddies who are higher level near impossible to kill and able to kill you in single hit (even if they shoot you in the foot with a handgun). This is obviously apparent in how high-threat (red icon) enemies will be difficult to kill at say level 10 but with the same equipment and 10 more levels to your name they are now just as easily killed as the moderate threat enemies from 10 levels ago. This is a simple level-gating technique which breaks both immersion and proper difficulty scaling (versus artificial difficulty).
Oh and for Gods sake, if I see another baddie train all trip over a dead body on their way to kill me I'm going to cry. It was funny the first time but now it just reminds me of how garbage the "AI" is in this game.
