I'm actually very much in
favour of stories breaking "rules" - and I'll absolutely enjoy it more when they can pull it off. The Fountain is one of the
most unconventional and unpredictable movies I've ever seen and is my all-time favourite. In fact, I think most of my favourite stories break the rules in one form or another. So the idea that I think stories must "strictly be a certain way" isn't true
at all. CP2077 is one of my favourites and it breaks conventions in a number of ways that I absolutely love. I love that I can play as a trans character for instance. And actually, it's because I enjoy CP so much, that I have such strong criticisms. In any case, I'm not saying, "this is wrong storytelling!"; I'm saying, "this aspect of the story doesn't work for me and here are the reasons why." And like I said earlier, I think writers are well within their rights to write whatever they want, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work for me (and I'm certainly not trying to act like if it doesn't that it can't work for you). That being said, I don't think CP is trying to be unconventional from a story point of view - it's got a pretty familiar structure like a lot of action adventure games. I also don't think that CP is trying to be structured like a Shakespearean tragedy like, say, Romeo and Juliet, which is deliberately building towards a tragedy in order to understand why it happened. I just didn't get the sense CP was trying to do that either. If other people did, then fair enough
I think I hear what you and LeKill3rFou are saying about CP77's themes - the little guy vs the big man, helplessness, failure, struggle in the face of adversity - that sort of thing... But, to be fair, you could say the exact the same about LOTR
REGARDLESS
, I was never claiming "LOTR was done like this, so CP needs to be family friendly!". LOTR was just an example, I could've just as easily cited Nolan's Batman for instance. I was just drawing attention to the way those stories are structured and how they're similarly building up to a well defined goal. Now, I can understand that "6 months" is meant as a plot twist i.e. you expect that V's life is going to be saved, that's the climax it's building up to, that's the touchdown, but -plot twist- you've only got 6 months. I get that, and I think that's fine if you then
do something with that plot twist (e.g. 6th Sense dealt with its twist at the end, which was a famously unconventional thing that worked
brilliantly). But In CP, that twist isn't really dealt with - the 6 month thing is just sort of left open and hanging there (with the implication that she's still looking for a solution, whether it's the Nomad or Casino endings). Which is fine with me if the plan is to continue that story and bring closure there - if they don't I'll be really disappointed. So... time will tell