I assure you, it's not just GTA5 that has a better Pedestrian system than Cyberpunk; and on a side note GTA5 at release had Pedestrians doing more stuff in general. Its crowd / pedestrian system didn't get to the point where it's at after 10 years of polish. In fact I can recall random events happening in GTA3 on the PS2, they simply added more over the following titles. In the 'original' ones (the GTA3 series) I believe it was San Andreas that contained the highest variation of random events (Vice City wasn't bad either). Even in GTA3 if there's a random car accident and there's a victim on the ground you'll see an ambulance arriving on the scene and the Paramedics come out of the vehicle and run toward the victim.
After that sure, it can be a domino effect and sometimes it's just ridiculous or funny. An example such as the Paramedics themselves getting hit by another car, then their ambulance exploding and then fire fighters coming in and so on; but that part is unique to GTA and it's the 'charm' of the series to some degree; again the point remains that things, some things happen in the game if you just wait at a street intersection for just 10 minutes you're bound to see something random happen. Then GTA4 did the same, just more of it, in fact there's some things that Peds / Police officers / Paramedics do in GTA4 that they don't do anymore in GTA5. There was a comparison video on YouTube someone made to that regard some time ago, showing how GTA5 was 'dumbed down' compared to GTA4.
But the main point being that Cyberpunk 2077's mindless drone population behaving in a paralyzingly boring and orderly fashion is completely inexcusable. Not only does it not fit Night City and Mike Pondsmith's vision of his universe, but it actually IS false advertising. If I put it this way: what if the developers right from the start of the development had told us "By the way, sure, we're building a huge city and visually it's going to be the most accurate representation ever made of a Cyberpunk setting in the history of video gaming; but the city's population is going to be a bunch of mindless walking drones, because if you guys think we're going to spend time actually pumping life into them you're out of your mind, fuck that shit!", would the hype and anticipation for it been this high?
So yeah, I'm extremely disappointed by CDPR, considering this was done by an experienced studio, one that oh so many already had been praising loud and clear since The Witcher 3 (and many since Witcher 2 as well); about how they are the new BioWare of our generation and then some, about how everything they've done since Witcher 2 (and mostly TW3) is pure gold. That same dev studio that clearly disposes of a FUCK ton of money to work on the damn thing for nearly EIGHT years of their life (just... think about this, it wasn't an Indie studio with just 20 guys who could only afford to work on it without any more income for one or maybe two years max). And we end up with a crowd system that is inferior to something released on the PlayStation 2? I'm seeing red when I think about this. I cannot FATHOM what happened during the making of this game in regard to this part of it. WHO the hell in the studio supervised this?! WHO thought that this system, crude as it is, was fine?!
I don't know how many of you here genuinely remember this, but I'll refresh minds just in case. We've been told all the way back two and a half years ago during E3 2018 that Cyberpunk 2077 was - already back then - CONTENT COMPLETE, and that the only things left to do were basically polishing and bugs fixing. Then at E3 2019, they said the same thing BUT... oh, magic, they announce a new District, the Badlands - which was NOT ever spoken of one year prior, period. Yes, SIX Districts was the final and constant word for the longest time. So between sometime in 2018 (after E3) and the following year's E3, they decided to work on a new District, so the game was not "content complete". But guess what? They said the exact same thing indeed during E3 2019; they 'assured' us once more that the game was content complete. Then they announced there that they felt very confident that they could release it for April 2020.
Obviously, all of it was a pure and simple lie to calm the crowd; while internally they were still working on it because, no shit, it was not 'complete'. VERY far from that.
So anyway, I know that all this is terrible to see. That yet another studio out there fucks it up, and that the beloved CDPR is a new victim of ridicule. But there's REASONS for this and they are very valid, and understandable. Just HOW, how is this possible? $200+ million budget, some of the best artists in the industry, and a 'different' studio mentality, one that prioritizes quality over quantity and isn't afraid to 'delay until it's done', and we end up with... THIS? And I feel so very bad for the console version owners out there whom are experiencing some of the big glitches and issues that have been shown and reported (most of which aren't found in the PC version for most). Were CDPR the victim of their ambitions for this one? Or did something somewhere just went wrong in the management and production department? Were the artists and coders properly communicated the vision of Mike Pondsmith's world?
If we can say that a game was 'rushed out' after being worked on for close to eight years, then I truly believe there's simply something wrong in this industry. But it truly is the case and I cannot believe it. This game was not complete, was barely tested (if at all) and STILL needed at least 1 or maybe 2 years of work to be released. This is remarkably sad.