As much as I talked about the Pedestrian / Crowd system of the game (and a couple of things in general related to the 'life', or lack thereof, within Night City), coming back from doing a number of Side and a few Main Quests I think it's time to get back to a reality check. Because there are parts of this game that shine incredibly bright - at least in my... opinion. The more I keep playing the game, the more it is indeed apparent that this game's "production quality" happens to be very inconsistent, or perhaps I should say that it's overall a fragmented / isolated thing.
There are systems / 'branches' of this game that really were worked on with care, and quality. And besides the actual City itself being one obvious part (by that I mean just the City itself, not the population; but just the infrastructure, its layout, how it was designed, and how it truly feels like an organic accumulation of City expansion over decades of growth), I have to say that most of the Main Quests (and most of the Side Quests, as well) were crafted very well (when they do work, of course; not including glitches when they do show up). I cannot count the number of details that as a gamer I could have argued something like "They really didn't have to animate this part, or make that character do this, it's too much details" (because yes ironically enough some people jump in "RPG-induced" games but still don't want to experience a story, to take time, to listen to characters, to read just in general and to basically 'role-play' their character and try to immerse themselves into a fictitious context). But there's numerous quests where, whenever a named / important character (or more than one within the scene) is involved (basically, scripted, story-driven quests) the game suddenly takes a turn for the very best; and that's where the CDPR touch comes in and gives you a nice hug, and you hear "It's ok, we're still there".
Some of those quests have an unprecedented amount of character motion / animation and expression. It plays out pretty much like a scene in a movie. In fact I do think that they motion-captured at least some of those important quests (and that's outside of using Mocap for the CGI trailers and promotional stuff). I don't want to spoil too much just in case. But I will give one example... or actually two of them.
1) Meeting Panam for the first time (at least as a Street Kid, not sure how it plays out with the other two Paths or if the quest when meeting her is 100% identical, and I don't want to know even if I do think it's the same but that's besides the main point here).
2) Meeting Judy at a... specific location for a specific portion of her own story-arc (it's vague and if you played it entirely it could mean a couple of instances but I'll keep it this way I want to avoid spoilers).
Just two vague and general examples here, but I could simply say this: most of the Side and Main quests (and of course, the Main Quests being the real show-stealers) are in line with that production quality I'm referring to. When those quests start, the way your character animates and how it feels organic and 'plausible' for the scene, how the other character(s) in the same scene interact with you or each others, how they themselves animate and make all sorts of gestures and use body language as they speak or make remarks, or show a specific emotion and their body language correspond to that emotion. The 'crafted acting' for the characters on-screen, is at times sincerely mind-blowing. The part of the Cyberpunk 2077 team that was in charge of the quests (especially the ones who made the Side and Main quests) have pushed their story-telling mastery from The Witcher 3 to some new levels here. And I DO absolutely hope that people realize, notice and spot it when that talent shows up on-screen as quests are played.
I could also simply put it this way: so far (in my Street Kid playthrough) I've had two particular quests that brought me 'to tears', one of which hit me a LOT harder than I would have expected it to even though I sort of saw it coming, what was about to happen. But when it happened... it's indeed the way the whole thing was crafted, with the background music, the camera angles, the animations, the character's expressions, body language... I mean I could just call it the cinematography at this point, which made all the difference. I actually had to stop a short moment and take a deep breath there because I was just way too immersed. That's absolutely that one quest I'll remember for a long time in ANY video game that happens to be story-driven with in-game, in-engine cutscenes. It was 100% world class story-telling and crafting in a video game at play.
It's moments like this that I am pleased do show up here and there, to help being reminded that I am playing a CDPR game. Because only a handful of other studios out there might have been able to pull that sort of crafting talent in their quests.
Strangely enough, when I play this game's Main Quests, I nearly forget that it is set within an 'open world', almost as if it wasn't even at play anymore, and that the game I was playing at that particular moment was in fact a very well designed story-based, scripted, more linear game. It feels at times almost as if Night City isn't even relevant anymore; where all the Pedestrian system complaints and the other things that make GTA5 seem like the clear winner suddenly takes a 180º turn in clear favor for this game and the development team. As long as you can sort of "forget" Night City, or rather Night City's "problems", and just pay attention to the quest lines, the story arcs, the characters and the quests' own self-contained production values, I could give this a 10 out of 10 without hesitation.
Which indeed counter-intuitively acts as a reminder that only specific portions (or "branches" of the big tree, as I like to imagine it) of this game were worked on more than others; that there is a lack of 'consistent quality' and only some things shine here and there, while others make it look like a pre-alpha Early Access Indie game on Steam (especially when looking at the PS4 / XBOX One versions... that stuff hurts a lot more than it should). I can see this game, over time, still being a 'love it or hate it' thing, with no middle ground appreciation possible. That's in large part because the "damage is done", and the 'Early Adopter' gets smacked in the face once more in this industry (there's too many examples to list, but it's the gist of it). You'll either always remember Cyberpunk 2077 as the way it 'was' at Launch even if it's 5 years down the road; or you'll manage to find the nooks and crannies that can shine and become part of what will feel like a minority who 'loved it anyway' and saw the game [possibly] grow in a positive way over several years of updates and support.
So yeah, NCPD cops spawn next to you, Pedestrians are mindless drones, you can't shoot car tires, there's no bullet impacts in the water, you can't preview clothing in a shop before purchasing something, we got a character creator with some very basic and lacking features, we can't put our vehicles in a garage and our Apartment is nearly useless throughout the game... BUT... my God are some of the quests, character animations, expressions, body language and overall story-telling moments really put things back on track at times.
I mean yeah, credits where due, I have to: the City itself (to reiterate, speaking about the City in and of itself here, not its inhabitants) and the Side / Main Quests truly are displaying the experienced talent that CDPR does have at its disposal. One could even say that CDPR simply wasn't 'qualified' for a fully-realized open world, BUT... would have made another undisputable Master Piece of a video game had they decided to turn this game into a more linear, focused, directed cinematic experience-styled game set in a smaller-scale City with less 'open world ambitions' in the veins of Mass Effect, or to perhaps use a more recent example; 2018's God of War. Because here's the thing here... before they actually announced that they had acquired the rights to make a video game out of the Cyberpunk universe (or specifically based off of the board game this game is made from with Mike Pondsmith's visions of that specific Cyberpunk world) how many here would have 'asked' or wished that such a potential game be set in a fully fleshed out open world?
I think that many of us would have been absolutely fine if right from the start they'd said something like "This will be on the same level of story-telling than The Witcher 3, but with more focus on characters, character development, story arcs and character interactions". You know, rather than trying to basically make what seemed to account for an actual lived-in, believable, extremely-detailed large scale open world with RPG elements to 'live your life' as the rest of that world does its own thing, all in a dynamic way without loading screens and... well you get it now yeah?
It was too ambitious, and they couldn't focus their talent on ALL of it. So the result is that only some fragmented sections of this game shine... but when it does, it feels like it's honestly a different game.