To be fair, greed-fueled self-fulfilling destruction is a huge staple of the cyberpunk genre.
...maybe I'm being unfair on the writers because perhaps their intention was to make some 'dark' ending for V no matter what. However if that's the case then really he's not the MC of this cyberpunk universe he's just some generic NPC...
How does that make V not the MC? You can still be the protagonist and get screwed over.
I feel like you're being pretty nitpicky here, and expecting things that weren't the main point. I didn't pay too much attention to all the marketing, and while role playing was an element, I always thought of Cyberpunk 2077 as 'cyberpunk GTA, with shiny graphics, and roleplaying elements.' Yeah, they claimed an immersive world, and it does seem like they fell short of their promises, but I wouldn't really blame the writing specifically for that.
Branching narratives and true 'choices matter' games can be pretty tricky to pull off. I don't have too much of an issue with these games, although some do it worse than others (you mentioned Mass Effect 3 which was pretty legendary in its issues there), but for the most part 'choices matter' doesn't make it that high up the list for my issues with modern games.
Video games in general on built on illusion, of course some choices are going to be somewhat smoke and mirrors. The other issue is, within a single playthrough it often feels fine, and I do think that should be the primary design goal.
Main Rant: If writers want to start killing off the protagonists of game stories, then they should have the balls to make new protagonists to continue the story overall rather than milking the same story endlessly that just isn't that interesting.
If this is about Phantom Liberty, they've said that's their first and last 2077 DLC. Whether or not they stick to that remains to be seen, but considering I think they're moving to a new engine going forward, they don't seem to want to do too much with 2077.
We'll see if 'Cyberpunk 2' or whatever introduces a new main character, or shoves V back in.
To posit a scenario that I would have written for a story like this. I would have given the player an entire option to ditch the chip and not insert it into your brain. That would have been really interesting...
But that's a core point of the whole thing and, as someone else has mentioned, there were reasons for it. Not every game is supposed to be some open-ended, everything is on the table thing. You want good writing, but then you also want huge branches, which just makes everything harder to manage. Nothing wrong with tighter narratives and specific immutable story elements.
In conclusion, I get what you're saying, and in some instances the frustration is warranted, but I think you're asking for things that were never intended anyway, and would sometimes be wholly impractical.
To be fair, greed-fueled self-fulfilling destruction is a huge staple of the cyberpunk genre.
How does that make V not the MC? You can still be the protagonist and get screwed over.
I feel like you're being pretty nitpicky here, and expecting things that weren't the main point. I didn't pay too much attention to all the marketing, and while role playing was an element, I always thought of Cyberpunk 2077 as 'cyberpunk GTA, with shiny graphics, and roleplaying elements.' Yeah, they claimed an immersive world, and it does seem like they fell short of their promises, but I wouldn't really blame the writing specifically for that.
Branching narratives and true 'choices matter' games can be pretty tricky to pull off. I don't have too much of an issue with these games, although some do it worse than others (you mentioned Mass Effect 3 which was pretty legendary in its issues there), but for the most part 'choices matter' doesn't make it that high up the list for my issues with modern games.
Video games in general on built on illusion, of course some choices are going to be somewhat smoke and mirrors. The other issue is, within a single playthrough it often feels fine, and I do think that should be the primary design goal.
If this is about Phantom Liberty, they've said that's their first and last 2077 DLC. Whether or not they stick to that remains to be seen, but considering I think they're moving to a new engine going forward, they don't seem to want to do too much with 2077.
We'll see if 'Cyberpunk 2' or whatever introduces a new main character, or shoves V back in.
But that's a core point of the whole thing and, as someone else has mentioned, there were reasons for it. Not every game is supposed to be some open-ended, everything is on the table thing. You want good writing, but then you also want huge branches, which just makes everything harder to manage. Nothing wrong with tighter narratives and specific immutable story elements.
In conclusion, I get what you're saying, and in some instances the frustration is warranted, but I think you're asking for things that were never intended anyway, and would sometimes be wholly impractical.