This is mainly a thread to rant about Cyberpunk story spoilers so if you're actually interested in this story don't bother looking at this thread. Even then though I think it's fair to post a lot of fellow cynics here are pretty fed up of the state of RPG storywriting these days.
I feel like Cyberpunk 2077 is Mass Effect 3 all over again and even on steam people are making comparisons to what Baldur's Gate 3 are doing with the story with Bioware. I took my own advice this time round and watched the no commentary gameplay and honestly yet again I was not impressed lol.
Even when you do your best to take the woke element out of the story, you quickly realise why they shove the woke elements of the games in so hard and it's to cover up the fact that ultimately the 'choices matter' marketing is pretty fraudulent in some cases. Allegedly Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't even have proper epilogues for the choices you make according to posters among other things though to be fair and not spread bullshit I don't know if they have plans to patch that in.
V's story is pretty self-fulfilling at the end of the day maybe or 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 who's going to die no matter what in this case and even the implied good endings seem to have him be miserable because he's a greedy fuck that wanted to have it all instead of live his life happily.
Perhaps I'm not giving the writers enough credit and this is supposed to be a social commentary on the consequences of greed in a cyberpunk universe however I don't think these woke writers are capable of that much subtlety. It feels like the choice matter games are all fake, at the end of the day you can't just say no and walk or fight out of a situation which would hugely impress me.
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, you could even make it the way more difficult option to survive through because of all the factions wanting you dead. However, you'd still have the chip generally on hand and you wouldn't need to worry about terminal illness. Carrying the chip around would be like having a live grenade in your pocket.
At the end of the day though it seems a lot of RPG writers don't want the PC having a happy ending or being all powerful for some bizarre reason. I'm going to always be checking for that shit now if I ever see an RPG pop up I like the look of and yes it does bother me a lot. Just another cautionary tail of don't buy a new game within a month of release.
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. Honestly fuck these people, if they want to go on strike I'll be thrilled, I could write better RPGs than they can and I realise that's very ballsy of me to post but I'm pretty confident in my writing skills. My only issue would be funding for voice actors but I wonder if I could make a multi-choice RPG with writing alone.
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.