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The core narrative is broken. WARNING SPOILERS!!!! /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n /n The whole Johnny schtick is an utter disgrace to RPG design, this isn't an RPG anymore it's a GTA5 wanna-be. The prolog is great it works flawlessly the combat in it is also good which is suspect is because it's heavily scripted. How this should've worked out is that the whole story of the chippening and Joh…
On one hand, I totally agree with you: your suggestions would make for a far more mechanically and morally interesting game, and it's a shame that the promise set out during the first two hours of the game doesn't really pan out in the end. On the other hand, I still have not felt this immersed in a game world and character stories since... well, since maybe The Witcher 3, and before that Planescape: Torment and Terr…
This game is far more buggy than say Mass Effect Andromeda that was shat on by everyone for how buggy and well lame it was.
As for the RPG elements they are essentially non existent there is absolutely no impact to your choices, and most importantly you have no way of actually dealing with Johnny or anything else the way you want it it all ends up the same. There is absolutely no reputation factor here, street cred might as well be called XP since it's the same thing there should've been actual gameplay mechanic in which the way you deal with situations and missions actually impacts your street cred after a bunch of missions you would get a reputation say bully, maniac, white knight, hassler etc. that would change how characters react to you and the options you get or do not get in future situations.
This wouldn't be hard to actually implement but CDPR seemed to have dropped all RPG elements from the game which is ironically in line with some of the Glassdoor reviews from a couple of years ago: https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-CD-PROJEKT...
As for the immersion I personally don't get it, driving just feels terrible (even with mods), there is no easy way to get new vehicles other than buying them, there is no vehicle customization and oh boy don't let me start on gear customization... I'm ok with the entire alt/punk look of the game but seriously some of the gear is just stupid I'm not kidding when I say I'm wearing a bathroom, a spiked braw, a gas mask, a pink bunny hat, diaper and loafers because of stats that to me is a major immersion breaker when your character is forced to look like that because of the sandbox.
The game deserves most of the negative reviews it got for being released as a buggy mess, it doesn't deserve the reviews of OMG they have dildos in shops and prostitutes. But this game cost a fortune to develop it had a budget of more than $300M that's more than GTA 5, it had constant delays and it still released with so many bugs that other than management saying fuck it we don't care about our reputation there is no other explanation to why it was released at this time.
Even if CDPR wouldn't have actually decided to make an RPG out of it but released it as a polished product there would be no questions that this game would've been received we a lot of praise. The issue is that mechanically it is weak in so many gameplay aspects like crafting and combat, it's buggy as hell and it doesn't have really interesting narrative mechanics to compensate for those flaws. TW1 was a horrible horrible mess when it was released, in fact without player mods especially those that change the combat it's still a poor experience but the story was great and you actually had to make good decision despite the limitations of both the engine and the studio at the time. TW2 was them basically trying to make a AAA game for the first time and almost nailing it, they had to make a lot of sacrifices to get it to run on consoles which is why it had about as much of a scope area wise as TW1 AKA Swamp and Back Again (with a detour to the fields of lag). TW3 was, well something else the combat still wasn't that great without balance mods but the overall combat mechanics were deep and that is by a large part thanks to it's setting where you can have more "boss fights" than in a game like CP2077.
The enemies in CP2077 are boring because they are human there is so much you can get by making them into bullet sponges without having the same issues as games like The Division have where you can dump 5 whole box magazines of a light machine gun into someone's face without them dying. Honestly CDPR should've added many more bots and cyborgs into the game and gave them much bigger abilities it would make encounters more interesting while not breaking the immersion of you dumping 600 rounds into someone and only taking 30% of their health bar down.
I can only hope someone at CDPR is still left that appreciates these ideas and has them too and the CDPR will 2-3 years down the line release an enhanced edition of the game, sadly because they've decided to have Keanu play Johnny it will make things harder because adding narrative mechanics would likely require quite a few voice over changes, but maybe they'll be able to deepfake it by then who knows...