First off, I'm only expressing such high expectations not because it's the standard but because it's what was kind of promised in the trailers and also because I care about the genre, CDPR, and their future games. It's one of the best games out there at the moment but not quite the game that was promised. This update focused on the core game mechanics and the story expansion. The core game mechanics are driving and stealth/fighting. However, the open world is still empty, it's not an immersive Cyberpunk world. The most crucial part of a big city is its transportation system. It's also part of the Witcher identity, giving you the challenge of how to travel and get to the destination. This game only has cars, no busses, no self driving cars, no unscripted Delamains, no usable metro/monorail, no trains, no unscripted flying shuttles. Transportation lacks verticality. NPC behavior isn't next gen either. There's no realistic crowd behavior. It's been improved with various updates, not only 2.0, but it's still mostly predictable, feels scripted. If you have such a big world, make the world itself an experience - beyond driving I mean. Some games focus on parkours. In this case, I would focus on the vibes, the atmosphere that Cyberpunk is supposed to convey. Make the travel itself an experience or a challenge. This city still feels too clean - not clean in terms of trash but in terms of visible poverty, heterogeneity of the dirt that such capitalism leaves in every corner. One old famous open world game had gang fights where the player could join, making the world basically reflect the player's actions and investment. The gangs of NC have barely any significance to the player's experience. What's more in update 2.0, the new traceability mechanic of hacks isn't really communicated well enough on how to avoid being traced or detected. There's one ultimate hack that isn't traceable but at the same time has reduced RAM cost only while being traced already, contradictory.
