The thing is, there are TONS of side quests but the way the story is designed you feel a sense of urgency and ignoring it breaks that feeling and it just doesn't work that well. And of course, none of the endings allow you to play after the completion of the main story.My biggest gripe with the story that it doesn't allow you to be just V, a mercenary. There are two or three missions while most of the world is locked down, and by the time the world opens up, it all goes to hell and the narrative becomes a rush against time, and revolving around Silvertongue.
That's why on my second playthrough I completely ignored the main story and had to pretend it's not there to be able to focus on side missions.The thing is, there are TONS of side quests but the way the story is designed you feel a sense of urgency and ignoring it breaks that feeling and it just doesn't work that well. And of course, none of the endings allow you to play after the completion of the main story.
It really could have been designed a lot better.
All of that is understandable. That being said, there are a couple of endings that can be perceived as being somewhat hopeful, but its not really stated one way or another. There is also a side mission hinting at a possible cure for V's condition which is furthered in the "secret" ending. But your right. Most of the endings are pretty bleak or are at least perceivable that way.That's why on my second playthrough I completely ignored the main story and had to pretend it's not there to be able to focus on side missions.
Originally the game wasn't supposed to be this silverhand heavy. The character didn't appear until mid game, but when they hired Keanu for the role they completely kicked the already established arc to the curb so they can have the reveal of their big star as close to the beginning of the game as possible.
To me the worst part of the game is Silverhand's character and the downer endings. It's cool to have one or two bad endings in an RPG, but in this game all endings feel like a defeat. Which completely killed my willingness to play the main story multiple times.
That's interesting to note. Witcher 3 had a similar, but different, technique in that during different parts the story switches over to Ciri. Those segments are short but only get unlocked after certain milestones have been reached.The thing is, Cyberpunk 2077's story is essentially split up into two different parts. You have V's story and Johnny Silverhand's story. They do tie together, but they are progressed separately with the latter story not really being playable until after all but the last mission for V is done.