There’s such a thing as “presence” in some games. Earlier Far Cry games had it, and Metro trilogy, and newer Resident Evil games. Cyberpunk has it too. It’s in the small details: how NPCs look at you, how your character places a hand over his eyes to shield them from a bright light, or puts one leg on the other when he sits.
Storywise, it’s also very convincing. You spend a few hours of real time doing jobs with Jackie before he’s killed. Compare that to Far Cry 6, where your “childhood friends” are killed 5 minutes in, and as a player you have absolutely no connection to them.
Or how V is not the chosen: when the jobs goes south, Jackie plugs the chip into his brain, and only because he was carrying the case, and just before his death you transfer the data to your brain.
The role system is interesting: you have attributes and perks, which you level as you gain experience, but you also have passive skills, that level up as you use them.
Weapons are strangely abundant. I’m used to not being able to pick anything but trash from dead enemies, but here, while sometimes they are broken, I assembled an entire arsenal just a few hours in.
Even five years in, the game is far from perfect. It crashed on me once already, and I’ve only been playing it for 2 hours.
At one point, I got a side mission to “rescue Brick”, although I’m not sure who’s that, which I failed, because I couldn’t find where should I rescue him from. When I reloaded, I didn’t get that mission anymore.
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