I typically don't write negative reviews but I was so disappointed in this expansion I had to share my thoughts. The writing, narrative and gameplay of this expansion are garbage. The game looks great, some voice acting is pretty good, but the overall story telling and what the game actually has you doing in-between dialogues is not good or fun.
There is an immediate shift in mission design and tone upon reaching the DLC zone. The whole narrative pov doesn't make sense. Are the npcs talking to "we the player", who knows about future events in the story or is it "V the street kid with Keneau Reeves in his head"? The characters seems to constantly be breaking the forth wall and speaking to the player with knowledge that the character V wouldn't have any way of knowing and this makes it very difficult to get invested at all in what is happening and I felt like a passive observer of a bad tv show, not an active participant in an immersive story and world.
To start, a mysterious caller tells you "The president is in danger"... uh ok. Aren't I a steetkid from Night City who has days left to live? Why would I remotely care about the president of this violent, evil, corpo-hellscape of a dystopia I live in? Oh, they are actually a really nice president in this world and not corrupt or cruel and her omni-present ai assistant somehow knew I had a special chip in my head and that only I can help save her... ok... Then 3 minutes later the mystery voice is telling me "Hurry to that ladder V, the yellow one over there, I know you can do this." WTF game am I playing?! The campaigns in a CoD are more original than this and the vibes are completely sanitized and weak. Vocal coaching the player from yellow paint marker to yellow paint marker is the laziest type of game design and completely out of tone of the world of Cyberpunk 2077 too. Just say "Go to there" or "Go to this person" and then let me figure it out like a puzzle using all my cyber enhancements, don't give me 20 progress updates and tell me in a cringe manner how well I'm climbing in a game supposed to be set in a unforgiving gritty world. Anytime you are given freedom you can just sprint and dodge past all the meaningless enemies to trigger the next scripted moment that will reset all of the npc's, unless you are forced into a scripted gunfight you will have to kill everything or a forced stealth part that ultimately devolves into you kill everything. the stakes feel meaningless with checkpoints every 30 seconds and your actions in the world mean nothing and neither do the dialogue options, which gives the game no immersion.
I'll keep playing and update if things change but I was super shocked and let down by this DLC and the quality of the writing and mission design.
