In the gamer spaces I've been before the launch, everyone have this "siege" mentality where they preemptively assumes that any kind of criticism must have come from "journos" and SJWs who wants to tear down the game for not conforming to an "agenda". Like the whole epilepsy thing where capital Gs lost their shit to a benign advisory.
Browsing the cyberpunk sub is a treat. still going to pirate it tho
Yeah, the writing is just inscrutable sometimes. Like the opening sequences have you at different positions with other characters, but after you wake up in the dump it all just snaps into the game. Like Delamain goes from a hired cab ride that's a look at the capitalist hellscape that is Night City ("I can't take you to a doctor, you already prepaid for a trip to the motel, I will dispose of your body though") to like your best friend when you wake up with Keanu with no explanation. Meanwhile basically every side character in Witcher had at least a small sidequest associated with learning about them or an entry in the codex or flavor text in a well designed area that usually could tell you a bit about the character just from the layout.
The Keanu thing had an explanation, it was just nonsensical. Like Keanu's character was put in the relic as a form of eternal punishment, but for some reason they gave him the nanotech and made it that he overrides the consciousness of whoever he's inserted into? Giving him a corporeal form and essentially immortality doesn't seem like what they had in mind. Although maybe later in the game they'll reveal that the scientist who vanished is on his side so I won't complain about that part yet.
And you make a good point with Delamain, they ruin their own valid critiques in order to start a fetch quest. Although the quest setup does contain its own criticism, i.e. that replacing workers with an AI carries its own risks.
The story feels like it was written by a dozen different people that weren't communicating with each other.