I picked street kid and I still was confused by why the first part of the story was even necessary. The game could have taken a lesson from Kurt Vonnegut, who said to start a story as close to the end as possible.
I'm fairly certain they cut out a big chunk of the "lifepaths" to make the deadline. They don't really make sense as a mechanic at this point. You choose your previous life as one of the main choices but then all the paths merge together after 15 minutes? Just doesn't make sense from a game design or story perspective as a intentional choice.
There was certainly a lot cut, but already back in August interviews said that lifepaths wouldn't lead to completely different stories, but rather add a bit of a different flavor to the same over-arching story [0]:
> Your choice of lifepath will influence parts of your journey throughout Cyberpunk 2077, and each one will have an entirely different introduction to the same overarching story.
Tho it's a bit telling how one of the introduction quests is used as an example for how the lifepath choice makes a difference past the introduction.
In my 30 hours of playing I've had only one situation where my choice of Nomad seemed to make a difference; During a Gig at Kabuki market I could ask another Nomad there about the location of a person I was looking for.
Dunno how that quest would have played out otherwise without that.
> In my 30 hours of playing I've had only one situation where my choice of Nomad seemed to make a difference
A Corpo can get the drone easier by talking to the other corpo and seeing through their bullshit. There are also a few dialogue options based on higher stats, but I'm not sure how much they affect actual gameplay.
Paradoxically, we call "cut content" what was recorded but not wired into the game. Abandonded ideas are not cut content, same as content that is cleaned up from the release thoroughly and leave no trace of it.
Concerning the life paths, it's just a fancy rumor that something was cut there. True, the origin stories for life paths in CP2077 could be perhaps as long as in Dragon Age: Origins, but keeping them short and tight is also fine.
Why have them at all? Broadly speaking, they may nudge the player into a specific ending. A lot of players vocal on forums would dismiss anything but completing all endings just for the sake of it, but if we are discussing this seriously as a role-playing game, what goes into the decision which ending to pursue matters.
The lifepath system was a key feature in the TTRPG, obvious handled a lot differently in the TTRPG than video game where they have merged the Roles with the Lifepath.
I think people are disappointed as they were expecting DA:O levels of paths but got 15-20 mins and a few chat options (that don't add up to anything).
> The game could have taken a lesson from Kurt Vonnegut, who said to start a story as close to the end as possible.
I hadn't heard this maxim before, and I haven't played Cyberpunk, but this actually strikes me as something a lot of games do to a fault.
The original Mirror's Edge (a personal favorite) is a good example. That game's story has many obvious issues, from stilted characters to cutscenes that look like cheap flash animations, but I think it all could have worked a lot better if you spent the first few chapters as a normal Runner doing standard deliveries, before things started going to hell.
This would ground you in the world and provide a sense of what it's like to be a Runner, so you'd care about preserving their way of life later on. Games as a medium are uniquely good at this sort of thing, from the early days of Final Fantasy.
Compared to Witcher 3, they DID do this with 2077. 2077's main storyline is roughly 20 hours long, while the Witcher's is about 50 hours. CDPR is kind of known for their longer story driven stuff, and its my understanding they took that feedback in this game and made the primary quest shorter while expanding the optional quest branching.
Gamers unfortunately often make an argument equating number of hours to value for money. Padded open world games are the natural result. You trade a nice, tight narrative for an experience spread thin over more hours.
