The phantom liberty expansion is out now, and something to note is just how many roads and cars are in the game considering... well... how are they still burning fossil fuels in 2077?
Something interesting about it is how the game now reads like Grand Theft Auto in the dystopian future. Cars exist so you must be able to drive and shoot out of them and there must be cops and there must be traffic and... all of that is sort of meaningless in that universe. So much of the marketing is set around cars, but if they got rid of the cars, if cars weren't there, then maybe they would have put more effort into the other systems.
Maybe the broken systems just wouldn't need to be built, because so many of them are shoehorned in around cars.
EDIT: wanted to address the comments here as they are all very similarly themed:
I am not talking about the fiction, I am talking about the game design. Yes it's a dystopia but that's not why the game is buggy or boring. Having cars in the fiction means the game must add mechanics to drive and get new cars and vehicular combat. Once there's so much car stuff, the game feels like GTA, which prompts people to make comparisons, which means CDPR needs even more GTA-like mechanics. That's time which could have gone into more RPG mechanics, better missions, etc.
The only time I was talking about the fiction was in reference to how much would cost to own a car, including roads and so on. Why isn't every road pay per use? Why isn't biofuel like $20 a litre? But that would be oppressive to drive in, and because it's a power fantasy, all of that goes by the wayside.
Overall my point was that just as cars dominate the city scape of the present, so they dominate the game design of everything where cars are present.
In the case of CP, as it was already pointed out by other commenters: car culture is firmly rooted in the world building.
However, imagining av alternative world without cars could be interesting as well. How would that transform Night City? How would you make moment-to-moment movement and exploration fun and engaging in a game with big city distances, bit with no cars?
I really think the gameplay of most futuristic or present day city settings really suffers because of this. Driving around is pretty boring, especially on a grid, and it isolates you from the environment just like IRL. Your probably arent going to stop your car and get out to check some small detail, but you would take a look if on foot. Games should lean into Parkour and other movement where you can stop fairly easily. Successful games already tend to lean away from driving unless it's the core mechanic, imagine how bad mirrors edge would be with cars, and notice how in fortnite most players gravitate to whatever non-car mechanic is gimmick of the month and rarely use the in world cars.
I think it would really cool if cp77 had something that launched you into the air and let you dive bomb an area far away.
Totally! It's actually kinda surprising to see Cyberpunk with no true hoverboards, for example.
Also, one game that seemed to have done it right, was Infamous for PS3. You could ride the power lines, glide, zip around the city - it was really fun without really losing much on the exploration side
There’s already dash, crouch dash, and air dash. Allow us to modify our cyberwear so we can increase sprint speed and double dash and we’re already more than halfway there.