This is actually not an exaggeration, I remember too well how NWN 2's alignment system often confused greed (asking for more money, or asking poor people for money) was the same thing as evil (which would have been refusing to help at all, but then again... really? 10 coins to free us... say no and you're evil for not putting your life on the line). Of course, in games with "alignment systems" it usually turns out that you can make the final good / bad choice regardless of your alignment. The worst, of course, is that the game allows a completely evil character to make good choices (usually because the player knows that the good choice gives better equipment).

Alignment systems in games usually feel gamey, not a restriction you place on your character to better build up your character... but something that gives you rewards or penalties which might have nothing to do with your character.

As it stands, I'm keeping my V as non-lethal as possible, not because the game rewards it, but because I view her as someone who knows the system is trash and spits you out. Throw an alignment system in there and what, should V's that go around blasting on people start growing horns? This is NC, the value of life is what you make of it.

Gamification. You used to have to start at a tavern to find quests, talk to people. Now open world games tend to be more "drive to this point to start a quest".

Ah, good point. I guess I take V as the protag they are rather than the insignificant bug they truly are to the denizens of Night City. I understand your perspective.
I forgot about NWN and NWN 2 XD Thanks for reminding me of them ; - ; But you're both right: the developers often choose what's considered 'evil', 'grey' or 'good': same as any game master irl and I seemed to have forgot the worst of the D&D games that made that system really weird. My b

This is going to sound a bit brutal, but here goes: Currently this game is an RPG in much the same way Diablo or Diablo 2 was. Obviously, the general problem with suggesting that the Diablos are role-playing games is that you're not really role-playing at all. You're going through a story on complete rails where you can do certain activities for certain rewards, but you can also skip them if you do not care. The only "character choice" that you really have is the choice of weapon you use to murder everything in your way.

The story of V is pretty much the same thing. The story is by and large on rails, and all the significant details will happen the same way regardless of what we do. The plot is strongly predetermined. The quests from fixers are predetermined. What we do or don't do to various gangs (and how we do it) will have zero impact on anything, and the game world takes no notice. We can murder more people than plague and cause major disturbances and not even get mentioned in the news. What "character choice" do we ultimately have? Romance options, visuals, and our choice of weapon used to murder everything in our way.

There is some illusion of a deep story, but nothing we do changes anything. Certain people live, certain people do not, and player choice has practically no impact on anything. We can't even build up relations with various named merchants because all merchants have largely the same inventory and they all have the same rates. Whether we get our chrome from our close friend Vik or some random clown that we just met has zero impact. There is an early quest to go shooting with a local gun dealer that we know, but does that quest change anything at all? It does not.

CDPR have stressed that this is not sci-fi GTA, but frankly it currently is precisely that. I like the game, but it is a story-telling action game with some character customization. It isn't even a bad RPG, because for that to be the case then it would need to actually let V's actions have an impact.