I didn't even bother paying attention to the hype - they really sold the game on their "advanced" AI?
I know their marketing words of how "the streets of Night City would be alive everywhere you went" (which is total BS), but not any specifics.

The AI in Cyberpunk 2077 reminds me of the zombie-AI in Dying Light after I've used a trainer and ticked the box that removes their aggression. You get a bunch of zombies that shambles and stumbles along, mumbles and grumbles whenever you come near them, and otherwise aren't a danger other than being in your way - THAT is the general pedestrian AI of CP77.

If that's indeed their idea of "advanced" anything, then I'd say CDPR is an abbreviated anagram of Cannot Dictionary Process Reading.

Oh, and if you're actually using a harddrive for this and not an SSD, then - in the nicest way possible - masochism won't be a long step to take. ^^
I installed CP77 from scratch on a harddrive for a colleague, including all patches up to 1.12, and it took me like 3 hours. Something that took like 45 minutes on my NVMe SSD.

And btw., on a 600 TBW SSD (TeraBytes Written) like Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB or 960 Pro 512 GB, you can write like 1,75 TB every single day for a year before it's worn out. As a middle-road power user I write about 20 GB every day. And the software I used once to check one of my Intel SSDs said it'd last me 57 years with current usage.

So if you're using harddrives to store games on, get yourself an SSD - pronto! Your load times will thank you for it. :)

Also fun to read, pal. I got back to check the improvements of the post. Not half bad. Thanks for sharing.

I have been thinking of either a hacker or a nomad (skilled in physical tinkering, can really take care of anything with wheels) for a first playthrough...

A hacker is often my first choice for cyberpunkish games, because of Neuromancer (although other classes might be very fun as well, and in practice the hacking part is not always really fun). Could really be a corpo or a street kid (à la Count Zero). A street kid is expected to excel in streetwise (is anything like there in the skill trees? something that helps with talking/fast talking/conversations?)

A nomad, since RPing one in the tabletop Cyberpunk RPG was loads of fun.

Harddrive can apply to both the old magnetic ones and SSD's.

Just because something can withstand some beating, doesn't mean you should be careless and start beating it a little just for fun. Corruption may, and does happen all the time, be it software or hardware.

And in many cases it wouldn't even matter if you had an SSD - it could still take many hours.

Worst part of the game is that only 2% of anything you do affect the story, some dialogues are bad, and yes, everything else in the game has been beaten by titles much much older. We're in 2021 and I don't want to see heavily scripted scenes everywhere like I was playing a PS1 game... so, calling it an RPG is a misnomer.

First off, the game does not let you "take care of anything with wheels" pretty much at all. There's no maintenance to be done, no fuel to be concerned about, and if you crash it or bash it (as you inevitably will, I guarantee it ^^), you just fast travel somewhere else, call your vehicle back and it arrives at your feet show-room fresh (unless it just drives by you and off into infinity, even the off-road vehicles, because you're standing too far off-road...).

Seriously, only way to repair any cosmetic damage (and any vehicle will perform 100 % until it blows up, though you will stop driving and get out automatically if it comes to that point, like coming under weapons fire for too long) is to either fast travel away or blow it up on purpose to get a "new one" (will cost you 100 Eddies).

There apparently is a modified version of a quest bike (tell Delamain to send Jackie to his mother if you want it), unique to the Nomad path. I have hacked myself to it, but I couldn't tell any difference from the regular version. Nomads also get a different version of a couple other cars, including my favourite (anything that can spin all 4 wheels from a standing start get a thumbs-up from me!).

And as for cars in general, any car you can purchase comes in a preselected colour - and there are no stickers or custom paint jobs or any modifcations you can do to them anywhere. Hope's on some customizing DLCs eventually, because there are cars you can steal (but not keep) that are in different colours, and one even comes as a wicked-looking convertible! Definitely a missed opportunity there by CDPR.

But the game apparently knew my feelings on one of them - when I went to pick up a middle-range executive car...in pink. 2 other cars in the parking lot randomly blew up right behind me as I walked up to it. Pretty much what I would want to do too if I learned I had just bought a pink car...

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As for fast talking / smooth talking, certain levels invested in Cool gives stat specific reply options (got a Yin/Yang symbol next to it when you get the option - a Wrench for Tech ability, an Aperture for Reflexes, a Fist for Body and Five vertical lines for Intelligence), but nothing exclusively unique to a certain skill tree. All of the skill trees (and life paths) got unique reply options attached to them at various points of the game.

yep that's the beauty of it!

I would NEVER disassemble Lizzie on purpose! Defender, though, total accident. I was carrying a LOT of guns at the time and just whipped through. I'm still carrying Kongou, Lizzie, Chaos and Dying Night, matter of fact.

Physics were a bit of an issue here and there for me pre-1.2, but I haven't noticed much post. Still a lot of visual glitches, and reports of quest breaking bugs are coming in bit by bit, with a few claims that 1.2 broke other things, but I can't attest to that because I haven't experienced it. The performance change IS noticeable, along with quicker loading and streaming times, except for that aforementioned weird occasional stream hiccup where you get stuck with the placeholder texture that looks straight from 1995 3D before the right textures correctly stream in. I've noticed NPCs spawning in here and there as well, so I'd say they still have some work to do in that area.

The parkour seems a bit more responsive, as I have yet to mod my legs for double or charge jumps, and I've managed to find ways to edge climb up buildings no problem.

As for the trips, man, I always get corny with it before I shoot them and tell 'em they've been trippin' like a proper 80s flick one liner before I rigourously apply Lizzie to their faces. (Or Cottonmouth, depending on the situation.)

Got'cha - you had me worried there for a moment, possibly losing Lizzie that way. :)
I actually try to avoid using Lizzie too much as it drains all my ammo away so damn fast. ^^
But it got nothing on when my Crusher shotgun glitched out, and had a listed - and effective - DPS of 63.077... Emptied the 12-shot magazine in about 1 second.

Say, you wouldn't happen to have Doom-Doom (Dum-Dums revolver)? From what I have been able to gather, you can either get Doom-Doom (way later in the game) OR Chaos AND Sir John Phallustiff (also way later in the game) in a single playthrough (or just Chaos, which is made as the easiest quest path to end up with).

Almost ironic that none of the weapons you mentioned can be placed on V's showroom wall in her apartment - whereas Skippy, a gun the game wants you give away, can be placed there. I have managed to collect all 18 of them (19, including Adam Smasher's legendary iconic Ba Xing Chong L-69 Zhuo smart shotgun - *phew*, that name is a handful! - though it doesn't have its own predefined slot).

I made some screenshots showing every icon, with name and wall slot (at the time I hadn't obtained Archangel yet, and didn't know the specifics on Smasher's gun). See attachments.

I got Chaos on my first run, and - after 7 15-minute attempts - managed to activate the quest to obtain Sir John on the current run. I agree on Cottonmouth, but there's just something about the sound Sir John can make when it hits the spot... Well, that and the fact running around clubbing people with a giant dildo is just so far out there, it just have to bring a smile to your face. ^^

Also saddened that Jackie could dual-wield his pistols, but V cannot - another missed opportunity by CDPR, to exclusively make Jackie's La Chingona Doradas dual-wieldable (is that even a word?).

Interesting what you say on quicker loading times - if the GoG installer can allow for skipping the intros like Steam already can, that'd be great. Yes, I get the first-time warnings about seizures, but I know I'm not susceptible, and I don't need a reminder everytime I launch the game. How long does it take from pressing the .exe till you're ingame (not just the menu) now, compared to before?

I tested on my system just now, and from default launch (no intro skipping mods) it took pretty much exactly 45 seconds. Despite all of Cyberpunks technical shortcomings, I'd say it really does launch fast for a 2020 game.

Apparently I came across this weird thing from the patch that said otherwise

The 1.2 patch took me 12 minutes and 23 seconds to install.
GoG offline patch on an internal HDD (storage), OS and Games both separate M.2 NVMe SSDs.

Patch completed without any issue.

I wonder how Marcin Iwiński's branching storyline is going to play out? lol

3 crashes so far, nothing all to serious though since i was able to commence play from the moment the crash burned through the software..... Men, What a story they are trying to tell! top notch cyberpunk there for you m8y