When Cyberpunk 2077 launched in 2020, many gamers felt like CD Projekt Red had just turned into Billy McFarland and sold them the Fyre Festival. Suffice it to say that the much-anticipated RPG was far from what the Polish game developer had built it up to be.
One of the most common criticisms leveled against the game is its linear plot. Even though the main storyline has different paths the player can take, CDPR could have done a lot more, a fact that CDPR's own Pawel Sasko supports. During a Q&A session on Twitch, one fan asked the Quest Director for Cyberpunk 2077 how he feels about players criticizing the gamer for being linear. Surprisingly, Sasko responded by saying that the players were "completely justified."
There are many things that happened. First of all, players expected more, they expected more because of how The Witcher 3 is built, and I think Cyberpunk has an insane amount of non-linearity, but I think expectations were higher. Second thing is, the expectations were specifically regarding big branches [in the narrative]. And again there are a bunch of big branches in Cyberpunk [...] but you are thinking about branches in a different manner.
To further expound on this, Sasko used the storyline of Goro Takemura, one of the fan-favorite characters in the game, whom you can save or let die.