also what do the numbers mean next to the icons on the map? Keep seeing the number 2 pop up next to the icons like loot drop, side missions etc.
Took me a few minutes to work this out...the icons on the map tile to hexagons on a grid, as you zoom out multiple points of interest can end up inside the same tile and the number reflects how many points of interest are really in that tile. You can zoom in over a tile with a number in it and when you get close enough you'll see it become multiple points of interest. The map is honestly really awful, I hate it.
Now that's kind of disappointing as I'm sure CDPR did an interview where they specifically said they had designed "thousands" of unique NPCs each with a complex and realistic routine and bespoke voiced interactions with the player character. Perhaps content which simply got cut but an example of something which wasn't simply conjured by the hype/fans.
The more I read about the game the more I think the way to approach it to have the best experience is to treat it more like a linear game, or a sort of semi-open game such as the various Deus Ex titles. The city in those always felt bigger than it was but (due to presumably technical limitations mostly) you were usually hemmed in to a fairly restricted playable area of it... Given the lack of depth in the NPCs and "open world" aspects here it seems like it's perhaps best if you don't focus too hard on the more sandbox-y kind of GTA like gameplay and instead try and stick to the missions mostly.
This is exactly what I said a few pages back and after getting more back into the story I'd just reinforce this point of view. What I noticed playing last night is that the closer you stick to the story missions the more you end up in story hubs like bars/nightclubs which have a large amount of attention to detail paid to them, it looks like they're hand crafted. For example you end up in the Afterlife Bar which is a morgue converted to a bar, and if you wander around inside there's a lot more unique detail that doesn't exist anywhere else, NPCs have more unique poses and animations than those who populate the streets and just walk about, and there's a lot of unique dialogue as you can overhear other gangs organizing jobs for the various fixers.
This is part of why the game feels so polished in the singleplayer because it's obvious these places were hand crafted with a lot of attention to detail to make the experience of the singleplayer main story very polished, and then outside of this narrow corridor that is the singleplayer story and it's locations you have a city which is populated by algorithms to create the pedestrians and their behaviour which is a lot more generic, because you're not supposed to have any particular interest in random civilian or food vendor.
I can't help but feel the best way to describe this is with a metaphor to TV/movie set, the people and vendors and traffic and hustle and bustle of the city is the set dressing, designed to be a backdrop to the main story missions where your focus is on the main characters and those other things are in the peripheral. But if you inspect them closely enough like follow the same NPC around, it's kinda like going through a door in the TV set, there's nothing really behind the door except all the wooden foundations propping up the fake walls, and it becomes obvious you're on a set. There's a moment in the Truman show where this kinda happens in the fake elevator and the illusion of the real world is broken.
It's quite amusing they put so much emphasis on character customisation in a first person game, yet mirrors are broken
They're not broken, they're futuristic smart mirrors which only reflect when you approach them and enable them with the F key. It's expensive effect to do because they didn't use ray tracing, it seems like they render all the geometry that is reflected again inside the mirror to give you a very high resolution reflection, but doubles the workload, which is why you only find them in tightly closed off areas. It's just masking a technology limitation. I remember a very old Unreal engine version having mirrored surfaces option which they later took out, if you viewed the game in wireframe mode you could see the wireframe of all the reflected geometry, I think the same thing is happening here.
The character customization is actually quite shallow as well when you think about it and that's probably why, because you can't really ever see yourself. I think there's about 4 tattoo options, 2 scar options, a very limited number of other things to customize outside of your face, no body types as such.
