A dystopia can only wallow in misery for so long until it becomes a boring (if flashy) backdrop, highlighting or bringing out the absurd through humour is the best way to have something retain the edge to its commentary, or just to keep its entertainment value. So far, the dialogue only seems to matter in terms of who you end up shooting to pieces, rather than being an aspect of the game that's in itself worth exploring, which could seriously bring down the game's replay value, as far as roleplaying goes. Then again, maybe I should mostly look at it as a FPS that lets you choose between power upgrades.
I understand the skepticism and share your concern, given how the Gaming Industry has taken to predatory practices to milk gamers for everything - for nothing in return. As it stands, I've given up hope for Bethesda since Zenimax has corrupted them horribly and Bioware (not EA as it turned out) has literally fucked up Anthem for everyone and EA is scrambling to figure out what the hell happened. Valve and CD Project Red are the only companies i can see that still give me some hope there's change that haven't written off gamers with their business practices.
I think you should give CP2077 the benefit of the doubt regardless of the controversy surrounding it's current PR. If the Rock, Paper, Shotgun article is doing a Smear Campaign against CDPR's hotest game to be released, CP2077 is going to be THE game to destroy Epic Game's Fortnite and Battle Royale trend once and for all.
"Is Cyberpunk 2077 really going to be that great of a game?" I'm going to say absolutely because of the Smear Campaign. Epic Games has their Exclusivity Deal strong arming Steam PC community from releasing good games and literally fattening up their Game Launcher platform. Which as it turns out, was a complete flop because they gave massive discounts to PC players that made those exclusive game tank in purchasing power
Epic: "We're giving you 75% more profits on your games if you sign up with us!"
Devs: "Sold!"
Epic: "By the way, remember that $60 game you've been publishing for us?"
Devs: "Yeah, it's going to be the best game ever!"
Epic: "We're selling it for $10 this opening week during our massive discount to celebrate our game launcher"
Devs: "What the fuck did you just say?!"
Yeah, that happened. CDPR's game launcher is more developed and has been upgraded like Steam's in terms of features. Which means GOG is competing against Epic Game's game launcher with Cyberpunk being the mascot game to help launch their platform, if they are successful, those game developers that took up Epic's deal are jumping ship to go sign up with CDPR's GOG game launcher and kick start a brand new Era of PC gaming and potentially a Golden Age for the Gaming Industry as a whole. They have a better deal than Epic and they're a golden standard of a company with consumers and have been committed to making single player games are years and will continue to champion those values. Once Gearbox signs on with CDPR and gives Epic the finger, they will be a powerhouse with fans swarming in to join the fight and boycott Epic and EA's bullshit.
Everything is riding on Cyberpunk 2077 knocking a homerun and knocking everyone on their asses this year, Epic Games is on the warpath to make sure they don't succeed in winning Game of the Year and causing them to go bankrupt by encouraging people to sign-up with them and spark a revolutionary change in the status quo in which single player games are dead, microtransactions are the ironclad, company policy is law, live service is normal, unfinished AAA games are priced more.