To be fair Prague in Mankind Divided is very developed and detailed, and its zones probably add up to the same size as both of Human Revolution's cities. Still I agree with what you're saying. Open world design on this scale requires a ton of copy and paste bullshit, so there's no way every area has the detail of a Deus Ex. However if the bigger missions take place in areas with that kind of design, and feel more like Deus Ex than smaller side content and random street travel, then I think that's a success.
Oh, absolutely, I wasn't having a dig at Prague, I thought it was fantastic and the best part of the game, all three tours. I was just using it to illustrate how resource-intensive it is to create a Deus Ex experience to modern AAA standards - the Montreal crew tried with DX3, some things worked, others less so, and with the benefit of that experience they realised they had to be smarter about their resources to improve in DX4.
People are kind of hinting to you to keep your expectations in check about the game (despite developers' words about certain features), yet they expect open world Deus Ex. Seriously?
Creating an immersive sim is a whole new level of game development, and the Witcher series never even had a proper stealth mechanic, not even saying about a good systemic / emergent gameplay.
I haven't played Mankind Divided, but Human Revolution wasn't an immersive sim (or a very basic one) because developers simply didn't understand the essence of the original game and didn't have the right kind of talent or experience. I liked the game, but being able to use different approaches for certain tasks is just a small part of the philosophy.
Actually, the opposite - it appears that "open-world Deus Ex" is the pie-in-the-sky aspiration, but you should temper your expectations because that's not likely feasible from a production standpoint, even with CDPR's massive workforce. The closer it gets to that ideal, the better, but I don't think any of us expect it to
meet the standard.
Sidenote and also in response to Harthwain, Mankind Divided is a much stronger showing than Human Revolution and well worth checking out. Yes, of course the original is still the best, but DX4 got close enough that I have no problem lumping them together as "Deus Ex" for the purposes of this conversation.
Cyberpunk 2077 being a video game adaptation of Cyberpunk 2020 (and therefore not 1:1 translation) was to be expected. That's not the problem. Not sure why people keep bringing up this.
The problem is they keep shedding tabletop elements all the time over time, and for bullshit reasons. Why you can't develop cyberpsychosis (or even some adverse effects)? Not because tabletop elements aren't compatibile with it, but because they don't want player to, because of the story. Same goes for forcing implants on the player. I am of the opinion that this could easily became an achievement - you know, The Meatbag, style one - and 95% of people would still pack enhancements on themselves on their first/second run, because enhancements are cool. Some people would even have to balance the cyberpsychosis aspect. But no, you can't have it. Period.
That's just it, I never got the impression that CBP 2077 was meant to be a videogame adaptation of the tabletop source in the same way that Baldur's Gate 3 wants to be an adaptation of D&D 5E, it was billed as an Action-RPG early on. Think of it as analogue to movies "inspired by real events" rather than "based on real events." What I was getting at is that if you're developing a computer port of the tabletop RPG, a comprehensive representation of the character classes is absolutely essential, but that's not a small feat if you're trying to make an Action-RPG based in the Cyberpunk setting and your priorities may legitimately be different.
Other things, such as cyberpsychosis... Yeah, there's no reason they
couldn't build some form of it in and it would be great to have it. But that's the reality of game development, shit gets cut, it doesn't mean the final product is doomed to decline. Like I mentioned earlier in this thread, the original Deus Ex was supposed to have a space station mission complete with zero-G combat, but it didn't make it, they had to focus resources on other things. Just be happy Spector didn't add in a penis slider or we might not have had Battery Park.