I think you're missing the point a bit. I am not saying they made a game with the sole intention to be manipulative. I am saying that at some point as the clock was ticking they started eventually to realise, we can not deliver the product as it's promised. And that is where shitty an faulty marketing steped in. And they kinda got away with it. So what is the lesson they will actually learn from here? To throw out more marketing, like a TV show or super hot stars.
They didn't just cut features, which is pretty normal in ANY game development. They delivered a broken product that was not even remotely as engaging as they described it. It was full of false marketing, manipualtion and outright lies. And again. I am not talking about bugs or technical issues. They made a game that's not even really an RPG. It's like their Fallout 4 moment here.
We can all only guess of course why it happend. But I believe there must have been some serious fuck up during the development of the game not because of some accident but due to missmanagement or communication issues. Who knows. Maybe the team behind Cyberpunk 2077 had a certain vision which they worked on for quite some time, and at some point the management came in and said, listen we want you to make this GTA Cyberpunk instead of what you're doing right now or what ever an they had to throw half the work out and realised they had not enough time or experience to deliver what GTA does. Or what ever the new vision was. And what you in the end got, was not a Cyberpunk RPG but a stat driven shooter with linear story. That's it. And that is what I complain about.
I see no reason why this should change with a Sequel now. Go watch the video I posted. Explains it nicely in my opinion.
So what. They had like 3-4 times the budged of Witcher 3 and double the time. And still delivered an inferior product compared to W3.
Uh say what now? How did you get that idea? Of course they have been dishonest and done dishonest stuff. The game got removed from the console shops due to their dishonesty.