I get where they are coming from. It's incredibly easy to break through the facade of the surface polish that is there to suggest "this is a real living city!".

I get where they are coming from. It's incredibly easy to break through the facade of the surface polish that is there to suggest "this is a real living city!". In some ways, I found that worse in 5 vs earlier games because the surface polish is so nice. But then you still can't interact with a lot of it, or the interaction is always the same. Most of it is just pretty set-dressing which falls over once you slightly push it. Which given the scale is not surprising, but it still breaks the immersion if you poke it even lightly. You notice the the AI being somewhat shallow, NPCs having nearly no interactions, ... And even in the fleshed-out parts, the NPCs relevant for missions, that's all very linear and basically only interacted with for missions. To slightly exaggerate, it's a good interactive action movie, and a very nice sandbox to do stupid shit with vehicles in. (Don't get me wrong, that's a totally fine thing to be! But it leads to tradeoffs that make other parts shallow)