(about replay) I did however rewind several times in my playthrough to try different conversation options (including skill or etiquette options) and decisions, and it was very clear that most resulted just in a few lines of different dialog, a few resulted in a different reward, but in no case could I determine any notable consequences or long-term repercussions…
I haven't noticed much long term consequence and the very few I noticed wasn't important stuff, like for example bride or not the policeman will involve later differences.
But there's still choices on how to do stuff, the beginning of the game is a mix of introduction and soft tutorial, the apartment, the flashback, the morgue, the street, the murder, the hub. All of that is relatively developed but it's still the introduction and I could agree it's a bit long. And then there's the first real;mission, and in fact not really because companions are still forced and it's still not a full team. But I took it to highlight the choices. In the mission you'll need reach a second floor and I collected 13 ways to achieve it, not all will be possible for all characters, but it's still here. And there's about 4/5 variations at second floor that are consequences, not major but some are significant anyway, so the FULL SPOILER LIST:
Mission: Apartment Royale (Coyote Rescue)
Goal: Reach upstairs.
Use the stair to the right, in that case you'll reach the level through a more hidden/better position which is logical as it's a hidden backdoor. You could feed the hellhounds, open the prison door, kill the guard and speak to Coyote then she comes in your team until the end of the fight. You have four way
1 - Speak old man to right, threaten him and he open the door leading to the stairs (not all characters can)
2 - Speak Old man to right, charm him and he open the door leading to the stairs (not all characters can)
3 - To the right, move the dresser, look to the hole and send a drone through it. The drone opens the door leading to the stairs.
4 - With a shaman, look through the hole, see a summon spot, summon a demon to scare the lady in the closed room, she flees and open the door giving access to the stairs.
5 - And there's an alternative when you use the stairs, it's first to go to elevator, use the intercom to provoke gang up, one guard up will go at bottom to fight. Then when you'll have a slightly different setup at second floor, with one less guard up, and nobody around the prison. It's just a slight variation because it won't change really the sneak path to free Coyote soon.
6 - In fact as a variation you could also free coyote during the fight when you come from the elevator. In case your character have no way to reach the stairs you could use this anyway. Start fights at second floor near elevator and soon have your character rush in to go to prison, feed the hellhounds, open the jail, kill the guard, speak to Coyote. It seems long but in fact if you move well they'll just use their AP to follow you and you second character can kill one and move to help.
You can also get the BTL recording in various ways, and use it at intercom to move up and be welcome. Gang at second floor will be friendly and you can reach the prison and free Coyote but the boss will follow you and when you'll open the jail he will call an alert. Still you'll be able free Coyote and take her in your party during the beginning of the fight. To get the BTL:
7 - You can buy the BTL to the boss at bottom (not all characters can and you need first collect some information from other NPC to get the dialog option)
8 - You can speak multiple time to the bottom boss to get a dialog option to kill him then you can access the computer and open the room to right and get the BTL recording from the recorder.
9 - You can trigger the fight near the elevator by using the intercom as explained in previous options. Then the bottom boss leave to the closed room to the right. And you can access the computer and open the room to the right.
10 - You can also hack the commuter to get the BTL recording but I'm not sure it's the same recording and not one to sell later, need check.
You can hack the elevator commands to go up if you are a decker:
11 - You need access the computer, there's multiple way to do it as mentioned previously, then you can hack the elevator commands to go up.
You can also just use a direct brute path with the elevator. If you trigger the fight by using the elevator intercom the gang up will wait you but also there will be one guy less at second floor:
12 - You can trigger a fight by using intercom of the elevator and provoke the gang. During the fight a dead guy will drop a paper with the security code of the elevator. You can use the code already but also you can try use a second time the intercom and get 3 new dialog options. I haven't found if they trigger something. I think it's more a role play element, but it's a very cool detail.
There's many other stuff to do at bottom, at least many for a small area like that, but I haven't notice links with the goal to go at second floor nor on the situation at second floor. Only that some dialogs options appear only if you have done some other stuff before.
So I'm sorry but for me GBG is a bit superficial in his review to ignore such stuff. I agree not all places have this amount of possibilities but there's often choices like that in many places, even if less. And at least one place has even more choices it's even rather complicated to list all the ways to do that part, it's the Brotherhood.
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I was disappointed by the matrix. To me it was just a glorified version of the regular game. Games like System Shock and Neuromancer made completely different games (minigames?) out of this part genre which really fit brought the story to life in a way the novels can't.
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For me no way minigames is a better choices, there's significant variations by having the alarm management, by using different skills and items (like standard heal, alarm slowdown, different summons) and giving one more opportunity to a decker to use his specialized skills. So it's not bad and certainly hugely better than any minigame. BUT it's right that the core mechanism is too close to standard fights and the area seems too much like a real word area very simplified. And I agree they should have work more on that point but not to make it a minigame.