This is probably going to end up being exhibit A in my personal case studies of
not boarding the hype train & getting wrapped up in the subsequent fallout when it (inevitably) lets you down. The only preview I had of this was an E3 demo (I believe), thought "that looks pretty neat" and didn't think too much more of it until the delayed launch and the fracas surrounding it. Then it was just a case of giving them another year or so to see if it could (or would) be salvaged.
Well, I picked this up during the winter sale last month while keeping expectations to a minimum and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised! It's definitely right up there as one of the more "alive" worlds I've experienced, so much so that (minor spoiler)
when your car gets wrecked at the start of act 2 I was perfectly happy with just walking about, taking things in. Driving around could be a bit better; having the brake + reverse as one non-configurable option has lead to more than one traffic incident on my part...
Performance wise, there's still a niggle here and a bug or 2 there; the most annoying one for me personally is what appears to be a memory leak that kicks in after about 90-odd minutes and a couple zone traverses (e.g. Pacifica -> City Centre -> Watson). I could only speculate as to why, but other than that I've only experienced a couple visual/audio bugs in 90-odd hours that forced me to save->load to clear it.
So yes, if like me you were umm'ing and ahh'ing about picking this up after the uproar that was this game's launch, give it a whirl!
And with that, a few of my own shots (I'm ashamed to admit I only discovered photo mode after 30 hours);