Hard agree. The first time I played through the game I was left feeling a bit hollow about it. On replay I realised why - Jackie and Misty were the only characters in the game that I liked. I missed them.
Was it planned originally to be playable but cut down due to time? Just watching the montage definitely feels lacking and actually playing it out would make your bond with Jackie stronger too, which definitely would play into where they were going with the story.
I always just assumed the "year with Jackie" was one of the things they had to cut.
Game is still buggy as hell for me on 5900X and a 3080. Playable but I am constantly seeing bugs that break immersion or gameplay. They made a good decision ditching their engine for UE5 for their WIP Witcher project.
I feel like this is an overly negative light to paint something fans of your game seem to want. There's an undercurrent of "your wish is bad and you should feel bad" to this.
I appreciate that CDPR has a strong vision for what they want their game to be, but I think if I were one of those fans who wanted to see more of the post-ending setting, I would feel a bit gut-punched by how thoroughly dissed and dismissed my kind of love for the game was.
Having a post story expansion necessitates at least partly re-unifying the different endings of the main game. This is a general problem with sequels already, but it's further exacerbated if you keep the main character the same, which would likely be the case for an expansion.
I wonder what they're doing with the sequel. The easy way out would be to just pick one ending. Not picking one and going all wishy washy is not the best solution either, because a lot of things would be significantly different and it would leave people who haven't played the first game in a weird spot. So I think they will choose a canon ending anyways.
I didn't say they should cave to fans save give them what they want. I just think there was a way to say this without being mean about wanting it.
Anyway, I don't have a horse in this race, I still haven't played this. Just commenting on how I think I'd feel if that were me. I've played a fair few games where the ending left me wanting a lot more, and not always because the game was just that good.