From a player perspective I tend to agree with you. What’s the point of building a theme park world if the people taking the rides feel intimidated by the rides? On the other hand, we don’t really know what the design intention was. If the vision was to create a “oppressively looking city that crushes you under it’s boot, and keeps you trapped inside, attached to the commercial infrastructure” then it seems like it worked. Maybe the intention was to make things feel more liberating emotionally in the outskirts. I just can’t shake the feeling that Night City is not really a city build as a sandbox, more like a metaphor for one but with a twist. I mentioned in my article that it’s and “anti-open world” open world game and I still think it’s accurate. It seems like in most cases it’s just a pretty backdrop for the story beats (and it seems a lot of time and money went into those).