>>718247873
>>718253670
RPG means three things but they have to come together:
1. Options. Mainly it's options on how to solve a problem but ideally it would also be options on where to go in terms of overall goal. Options on who to be, how you speak etc.
2. A world that reacts to your decisions. If you made a choice that affects something in the game's world you should expect the appropriate action-reaction. If you chose to be a piece of shit people should treat you like one, especially if reputation is concerned which would affect people's behavior towards you before you even speak to them
3. Growth. The obvious. You should naturally be able to get better at doing things.

2077 may have some kind of growth with the skill tree, and you do get some options but only when the script allows it. You say you like to go around pretending to bust mercs undercover but that's the fucking thing: you're doing that IN YOUR HEAD. The game itself barely recognizes you doing that.
No NPC would talk to you about doing that, you can't make that an overall goal for your character. Your character's personality never changes no matter what run you're doing, the only time an NPC recognizes your accomplishments is again when it just happens to fit a script, and even then it's one line of dialogue most of the time.
You're not playing an RPG when you "go around playing merc", you're just playing with fucking dolls and most of the setting is in your head.

also
>I feel like this is what the game's "RPG" was intended to be
It's not. They intended for it to be what I described above because they said that's what they were working on throughout the 2010s. Development and management was just a mess however so they had to settle with action-adventure by scraping what they had and put this together in the state that it was in 2020.