So is everyone in this game a robot or something?

[Swintcore]

Or is everyone super mechanically augmented? I ask because in my third play through there's a woman getting operated on and the inside of her head is all wires and machinery.

[Silverbane7]

if you mean the blue haired woman at the Ripperdoc known as 'Fingers' she's a doll.
they have heavy augmentation done to install the doll chip, plus they have cyberware than can change their hair or eye colour in realtime to whatever the client wants.

most avareage people have a little cyberware here and there.

some folks tend to have basic wetware that allows them to use the holophone the way we see V do (image inside the eye) and access things like transfer money (also buying things)

then you have the people with arms, legs, eyes ect.
Maelstrom goes for the older stuff (probably as its cheap, easier to get and has a look they like)
Tyger Claws get their hands on the newest stuff from Arasaka (they work together, Tygers are cheap enforcers and bullies for them. and easier to lie and say it was not the Corp when its a gangoon doing your dirty work lol)
you see old simple stuff in 6th street zones, mostly barebones legs and arms.
Pacifica is also old stuff, but the netrunner cyberware is newer. they seem to prefer to spend on internal headware. especialy the voodoo boys.

[Swintcore]

Wow. This game is fun but depressing. I would never trust anyone to tinker with my brain that way.

[Silverbane7]

If you take some of the non violence options to talk to Woodman in Clouds, he gives more info on Dolls.

Says when they install the behavioural chip (the one Judy and co call a 'Doll chip' later) it splits their minds and personality down the middle.
Half of them stays 'them' while the other half likely becomes the 'doll' personality. That's the side that becomes whatever the system at Clouds decides the client needs.

(I've never picked Angel in that scenario, but I expect the conversation is the same as with Skye when V goes to Clouds to find Evelyn. So I figure that's the in game world reason for the convo being the same. The Clouds algorithm knows V needs to talk to someone, so gives them what they need. "Therapy with a robohooker" lol)

But Dolls and full body conversions like Adam Smasher, Shaitain and Lizzy Wizzy are exceptions to the rule.
Most folks in the city are mostly meat still. Even the ones with arms and legs.

Used to be that installing lots of Cyberware would drain a stat called 'humanity' (in the tabletop game, it was a way to gauge how close your character was to going cyberpsycho) and every bit of Cyberware has a humanity cost.
When you get things replaced because of damage (Johnny's arm for example) you got what the tabletop calls 'medical grade cyberware' that does not incur a humanity loss.
Getting new eyes like V did tho, for work or for looks, did.
That's why some of the cyberpsycho's are how they went.
The guy up in Rancho Coronado for example.
His bosses stuck him into an exosuit (external skeleton cyberware) when what he probably needed was just time off, rest and physio therapy for his back.

[Swintcore]

i did take non violence but I skip most dialogue because I just don't give that much of a ♥♥♥♥. I chose the girl my first play through and angel on this one. I think they are the same.

The first time I saw maelstrom and what they do to their faces.... I would rather die than live in cyberpunk

[Silverbane7]

Have you talked to the Monks?

There is a quest to rescue one of them up in Northside of Watson, pops a little after you have visited the AllFoods with Jackie.
(I always wait till I have Johnny tho, he has few things to say before, during and after)

If you do the quest, later those two are sat under some of the pagoda shelters near the cherry blossom market, next to Jig-Jig street.
You can talk to them about their take (a Buddhist take) on cyber augmentation, digital pcyche and the nature of humanity and it's digital afterlife. Even ask Johnny his take.
It's worth doing once at least.

[Tokenn]

50 years in the future, cyber augumentation is commonplace...sometimes out of necessity [a lot of those people with cyber prosthetics are war veterans, I assume] sometimes out of aesthetic motivations, sometimes for living everyday lives [work, etc.]

I was around 55 years ago..._nobody_ in 1968, not even top-shelf science fiction authors foresaw the day when powerful computers were something that nearly anybody could own or use, just for fun, or that they would revolutionize communications and entertainment and practically every facet of our daily lives. 55 years from now...who knows? In fact I think CP77 is a very modest view of what the world may be like in another half-century.