There's something about the image quality of Cyberpunk that looks off to me, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe the hair rendering? Shadowing?

It's clearly going for photo realism, but it somehow looks worse to me than older, lower-fidelity games.

DLSS really messes with the realism, however for actual gameplay it's less annoying to me than i thought it would be from such games as diablo IV and others in that cohort. If you want maximum quality, don't let an AI draw what the developers (artists) intended, just draw what the developers intended. i replied to a sibling comment with 4 photo mode screenshots, and you can see that there's a lot of variation in environment lighting, and all of the ambient light is pre-arranged by the design team and developers. In CP2077 a lot of quests are "go to <location> at dusk/dawn/night/noon, or between x&y time, because they want the scene to be cinematic, and it shows. Harsh fluorescent lighting on scenes with a doctor, muted, hazy interactions with a shady character or a scene with emotional turmoil, long shadows and lots of reds at the end of a story arc.

It really feels like they put so much work into how everything looks in the primary and secondary stories.

i can agree though that just "jobbing" it looks more like a run-of-the-mill shooter, though.