I think it was already confirmed that there is some sort of "street cred" stat opens up new options in regards to how you interact with certain people.

Perhaps you should read back over the thread.  You seem to have missed the elitist and ignorant anti-FP posts that started all of this.

Totally, that's why RPGs never have any extensive character creation screens.

Yeah, I know about that, but this is what worries me:

"EG: You appear to be able to talk your way through a lot of tense situations. There are engineering and hacking skill checks. Is speech also a skill check?
Patrick Mills: We don't want to gate speech behind particular classes or anything like that. We want that to be about the story and about your choices in the story."

I like when RPGs give you mechanisms, whether attribute based or skills, connected to dialogue options and what you can do via dialogue...that makes for interesting non-combat based characters builds.

If you're reffering to how characters look, that's thanks to 3D engines - back in 80s/90s there was no such thing, and it was quite irrelevant - you pick a character(s) you like the most and then you dive into what matters most for characters in RPGs - attributes and skills.

A game like this should really be in VR with next gen headsets. I still don't know what this game is about yet it looks interesting. Hopefully it has a great story as just doing the usual sci-fi tropes GTA style is going to get old fast.

I like those mechanics too, but I could sort of understand not having them, from the standpoint that using options that stem from those types of skills will pretty much always lead to the best outcomes, which is a little bit uninteresting if you're like me and just invest in those skills first thing, then proceed to cakewalk through every conversation with optimal results.

First-Person Shooter? Never have been a fan of Fallout but let's wait and see.

And then the moment we could put character creation into RPGs, we didn't because that's not what it's about, right?

I see your point, but on the other hand, by investing points in speech related stats you're gimping your character elsewhere, so it forces how you play the game.
Of course, game abolutely must be designed in a way that you can never get even close to being expert (let alone master) in eveything...which is what, unfortunately, most modern AAA games are suffering from.