I'm am seriously on the fence about getting this game. Looks great, gameplay looks fun, and I look forward to the racing elements. I am under the impression it's a sort of shooter with RPG elements. Which is great (LOVED the Stalker games). But is the world open? Can I go where I please, pick up quests etc Or am I given everything to do in a linear fashion? Not necessarily a game breaker but I am curious where this game falls on the scale of open world rpgs.

The game is open world, you can walk/drive around as you please and pick up quests and stuff. But it's not really the strong point of the game. The game world isn't that large and there aren't really that many sidequests either (that I can remember anyway). So you pretty much just follow the main story in a linear fashion, even if you don't have to.