A lot of things in the game were given only the most cursory of explanations. For example (minor spoiler time), at one point, you learn that a character you've interacted with is the king of a neighboring country, covertly present in the city. This is revealed without fanfare, and hardly affects the game at all. Similarly, it's mentioned a couple of times that some sort of sorceress' group has been vying for political control of the government. From what I read online, this is apparently a big deal in the books, but it seems like it was put into the game just for the sake of being there. There's some big important scene with Triss, too, when I assume she's talking to another sorceress? That's probably part of that plot, but is never touched on again.

It's been a few months since I played the game, so I can't think of any more great examples, but there's lots of stuff like that. Stuff that's just mentioned in passing, which seems to be important, but is never explained or dealt with.

That would be fine if it were only the subplots that weren't filled in as much as they should be, but the main story points suffer equally (no spoilers here). You start the game when a bad guy steals something from you. This is made out to be a huge deal, and a very bad thing. You spend most of the game chasing him down. When you finally catch him, the boss fight is good, but the importance of what he stole is pretty much never mentioned again. It's a tangent at that point. Oh, and of course, then a "real" bad guy shows up. At the very end a "final boss" is revealed. His plan and reason-for-evil are both absurd, and haven't been mentioned or hinted at at all up to that point. It's completely out of left field.

Anyway, it's not quite as bad as I make it out to be. The bits of the story that are actually present in the game are nicely presented, and well done. There's a good atmosphere and it doesn't feel cheesy. Still, I don't know. There's just not enough detail in the game to make it a truly great story. They tried to do too much.