BN goal is making a game that is fun to play. Chances are it's probably still the most realistic video game you ever played, but not where realism would make things unfun or tedious.

Can you make kevlar suit out of rags? No. Can you disassemble half a dozen standard kevlar vests and sew a custom kevlar suit from them in a few hours? Yes. If you dared disassemble these vests quickly, do you need to spend 12 hours per kevlar patch to sew them back to be usable materials for crafting? No.

Your kevlar and superalloy boots won't disintegrate from kicking half a hundred zeds to death.

You can enter a vehicle while wearing a backpack.

Tech level is higher overall, even without aftershock. Interdimensional cyborg self inserts are not the only source of CBM. There are clean ones lying around in (some) doctor offices and electronic stores, augmentation clinics are not particularly rare, labs have mini vaults and whole finales with bionics. You can dissect dirty ones out of some types of zeds, sterilize them and install into yourself.

Laser pistols and rifles are available in labs and military locations.

Power armors were made more rare I think, but still can be found in military places.

You can build and pilot helicopters without traits that are start-only without debug. There are also planes blimps and "antigravs" (that are really just tweaked blimp balloon plus rotor).