This is a thinkpad with an nvidia card. The update went on without errors but after the reboot I had just a black screen with a mouse cursor.
If I ctrl-f2 and login as root, init 3 and startx I get the same thing.
What fixed if for me was :
rpm -e nvidia-glG04 x11-video-nvidiaG04 nvidia-gfxG04-kmp-default nvidia-computeG04
followed by
zypper install nvidia-glG04 x11-video-nvidiaG04 nvidia-gfxG04-kmp-default nvidia-computeG04
Took 15 minutes but then after a reboot the display works.
I doubt nVidia has much to do with the problem since it’s related to either scripting in the packages (which are maintained by SUSE people) or some issues with 42.2/42.3.
Also, bricking means that the device is completely unusable - it would be bricked if you couldn’t boot it at all.
I use proprietary nvidia driver so when this happens usually after a kernel or X update it takes me about 2 minutes to fix noy counting the reboot time.
If I remember the update when I next reboot I can do the quick fix as I reboot and I don’t get the black screen.
When a Kernel or NVIDIA driver updates you must link them this is done auto-magically at next boot using the NVIDIA-KMS module and does take some time though 15 minuets seem excessive but that does depend on the hardware/memory.