Even a AAA budget needs to make compromises, in particular when they have to do this animation for hundreds of characters, voice act nearly everything and make sure everything emotes instead of being cardboard. We are not grading it on a curve, we are grading it by the standards of cRPGs. We are grading it but the test it is taking. A genre where the mindseye is often what is put forward, and text rules all because visually it isn't as cinematic. right now that budget is clearly being put to good use on the cinematics front (arguably not yet on mechanics but I digress) because by comparing it to the genre, they are clearly passing the test. They didn't come in to make a super realistic railroad story like the Last of Us, which I think is won of the more beautiful games, they came to make a cRPG. Honestly, and I don't mean this in a confrontational way because I think it is just a matter of taste, but to continue the grading/school analogy, it feels like you are yelling at the game for failing Biology, when its not in that class and instead is making models for a History course.
