This sort of thing is very common among video games.
Part of it, especially in CRPG's, is trying to make a weapon actually visible at the distance and scale that a player will be looking at them.
Yeah, that's SUPPOSED to be the design goal, but the result speaks for itself:
it clearly wasn't necessary in this case (given the overall level of detail) or at very least they decidedly over-tuned the effect to the point that it's more distracting than helpful.
