Really looks like this game was designed by incompetent suits and marketing teams with the primary goal of turning those millions into more money. The game looked good and didn’t seem to play (totally) awfully either. It just doesn’t stand out or make anybody want to play it, like at all. It really is a another one of those AAA unfinished style over substance tech demos that masquerade as a game that got released into really saturated market at a really bad time, where the competition is usually also free.
Also something, something big capital overtaking creative process is one of the great disasters of our time.
problem is not on a development level, but rather on a project management and (particularly) an executive level.
In any industry as time progresses the production becomes more and more capital intensive and that needs more and bigger investors and all that capital means that there is a bigger risk and that is mitigated by the investors by requiring “their guys” to staff the management and these people are unusually really bad for the technical and actual value side of the business on the long run, because they are usually people with financial or marketing backgrounds. They fundamentally work by the logic of profit maximization and there are always easier and more surefire ways toi achieve that than with supplying a good product. It’s even worse when the end product is something that could be considered “art”. In AAA it all eventually leads into pushing bland installments under rushed deadlines for the same once successful franchise out one after another, just because that is where the risks are lowest and money is still being made.