I'm going to use some pictures to help clarify my point:
Exhibit A: The Streets:
WOW, doesn't that look EXCITING! Sooo much stuff going on here. Well... nope, there is literally nothing going on here, it's just a pretty picture. Or perhaps one door you can walk into, that being your objective, that, for some reason you have to sometimes walk to and sometimes you can teleport straight into the building.
No navigating your way round the city, no stumbling upon things, just zoom, you start this mission here, go to destination asap pls & don't forget to talk to anyone who's talkable along the way. That caravan come stall outside that building? You've gotta be able to interact with that, right? I mean, all that effort to put that thing there, there must be a reason for it, right? Nope. It's just there, a block of colours woven into a shape that you walk by and say "Ooo, that's pretty, oh, nothing there" and instantly move along, instantly forgetting that it was ever there.
Now, someone put the effort in to put that thing there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy caravan/market thing, that takes up a huge amount of your screen. For no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice". This is not how RPGs work, this is not what RPGs do. In RPGs, well the good ones mostly, everything you see has some kind of point to it. In a 'normal' RPG someone would have been told to "make an interesting location for an eccentric trader/healer/NPC" and then they'd come up with this. Then it would be incline. Instead, this game just has this block of nothing for no reason.
Like-wise, all these buildings you walk past, every single one bar the quest location is a dead picture and nothing more. You can't go inside any of them. In any 'normal' RPG you would walk in these random buildings just for the exploration of it all. One might have a group of angry cultists you have to fight, one might have a 'nice' family that you have to choose between giving them #50 credits after a sob story or just leave or kill them for a #20 credit gain, another might have no-one in but some loot hidden away for the most observant players. But no, this is all just fuck all. Someone put the effort in to put that building there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy street map, that takes up a huge amount of your screen, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice".
Perhaps you can have some fun with the few NPCs you can interact with along the way? You mean you can't interact with everyone you see? That's right, the game has loads of sprites that walk about completely oblivious to the fact that they're in a game. Someone put the effort in to put those people there. Someone spent hours of development time making these fancy NPCs, that takes up a huge amount of your disc space, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice". Now, about those NPCs you
can interact with. Well, as soon as you've exhausted their dialogue options they cease to be interactive. You can't even repeat a conversation. You can't kill any of them or even just stop to say hi and get some brief repartee.. Only traders are permanently interactive, but you still can't kill them, pick pocket them or anything.
It's amusing how the RPG barrel get's so much mockery and stick for being a redundant RPG loot mechanic, and rightfully so, but in this game, jeezus, just one fucking barrel, just give me at least one fucking barrel. At least it would be
something.
Exhibit B: Inside a Building:
You see those stairs there? You can't go up those. There appears to be part of the bar you should be able to walk to up there, but it's just another waste of space, you can't go up there. Someone put the effort in to put those stairs there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy upper floor, that takes up a huge amount of your screen, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice". And the same can be said for the entire left hand portion of the room. From the first dancing girl all the way to the empty tables next to the wall. No NPCs inhabit that area, well, aside from that one dude with the yellow speech bubble above his head who could quite easily be in any other room in the building. You can't ever talk to anyone there, you can't interact with the dancers, you can't look for loose change down the back of a sofa, you can't start a brawl. Someone put the effort in to put that section of the building there. Someone spent hours of development time making this fancy lounge area, that takes up a huge amount of your screen, for no reason other than "Ooo, that looks nice".
No. Instead, you have to press the only interactive thing in the room, the piano at the far end, and go underground to your base of characters. Because, instead of making this backroom a secret room, what an RPG needs is an empty dead space you have to walk through to get to the secret room. & why not throw in a loading screen into the bargain while we're at it, because that was so necessary.
An RPG would allow you to
do something with this room. An RPG would allow you to go everywhere you can see, at least at some point in the game. An RPG would have some reason for having holographic/real dancers beyond "Ooo, that looks nice". Inherently. Without thinking about it. The room would fill itself with RPGing almost naturally and by osmosis simply by being underwritten with a sound RPG mechanical core or it would not be a part of the development process in the first place. I mean, what was the order to the designer? "Design me a bar/nightclub"... "ok boss"... "cool, now sprite guy, put in XYZ characters"... "ok boss"... "Ooo, that does look nice"... "yes boss". At what point did anyone say what the point was for any of it?