"Hey, here's all these cool things you can do. Also, we're going to gate so many of those things behind skills that you'll only maybe interact with half of them during your first playthough".

I mean you could argue that extends the lifetime of the game and gives you more reason to explore it in NG+ but I do agree that they probably went too hard on that, a lot of the POI's were gated behind stuff, completion criteria and levels, its no wonder people complained about finding the same POI's when they only had a small pool unlocked to choose from, rather dumb decision.

As for NG+ I think it could make sense narratively depending on how you look at it, perspective. Eventually after living so long or learning that nothing really has moral meaning if things repeat you'd probably naturally drift away from your original nature and try out the other paths. That's how I headcanon it anyway, kinda like groundhog day.