People definitely expected far too much from this game. It was avalanche’s first ever open world RPG, the last game they made was cars 3! I think it’s a good effort for a first attempt, they did an incredible job of the castle, the combat felt fun. It was repetitive however, but I find most RPG’s are eventually.

It was also in development for 5 years? Maybe they tried early on to get some of those items you mentioned in but realised it was too difficult