Im sorry but its just insane levels of detail for about everything in each new location
Maybe, but how did you even get to care about discovering these things given the piss poor characters, boring plot, overwrought/ham-fisted "social commentary" (what is it with these Sci-Fi games and poorly done segregation analogies? Detroit: Become Human did the exact same thing in almost the same awfully constructed, incredibly shoehorned way. Are writers really this insipid?) and bland environments muddying everything right out of the gate? What's the point of having interesting things to look for in the game if the game is unable to give me the motivation to start exploring for them in the first place?
Everytime segregation gets used as a narrative device theres this exact same complain.
Really, why it is poorly written? Because it is an obvious analogy to a problem we all know that happened?
Nah, if not this is one of the major points that makes the setting so strong.
You see the law getting way more rigid as time progresses and every single place you visit has its own way of working, which not only makes the small changes feels dynamic as they happen but also makes the setting incredibly well fleshed out for this kind of game, without needing to appeal to melodramatic levels of tragic shit happening like Detroit (which literally ends up in a Concentration camp with a child getting ready to be exterminated. Sorry, not the same thing AT all.)
And not only this is used to great effect in the whole atmosphere to raise the sense of paranoia in the player as you never know which choice or way of tackling down a quest can actually backfire (which, some of them actually do)
but this is also never the focus of the narrative itself, instead just making for a really neat setting for an rpg in which you feel like people around you are already in a pretty bad shape and because of it, if you screw up, everybody will have to suffer because of your actions.
And i would also raise a point about how this kind of stuff is far from new in rpgs.
Arcanum itself has a very non subtle way of handling shit like half ogres or orcs in which people will adress you like a fucking beast that has no racional thought. They wont talk to you or even directly ask you to move away so they wont need to share the same fucking space as you. In fact, racism and such is a huge part of the whole game
Still, i rarely see anyone aknowledging that as a mistake, even tho its all over the place anywhere in the game.
As for the plot, im more of a worldbuilding guy and i was never pretty fan of any of DE's plots anyways
They all feel very over the top with the whole cyberpunk-esque conspiracy vibe and my suspension of disbelief really dont buy into most of what happens.
I do admit Human revolution has a better progression for the plot structure tho.