I think a big problem with new settings in these kinds of game sis the amount of exposition and info dump thrown at the player. In the DND games most players were pretty familiar with the world, history, gods, factions, cities whatever so it doesn't need to be explained.
Yeah I think expectations were too high with the sales, cut the full VO, and boat mini game and the budget would have been significantly lower and Josh Sawyer's sanity would have remained intact. Butttt… I think Obsidian were desperate to get back to the good old days so chucked a load of stuff in to try appeal to too many groups of people. I really wish they had included fishing or sea monster hunting instead of the boat combat.