>lack of polish
no, it's 100% DEI. DEI changes what "polish" means. Skyrim was already a woke game but it lacked DEI polish by showing you some male leaders in the early game and not making sure that every Jarl was a woman. Avowed's drenched in that kind of polish, and therefore lacks lots of gameplay polish. Money and time are both finite. When you're at a meeting and some nerd starts talking about making sure the names are sensitive in all languages, time is lost to speak on other things.
Dovetailing with DEI is replacing your less-skilled white workers with stat-enhancing groups of Indians. There's no kid on the team to propose that he add a fishing minigame, or complain that he shot a bird with an arrow and nothing happened.