Based on these videos it seems like there might something of a trend for current open world games to lack the kind of small incidental details that really add to the overall sense of immersion. Pretty interesting how the some of the focus has changed, at least in the games above, from immersive world building to very pretty and vast but somehow less dynamic and reactive worlds.

Often there are great quality of life improvements in sequels that actually make the game more playable and understandable but depth somehow gets lost. Morrowind - Skyrim comes to mind here as another possible example.

The interesting thing about the examples above of details in old games, is that you often don't really notice when they're gone. They are small things that you might take for granted at the time, little bits of behavior created that you might experience for only a fraction of the playtime. But added together they help the player to get lost in that world. There were times in GTA V where I was confused that I couldn't do something, throwing a brick, or holding someone at gunpoint. At the time I didn't even realise it was something lost from the previous iteration, made me thought I had it confused with another game, or just imagined or dreamed that I was able to do that.

If anyone finds similar videos or thinks of other examples of a drain in detail compared to previous iterations of games then chuck em in here. I really hope that with the upcoming generations of consoles with presumably much greater CPU horsepower will tempt devs to once again go down the rabbit hole of implementing excessive amounts of detail and AI behaviour.