Warren Spector had nothing to do with Deus Ex: HR, that's a pretty enormous distinction. And no, go play Deus Ex 1 again, and tell me HR had the depth, complexity and player agency of the first. It didn't.
Fact is, gamers with their irrational and idiotic obsession with "graphics and specs" have fallen into the "graphics trap" as I call it. And naturally, business saw this as a opportunity to pounce and release games for high prices, plus now DLC/subs, as well as release consoles that cost a fortune to the average person, in order to take more money from you while focusing more and more on that aspect of "visual fidelity" that fundamentally has little to do with the "quality of the gameplay" involved. So thus, the excuse nowadays from developers is, they spend so much money focusing on improving and optimizing that graphical fidelity that all forward momentum in new ideas of gameplay, pacing, innovation in mechanics big and small get pushed to the back burner, it's about creating "great visuals and worlds and atmosphere first", rather than building the gameplay and it's concepts to fit that, regardless of how much the visuals WOW or not. Narrative and story and VA spending is another example of this trap, where they become the focus and simply copy/paste viable existing gameplay methodology (Naughty Dog) to fit their agenda. And we hoot and holler about it being a "GOTY contender", this industry and even the gamers themselves have been bought off and propagandized to believe and seriously consider a sticking point these things, when before what mattered most of all was just the gameplay.
This is not to say a game can't have great visuals, story, meaingful well written narrative AND have amazing gameplay. The point is, the gameplay should always be the foremost priority of any project worth considering. And it's the complete reversal of that instance in most cases, hence the skyrocketing development costs and risk aversion that comes with it.