This is what I was talking about, SG and Wiab will exist in the same game universe without interaction, but with mentions of events from the past.
I'll let you in on a little secret, there are 2 types of dialogues that are found not only in games, but also in books, etc. The first type is when you're told interesting things about the plot. And the second type of dialogue is when you're given a bunch of meaningless information that doesn't affect anything, it only serves to stretch out the time of the game (movie, book). If you start listening to a dialogue filled with crap, you can safely fast-forward it, because there won't be anything interesting there.
Have you ever looked into rendering courses? After a certain part of the training they give you a ready-made scene with a toothbrush or a barn (many options) so that you can render it. But you won't be able to do it, it's easier to render an Ocean's scene with 32 people. What's the joke? The problem is in the textures and materials, they are gigantic in size, but that's why they need to be cropped. The same can be said about the scenes with Ocean, if you crop the textures correctly, then you can easily render everything without any loss of quality. I don't understand why you need to make scenes with 32 people that will then be blurred. A good option was suggested by HarryDubois420, you can create at least 1000 low-poly people, they will still be blurred later and no one will notice their poor quality. But I don't see the point in making scenes with a large number of characters. And don't come up with excuses for Ocean, they sound ridiculous.
It's hard to create a game from scratch, but when there are ready scenes and characters, the time for developing a new chapter is greatly reduced, like in DPC, for example. But in Ocean, the development time is not reduced, but constantly increased, don't you think it's strange?