Amy Henning didnt hire the shittiest artists and designers lol. She probably got the cream of the crop.
The matrix was done by a total of 80 people in 8 months. Again, a lot of them were hollywood artists from CG studios. It comes down to talent. 50 devs over at Amy working on a linear game with no bloat is going to look better.
A lot of games nowadays are too bloated. Everything not only has to be open world but also needs to be 100-200 hours long. FF7 looks like this at times. Well, why make 30 mini games instead of focusing on quality control? Why did it need to be a 100 hour game? The rocks in this game are NOT bad looking at all. It's just that there are way too many of these instances where stuff breaks down and that isnt on the artists who drew the rocks or imported from quixel megascans or whatever. Games are just too bloated for devs to go in and review each rock, each nook and cranny.
Gameplay is where most of the time is spent anyway. There was an ND artist/designer who did a breakdown of the museum level in TLOU2. It took him 18 months of iteration to get it done. Not because he spent 18 months creating assets for the level but because it kept going back and forth with designers, director and other people in the team and it was literally being iterated upon and changed for 18 months. I understand no one wants to see their first draft get published, but i see way too many hands and no one to tell the devs to stop and get shit done. And btw, that museum level had no gameplay. you just walk around for 15 minutes looking at dinosaurs and a space shuttle. no combat, no setpieces, no boss fights, no puzzles. nothing. and it took 18 months. The same amount of time it took them to make the 2 two train chapters in uncharted 2.
A lot of these studios are run by hipsters who dont want managers or producers and do whatever the fuck they want. Thats how Valve is run and they have made one game in the last 13 years. You need people to go in and say enough is enough and who knows maybe Amy has someone like that. Square Enix needed someone who saw plans for 30 mini games and went on a tirade trashing and publicly shaming everyone for these retarded ideas. And it goes the other way too, you have ninja theory taking 5 years to make an 8 hour game. A game that will likely have 5 hours of walking if its anything like the first. There has to a middle ground between 100 hour games or 8 hour campaigns. I think Spiderman 2 was perfect. 15 hour campaign, 5 hours of open world side content and another 5 to platinum. GOW, FF16, and even Ghost of Tsushima were just way too long at 50-60 hours. Make games shorter and they wont take 5 years and $200 million to make.