The first game was pretty good but the world was very static and boring. You never really come across anything interesting happening in the world. Sometimes you see random dudes fighting dinosaurs but that gets old fast. In the towns you can jump on NPCs heads and they don't react.
Because it's cross-gen I am unfortunately expecting the same again. Can I push those NPCs off the bridge?
It was not an hardware problem, many open world have scripted and dynamic events.
It was probably a mix of lack of time\money, the need to build a world from zero with a new engine and different priorities.
I think the sequel is gonna be what the original idea for zero dawn was, like many sequel who are a gigantic upgrade over the first title.
But yeah, to see the game in his final form we have to wait for the third game in 5 years from now ( if jimbo doesn't decide to keep crossgen alive for the entire gen of course)
I doubt that you are gonna be able to do gta5\rdr2 stuff with npcs like pushing them around with adeguate reactions.
At best you are gonna have a precanned animation when they stumble and get mad at you, i predict the same stiffness of the first title when it comes to npcs interactions unfortunately.