Makes sense. The higher the fidelity, the more dev time it takes for each player option, so when you're looking for features to cut during crunch time it's easy to see character customization options as a waste of time.

I think I've come to associate graphical fidelity with bland gameplay and storytelling. All of the best looking games out there are by Ubisoft or EA or one of these other big game companies, and every single one of them has so much money dumped into it that it becomes "too big to fail" and that means that the choices made by the game designers are extremely conservative. Can't take any chances and risk making the game fun, just make it like every other game in its genre so that it makes its money back.