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[Syt]

I dunno, fully destrcutable environments have their drawbacks. I remember an old build of Starbound (Terraria in space) and getting excited about a dungeon/bunker I found. Only to realize I could bypass the traps and deadly enemies by digging around it and into the vault, because destructable everything. Which made it a bit boring.

[Josquius]

I don't know the technical details but lets assume what you've put out that trivially easy to have objects able to move about. 1) I think they'd still need to have more effort put in as you could see them now from all angles so all angles would need to look good. 2) There would need to be meaningful things to do with all these objects that can move about otherwise it'd just be frustrating to players. Only so many times you want to smash everything to bits vs. try to use these moveable objects in some fashion.

They're 3D models. Unless an object is complex and definitely only ever going to be visible from one side and they know that from the start they're usually complete.

And I don't know. Useful objects would certainly be good. But even just seeing a shoot out in a shop with things flying off shelves, trees being hacked to bits in the forest, etc... would add to the atmosphere- and as I write I realise as well as doing something with an object there's also doing something with the absence of an object to consider.

We've seen what happens when they don't focus on narrative choices. We end up with what a lot of time is spent with in Ubisoft games, doing a whole lot of busy tasks / a whole lot of nothing.

Or Deus Ex. A masterpiece with myriad ways to solve problems.
Or classic Fallout or to a lesser extent Bethesda games (they suffer from trying to offer full interactivity in a giant world)

Also, do recall that all of this is done not as pure art but as a business. Unless there are signs that players enjoy games more when they can interact with everything, why bother?

Art and creating a good game is part of it. Though YMMV depending on the developer.
Certainly I expect this is key to the reason.

[garbon]

I don't know the technical details but lets assume what you've put out that trivially easy to have objects able to move about. 1) I think they'd still need to have more effort put in as you could see them now from all angles so all angles would need to look good. 2) There would need to be meaningful things to do with all these objects that can move about otherwise it'd just be frustrating to players. Only so many times you want to smash everything to bits vs. try to use these moveable objects in some fashion.

They're 3D models. Unless an object is complex and definitely only ever going to be visible from one side and they know that from the start they're usually complete.

Again I don't know the technical aspects but intuitively what you've described seems...wasteful?  I get that the 3d model would exist but I don't see why they would put in as much detail on sides that aren't intended to be shown. Similar to say one sided staging in a play.

And I don't know. Useful objects would certainly be good. But even just seeing a shoot out in a shop with things flying off shelves, trees being hacked to bits in the forest, etc... would add to the atmosphere- and as I write I realise as well as doing something with an object there's also doing something with the absence of an object to consider.

But surely that would require more work. Let's take your tree object. They could be setting up each static tree object with all its individual components modeled as separate objects (leaves, branches, trunk, bark, roots, etc.) or it could just be one object that is the tree. No need for each individual object as individual piece with its own physics if you aren't planning to have every part move / break apart.