And why exacly does the full 3D interior add nothing to gameplay?

Nicolas' post brings to mind a question that I hope will not offend.

SH5 appears to have (at least) two AI engines running simultaneously, that for the interactive 3-D crew on your boat and the AI which will manage the other objects in the SH5 world, aircraft, merchants, warships and what not.

Which has had developmental priority I wonder?

With finite resources available if the developers manage to have a solid and challenging enemy AI while creating an interesting and variable crew AI they may well have succeeded in pulling a very large rabbit out of a probably limited sized hat.

On the otherhand if the crew constitutes purely reactive entities with severely limited scripts and actions that aspect of the game might get very old very fast.

Good Hunting