@Dart, how do you judge how much passion is put in to a project? Isn't it very possible that the Farcry dev's put just as much passion it to their game but are passionate about different things than you are.
It's because I care about how people work and I tend to follow development of certain games closely and I study the key people involved in development and under what conditions they work.
It sometimes happens when games I expect to be shit turn out to be surprises. We all know what happened to DE:IW - and I expected nothing but crap from the sequel. But the more I heard from the developers at Eidos Montreal - the more I started to turn around. Canadian developers also tend to function a bit differently from american developers.
Mostly, it's about watching their faces when they speak - and picking up on small details that most people would probably miss, especially when they're speaking about their design process and what they're trying to do with the games in question. In this case, I listened carefully for whether they understood Deus Ex - and what they took from that game. It became clear to me that this wasn't just a job for them, it was a dream come true and they knew what they were doing.
I'm sure the Far Cry developers are passionate (most people are), they just don't have the freedom to develop the game as they see fit, because the publisher mandate is harsher and more conservatively about playing it safe for profit - and the development cycle is quite short for the scope of the games in question. Which means there's no way to pull off a truly meaningful free-form experience.
It's the same with the Assassin's Creed games - because the games are actually really huge and they have short development cycles on top, which - rationally - means factory line products based on blueprints. It's inevitable.
There's no artist in the world who can be all that he or she wants to be under those restrictions. It's basic human psychology, really.
DE:HR was a rare exception, because the developers were set free to create a Deus Ex sequel with only a handful of suit restrictions, the worst being the boss fights you mentioned.
Really, given the climate of the industry during that time, I consider DE:HR a near miracle. DE:HR along with other very rare examples like The Witcher 2 really helped pave the way for developers of future AAA games.
Unfortunately, they weren't huge hits - but they were still quite successful.
