I think this has more traction because of the way the generation started, and how xbox was marketed.

There was the "it eats monsters for breakfast" "its 30% faster than the PS5, games will look and run noticeably better than on playstation" ect ect.
Ontop of that, there was the "60fps only mantra" as a reason not to get a PS5.  You have xbox fans, and xbox influencers backing all that 4k60 stuff.
(even a few offical xbox people, were saying this stuff)

Then it turns out, 3years into the generation, that playstation 1st party for the most part, have various modes of play, usually a "performance mode" and a Graphics one, and thus most of their first party games actually have 60fps modes to play them in.

Meanwhile the reverse has been true for xbox.  Like 1 out of 10 or something had 60fps at launch.

It all just blows up... when it really shouldn't even be a issue.
Does it matter if Hellblade 2, is shorter than the first game is?
Does it matter if its 1080p and 30fps ?

Not really... its still going to be a fantastic looking game, esp the cgi parts (cutscenes), before the gameplay parts.
Its a visually good looking game.

The first game was 30fps too right? I mean on the xbox one's.
No one was complaining back then.

No, I don't. You can keep your strawman at home.

And as I wrote several times, a 40 fps option (performance mode) would be nice. I can also tolerate 30 fps (I do it quite often when I play handheld games), but I prefer at least 40 fps.

I thought it was rather silly that anyone thought those consoles would be 4K, let alone 4K60fps. I mean, GPU progress was in the gutter for years and pixel jump from HD to 4K is bigger than any console generation so far, so it was kinda funny to see anyone expecting those consoles to pull that off.

Devs are doing exactly the same thing they've been doing consistently for several generations - dumping frame rate and resolution for more visual bling - give them console with equivalent of 4x 4090 inside and they will do the same thing if they feel like visuals are more important than fps/resolution.

Fair enough but you were talking about MS "controlling" devs on their payroll as oppose to the devs just organically creating the performance profile that works for their vision, forgive me for seeing that as an attack on their creative freedom.

Devs should have the freedom to make the kind of game they want to make at the end of the day; the level of detail and character rendering in Hellblade II wouldn't be possible at 4K/60fps for instance, so being restricted to that would prevent Ninja Theory from realizing their vision.

No matter how powerful your hardware is, you can always create more detailed visuals at 30fps than 60fps, or at a lower resolution, and if the developer wants to prioritize detail for the sake of immersion, that should be their choice to make.

4k is nice, it really is. But unless someone has a 4080 or better it isn't a realistic target. 1440p should be the target as should 60 fps. 30 fps is awful.

No matter how powerful your hardware is, you can always create more detailed visuals at 15fps than 30fps. So if the developer wants to prioritize detail for the sake of immersion, you would be happy?

Using an extreme to discredit a logic only works when such use is logic itself. 30 fps is enough to make a usable and enjoyable experience while 15 fps is simply not. So no, supporting devs ability too reasonably choose their focus does not mean supporting devs ability to do so unreasonably.

How about 16.67 fps? Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, LoZ: OoT PAL...

15 fps is unreasonable?

I played a lot of N64 games with 16.667 fps (unfortunately I only had access to PAL versions), many PSP games with 20 fps, and a lot of point&click adventures with 15 fps and less.