They prioritized telling the story they want to tell above being a good game or allowing player freedom. Walking next to talking people is not gameplay, and having the player swing from being a god of death when it's not plot relevant to being unable to kill a few guys when the plot demands it is both bad storytelling and bad gameplay. If you can't tell your story without taking away control from the player, then make a movie.

Further, It's like someone told them "Unskippable cutscenes are bad", so instead of removing them, they said "Well, if we make the player hold 'W' to walk during the dialogue, it's not technically a cutscene, problem solved. It's still unskippable though."

I could watch a western movie while holding forward on an unplugged controller and have a similar experience.