Japanese games tend to focus creating an interesting plot while western games focuses on character development.

I could be wrong but I always felt its the other way around. JRPGs always give you a group of friends. You're supposed to "befriend" those people and its very focused on character development and character driven storytelling.

For example in Tales of Berseria you have the sexy and dark Velvet, the quirky Magilou, the cute little Laphicet and the cool guys Eizen and Rokurou. In FFXV you have the sympathetic hero Noctis, the quirky skinny Prompto, the smart Ignis and the calm, strong big guy Gladiolus.

Western games on the other hand focus more on an action story. In Horizon Zero Dawn, your main objective is to find out what happened in your world. In God of War, your main objective is to scatter moms ashes. In Assassins Creed, you fight the Templars, etc. The characters are established early on and the story revolves around the world or a narrative objective.

Telling a long winded story means your going to have to cut a few technical corners inorder to focus narrative.

I don't think they have to cut technical corners. I think japanese devs just like anime visuals, and the weeb audience likes that too. I think thats why they choose those graphics.