I agree. It is almost like they spent more time changing aspects of the game play that did not to be changed and less on story and character development. I was always looking for phones in D1 trying to hear the back story, now I could care less - they don't interest me - they are blah. The stories the NPC's told were great as well - now we have a guy sitting there telling another who is doing pushup his dead grandmother did them better - so blah. Clearing the factions locations to get to the boss was fun and entertaining, not so much now. Maybe it is me, but I think they could have done more development as well.
I really liked how they incororated real life cutscenes in the first game and would have liked to have seen something similar in the sequel. I'm really liking the game but I agree the story isn't portrayed as good as in the first game. I'm hoping there's more story to come - which I believe there is later in the year.
I'm gonna agree as well here and the fact that the footage that you find throughout the game does send you into an automatic cut scene is lacking. Hell I didn't even know I had footage of things until I was messing around in my menus and found it. Then I was like wow...this would have been great in game and not in my menu.