You can hide chat and you'll barely even notice it's online. And I don't see how it's grindy - in fact they made the base game so easy your companion can kill everyone for you.
If you just play the base game content from 2011, it's 8 completely voice acted stories that are interconnected into one big story. And it's free.
Do they think openai invented the concept of generative ai, because that's what their statement implies?