I feel like episodic release is detrimental to the "just play blind" kind of immersive, branching game that UT/DR is.

I liked UT despite how short it is, or maybe because of how short it is. It feels concise and focused right on the point, while DR feels like piles of throw-away bloat throw in just for sake of padding with hidden hints of some grand plot that you need whole community to make a schizo theories about. I genuinely doubt that 90% of characters you face will have any meaningful role in DT world. Even the bosses, the spade king will probably just sit in his basement doing nothing. He was brought to the world solely to be an antagonist in ch1 and disappeared right away to make space for another antagonist, no backstory, no future, just an obstacle for the spectacle. Compare this to the UT bosses, where everyone(except maybe Muffet) was living part of the world who was here for a reason and their existence(which is at your hands) affects the world around them on much wider scale than your little adventure.