without a corresponding change to the slot time, proposal/attestation sub-slot time, and/or gas limit, the reduction in block verification time could exacerbate the pre-existing timing games mentioned. in other words, if the protocol does not take advantage of the additional “slack”, then we can reasonably expect other parties to do so.
as you mentioned, the concern with a gas limit increase is a faster rate of state growth.
one item that was not mentioned is the potential for more collaborative block building schemes, which are limited in the current regime because some entity must ultimately execute the aggregate state transition and compute the post-execution state root (e.g. proposer suffix ILs).