OK -- I am an idiot. It is not an NVMe SSD.
This is what I got from the BIOS: SK HYNIX SC308 series Solid State Drive 2.5" and M.2 512GB
Let me try removing the NVMe kext and see if that solves it.
EDIT: It appears that the EFI Folder does NOT have an NVMe kext and the patch in config.plist is also set to "disabled".
EDIT2: I removed a "SCMHelper" file located in EFI > drivers > UEFI folder and now I am back into the installer using the boot args -v -igfxvesa