You can use a butter knife as a tire lever in a pinch, or the handle side of other flatware. Chain tools are a necessity, since manufacturers would have to either offer chains for every different number of links someone would feasibly have to install on a bike, or weaken the chain or make it wider to be accessible with "standard" hand tools. A thinner chain is a necessity to have more gears without obnoxious wheel spacing and derailer travel.
The tool you pointed at at is a chain whip. You used to not need a chain whip to replace sprocket clusters, but the old way of removing a freewheel still needed the proper shim to lock the freewheel mechanism, which was built into the sprocket. Now the freewheeling mechanism is built into the hub, which means the sprocket cluster has to remain put so you can unlock the lockring (instead of spinning the wheel). You /could/ do it by just holding the cassette with your hand, but I don't recommend it :)
Although bike tech is in many ways suffering from the same march of "more tech, sleeker package" that makes parts smaller, weaker, and with shorter service lifetimes in other industries, most the specialized tools needed to work on bikes haven't changed in some decades.
The tool you pointed at at is a chain whip. You used to not need a chain whip to replace sprocket clusters, but the old way of removing a freewheel still needed the proper shim to lock the freewheel mechanism, which was built into the sprocket. Now the freewheeling mechanism is built into the hub, which means the sprocket cluster has to remain put so you can unlock the lockring (instead of spinning the wheel). You /could/ do it by just holding the cassette with your hand, but I don't recommend it :)
Although bike tech is in many ways suffering from the same march of "more tech, sleeker package" that makes parts smaller, weaker, and with shorter service lifetimes in other industries, most the specialized tools needed to work on bikes haven't changed in some decades.