this is conjecture, but i think the growth of the “indie” tier of games has bifurcated the market and made AAA titles larger and more conservative. makes no sense to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a game concept that’s even slightly different from something with proven mass-market appeal when a studio that’s a hundredth the size with a thousandth of the budget might make something way weirder and still hit a tenth of your sales goal. it’s just not maximizing your return.
The AAA style: open world, someone calling you to tell you to meet them at story quest marker. You can quick teleport right next to the marker. A bunch of markers for side quests. Crafting consumables and sometimes rare armor that needs 10 side quest tokens. The story quest is a gauntlet of killing a bunch of dudes before fighting a boss. Cutscene. New ability. Beat the game. Some kind of movement ability unlocked.
this is conjecture, but i think the growth of the “indie” tier of games has bifurcated the market and made AAA titles larger and more conservative. makes no sense to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into a game concept that’s even slightly different from something with proven mass-market appeal when a studio that’s a hundredth the size with a thousandth of the budget might make something way weirder and still hit a tenth of your sales goal. it’s just not maximizing your return.
The AAA style: open world, someone calling you to tell you to meet them at story quest marker. You can quick teleport right next to the marker. A bunch of markers for side quests. Crafting consumables and sometimes rare armor that needs 10 side quest tokens. The story quest is a gauntlet of killing a bunch of dudes before fighting a boss. Cutscene. New ability. Beat the game. Some kind of movement ability unlocked.
This is why I hate every cookie cutter open world game.
But then they also do those things badly (thinking of the Suicide Squad GaaS here).