The games industry is undergoing a 'generational change,' says Epic CEO Tim Sweeney: 'A lot of games are released with high budgets, and they're not selling'
Modern Ubisoft are the prime example of this. They churn out loads of games every year and they're just the same old formulaic crap that you've seen before. How can you have so much money and so many studios but you can't get decent voice actors or writers? How can your AAA games still have clunky mechanics and absolutely no original ideas?
Oh look, it's another shitty enemy outpost, let's scout it with my drone/bird/binoculars and mark all the enemies so I can see them through walls. Maybe I'll not use stealth on the next one because it's a waste of time as the game is piss easy anyway and I'll be able to kill all of the enemies in a straight fight. And the reward is the same either way. Now I've found [collectible item] 37 of 200, I wonder where the rest of them are in this massive vapid open world?
I lived the collectibles in Anacronox, they were little golden taco trophies and their lore was that they used to be highly sought after until it came out that TACO stood for Totally Arbitrary Collectible Object and it tanked the market.
You meet a guy that held on till the bitter end but finally had to sell off his collection because he needed the money, so you give him any you find for trinkets and stuff to help him rebuild his collection.
A reminder, AAA, means nothing. It is a self-appointed term for marketing. Because it means nothing customers apply whatever they think it means. Just like AAAA is also pointless, and stupid.
It's the ubisoft lookout tower sinulator, you will like it while you mindlessly run around the map to fulfill idiotic chore tasks that trigger your ocd
I always wondered if I'd like to write for video games (I write sketch, character, musical comedy) but honestly there's probably very little fun in it, as you're writing 95% one-sided conversations that are variations on "go to place, bring hack item"
The best written games are all indies now. Text and story heavy games are pretty common, with varying amounts of "game" to carry the story. Check out Citizen Sleeper, Disco Elysium, or Book of Hours.