Don't buy AAA games at release, and instead try out popular indie titles. They're usually a quarter of the price and some of them have become my favourite games of all time. Indie games have small teams of passionate devs who have total creative control.
AAA games will typically release a "game of the year" edition a year or so after release with twice the amount of content the original game had for half the price.
Nowadays buying games at release is doing yourself a disservice. You pay way more for way less than someone 6+ months later who gets it on sale with fixes already done
But then you'll miss out on the pre-order exclusives. How can you even play the game if you don't get that car with the special dickbutt livery? How will you defeat enemies if you don't get that special cabbage-shooting gun?
real (my passion for gaming has slowly atrophied from childhood as capitalism has taken hold, while passion for creating anything more than a busted cash-grab has long gone)
I hate to defend Ubisoft, but this isn't fair at all.
That "splash of paint" is the world design of entirely unique locations, a full story, a cast of characters, and new arsenals of weapons.
As an amateur dev I have a bit of insight into this. I can, and have, made an entire FPS system in less than a day. A play that can move, weapons to shoot, and enemies that can target, follow and shoot at the player with the same weapon system. That part is not where the work is.
It took two weeks to build on that foundation to barely make one small level. And I didn't even manage to fit in any story.
The point is, those mechanics that to you are "the game" take infinitely less time to make than everything "the game" takes place in.
I'd also say, Immortals Fenix Rising was excellent, complete and bug free as far as I remember. It's too bad they dropped it right next to AC Valhalla and nobody played it.
I can safely say that unless their design philosophy changes significantly I will never 100% an Ubisoft cookie cutter open world game because nothing they've produced is worth a hundred hours of boring repetitive gameplay.
It's crazy because they have all the tools to make a successful game. Their AI NPCs are cutting edge, their environment models are so good that it was used to restore that one chapel that burnt down, etc. They just choose to make the same game every time.