Back in the day, Asscreed 1-4 and Far Cry 2-3, there were constant improvements and innovations in level design, mechanics, graphics, cool shit to do basically.
Recently the 2 “highly praised” Star Wars “open world” games essentially haven’t moved the needle but are just Generic Game with a star wars skin
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The new Open Worlds, firstly we have the Horizon Dawn killers, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Exploration focused game design, unique mechanics include unrestricted interaction and massive dungeons hidden behind tiny doors. Honourable mention to Death Stranding where deep mechanics are overshadowed by top notch facial animation by famous actors
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Hero shooters, not a fan, but probably huge improvements and gameplay mechanics in Apex, Overwatch, Fortnight, maybe someone could chime in
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RPG, Baldurs Gate 3, an impressive step up from Witcher 3 where every choice is considered, voice acted, millions of lines of dialogue, every player thought predicted by the designers.
4 The indies - usually the place for innovation but recent indies are super polished for small teams, bug free, fully thought out, addictive game loop, Balatro, Tactical Breach Wizards, Animal Well,Thank you for Coming.
In summary i think the industry is just spread out across more budgets, team sizes and countries now, no longer are the days when western Devs come up with fun or innovative AAA games, the focus more is on casual appeal and form over function
How much innovation can you get when you have to spend millions of dollars on large teams to develop games now, compared to even 10 years ago? It’s not really all that surprising that companies want to play it safe. It’s a large investment, and they don’t know if there will be a return on it.
That doesn’t even get into the fact that there’s only so many combinations of things you can do in a video game.
This is a fair point, but these companies have enough money that they could set aside a small team that just tries new things. Whether the games succeed or fail shouldn’t matter. It should be a testing ground for finding new things to base a new IP around or just add to existing series or something.
The team should be allowed to take their time and just make something they’re passionate about and players should be able to get involved. Feedback should be taken seriously and used to improve what the team puts out.
I know this is an absolute pipe dream, but I wish companies would do this for the sake of keeping the business moving forward if not for the players.