I'm not saying story is a bad thing. It's not, but it seems like a lot of devs focus so heavily on coming up with an engaging story and good visuals that they forget to actually make the game fun to play.
I think about some of the games I've played over the years, and a lot of my favorites either had fairly limited or even downright absurd plots that basically boil down to an excuse to make the gameplay loop happen.
Just a random musing.
I've only ever preordered two games, and somehow got lucky with both; Ghostbusters: The video game in 2009 (basically a third-person shooter but with the proton pack), and Deadpool in 2013 (Think arkham asylum-style fighting sequences, but with a more forgiving combo system, also killing, lots of killing).
generally speaking though, yeah. preordering always seemed like rolling the dice even before the woke garbage got forced into gaming without gamers' consent...