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.
Graphical emphasis goes back to the early days of gaming. The Sega Master System was at least partially advertised for its hardware and rendering capabilities compared to the NES.
Yet at the same time it not only had a much much smaller lineup of games to offer, it didn't have the kind of punch of big, enjoyable, audience pleasing hits like the NES did.
What really changed was probably that the limits for graphical fidelity has slowly moved from being a hardware hurdle, to how much time and work must be invested in producing the assets and art itself.
Plus, because of how much more modern hardware's capable of, you have greater complexities when it comes to applying that art. IE, more and more objects and decor that can be included in a scene, to try to bring it closer in line with what we might see in reality. Which then requires tools (or a fuckton of time) to streamline the process of actually placing all of those objects and decor throughout every scene/map/space in an entire game. It just really adds up.