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.
eh, it goes further back than that. The series that keeps coming to mind for me is Legacy of Kain. Rich world. Dark, twisted characters. incredible story.
...aaannnddd shitty controls/boring gameplay.
It's a style of game dev that got mainstreamed by elitist arseholes who went to university and they've all decided to adopt the exact same philosophy. Plus, it comes with the added bonus of them not needing to look at much code to make something.
You see this with the Ubisoft school of thought, I remember seeing articles being dripped out where they let it slip that their UI vomit was a very deliberate process and they think it's a good idea. Much like how when you see these woke artists who all adopt the exact same art style and colour scheme it's because they all went to the same educational institutions.
...seems like it would be pretty easy to troll them on that...just act super patronizing about how they totally didnt mean to make such a monumentally hideous UI, it just sort of came out that way, lmao.