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.
Wokesters have an easier time writing scripts than developing tech skills. It's easier to write a woke script and browbeat tech bros into accepting their ideology than it is to develop the technical prowess themselves. Thus we have more narrative driven shit to push The Message.
That and crafting good gameplay is extremely difficult and doesn't have thousands of years of tradecraft to back it.
even before the woke mind virus things were trending that way, though. I don't hate story in a game, I just feel like sometimes the story takes a back seat to actually fun gameplay, which turns what should be an enjoyable experience into a slog...