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 think this is more a product of an individual's stage of life. In my youth I wanted stories because I had boundless free time to pour into subpar gameplay. Now that I'm older and have less free time, the minute to minute gameplay needs to be super tight or I won't bother to slog through it regardless of how grand your story is.
That said, the best of video game writing is still very much worthwhile, but there are precious few titles that can claim to achieve such lofty heights. I can probably count the number of titles on one hand after thirty years of play.