Back in the day, Asscreed 1-4 and Far Cry 2-3, there were constant improvements and innovations in level design, mechanics, graphics, cool shit to do basically.
Recently the 2 “highly praised” Star Wars “open world” games essentially haven’t moved the needle but are just Generic Game with a star wars skin
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The new Open Worlds, firstly we have the Horizon Dawn killers, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring. Exploration focused game design, unique mechanics include unrestricted interaction and massive dungeons hidden behind tiny doors. Honourable mention to Death Stranding where deep mechanics are overshadowed by top notch facial animation by famous actors
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Hero shooters, not a fan, but probably huge improvements and gameplay mechanics in Apex, Overwatch, Fortnight, maybe someone could chime in
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RPG, Baldurs Gate 3, an impressive step up from Witcher 3 where every choice is considered, voice acted, millions of lines of dialogue, every player thought predicted by the designers.
4 The indies - usually the place for innovation but recent indies are super polished for small teams, bug free, fully thought out, addictive game loop, Balatro, Tactical Breach Wizards, Animal Well,Thank you for Coming.
In summary i think the industry is just spread out across more budgets, team sizes and countries now, no longer are the days when western Devs come up with fun or innovative AAA games, the focus more is on casual appeal and form over function
As I see it, the difference is that we now have capable game engines freely available. Indie studios can, for the most part, offer the same quality of gameplay. AAA studios can only really differentiate themselves by how much content they shove into a game.
In particular, this also somewhat limits creativity of AAA games. In order to shove tons of content into there, the player character has to be a human, the gameplay has to involve an open world, there has to be a quest system etc…