Yeah, it seems most AAA developers have turned to crap, and while great indy studios exist they are limited by the resources they have.
Lets see, off the top of my head of number of video games that had both large budgets and good plots in the last ten years....it's hard to come up with a lot. There isn't many. Off the top of my head I come up with The Last of Us, Witcher 3, maybe the last God of War game, maybe some Yakuza games, Red Dead Redemption, and the first two Mass Effects (to be honest I never was as big on Mass Effect as most people.) The cupboard is pretty bare in that respect.
Everything else if from long ago in a better video game era for that stuff. It's a shame we can't get back into that. Too many developers either think they can't make the money they want outside of online multiplayer stuff or they are too scared to try something new or risky. They aren't going to take a risk when they can just milk people with microtransactions. The video game industry really went downhill when business types and suits started taking creative and content control away from the people in the past that actually gave a damn about making good games.
Last of us 1 = beaten it like a Torre dick. One of the rare games I liked so much that I jumped onto the multiplayer to see what THAT side of things was like. Luff the game! Naughty dog has pushed, and take this with a grain of salt.. amazing visuals and stories that do NOT fail to entertain. They are one of those 'if only they didnt do THIS one thing' kinda guys, cuz Uncharted was that way. And in a way, Last of us was that way. Lemme 'splain: Amazeballs. VERY interactive. Great RPG elements, great set pieces.. but very, VERY short. (Iknorite, its like the people that want even more Lot Rings and extended edition just wasnt enough lol)
Witcher = on my to-do list. You ever have a series you wanna start but you cant bypass the ones youre working on, right now? Cross-media example: I wanna start boardwalk empire, but I'm finishing up star trek voyager. And since I'm on some damned sci fi kick, these days.. I'll probably watch star trek enterprise, next. Pushing boardwalk back even further. AND THEN I WANNA START BATTLESTAR GALACTICA! See, cuz I watched all the stargates. Literally all of them from start to finish. And the closure is great. Not in watching the last episode of everythhing, that sucks in its own way. But I adored stargate universe cuz it was damn good character interaction inside of a sci fi setting. In my opinion. ANYWAY! closure that it died 10 years ago and I wont have to harbor ANY HOPE whatsoever... the writers strike of 2004+ killed off my lust for watching TV shows before they are finished.
(DAMN YOU LOST! DAMN YOU HEROES! DAMN YOU DEADWOOD! DAMN YOU CARNIVALE!)
God of war games were damned good. Hard enough to present a challenge. Never cheap. Unless your coordination sucks. Had a roommate or three who couldnt do the spikey beam walking parts. Or the timing parts. Or the QTE. So I got home and he passed the controller to me, yada yada.. it was a collective effort. Saved us both from series burnout. SPeaking of burnout.. we killed off 3 in 2005 in a year of drunken, high, lawbreaking goodness all around. Good times.
Barely got started on Yakuza. PS+ gives out free monthlies and I got 3 directors edition off them ~ but my subscrip' ended a month later sooo.. never started. Sadness. :\ Its on the agenda.
Red Dead ~ love it, but.. feels incomplete. The way GTA games do. Like they get what they DO try for, they do it right. But the game feels incomplete, apart from story missions. Like GTA 5 did. A heist game with barely any heists. A gas station robbery option with barely any gas stations you can rob. Tons of NPCs to interact with, but only the once. Golf, tennis and yoga games... but you cant go see a game, watch the dogs race, go to the comedy club like in 4... etc. Hollow. Red Dead makes me laugh, like its slightly skewed from reality enough to make it 'jarring' like a stephen king novel. But funny enough, and good gameplay enough to maintain.
Mass effect is great. But hey, Andromeda. Andromeda is like a mobile game addon ~ enough to satisfy a thirst, but it is, like rogue one or solo, going nowhere but still nice to see.*salut to that* Replayed the mass effect games a few times. Reminds me of a remix of star control games. Decent story, cheesy gameplay decisions abound sometimes, but still pretty damned good.
I'm trying to finish off old things I never started. In a way, cuz I didnt play 'kiddie' systems back when, I never got to appreciate GBA and Nintendo DS stuff. I was all about high replay, hundred hour games. Vice City let me roam around for days, Morrowind didnt reward me in gold for exploring, it just let me map for the sake of seeing whats around the bend, whats in that crypt? Will there ever be an enemy who challenges me, again? And there always was. Just never where I expected it. It took 40 hours to get to the other side of the map, cuz exploration is seecondary to progress is secondary to leveling is sec... blah blah, you already know.
And on that note, *clicks 'post* I'm long winded.
