udienowplz: Does anyone still have much interest in today's games, these days? I don't find myself looking forward to many new titles, especially E3-standard. What do you guys think?
For AAA's, it's pretty much been the same for me since 2013-2014. Eg, Dishonored 1, Bioshock Infinite & The Talos Principle were the three last AAA games at the "tail end" of the stuff I like. I have zero interest in "Battle Royale" trends or online multi-player in general. Although part of it could be subjective "gamer aging", I think it's more like "franchise fatigue" (getting really sick of publishers being totally incapable of making new games which aren't spammed sequels / remakes / re-releases). Stretching 90's IP to late 2000s is one thing but will we still have Tomb Raider, Hitman, Assassins Creed, Call of Duty, etc, by 2030? 2050? 2100? 3100?
udienowplz: I just feel that these more dated titles have something of a... "Raw" element to them? Like they're really their own games and have that self-awareness to them that most modern games don't seem to have, in my opinion. Could be my age getting ahead of me, though.
It's not just "aging". I don't like the feel of many post 2014 AAA's but I love pre-2012 stuff like Bioshock 1, and yet that doesn't scale backward per decade. Eg, 10 years ago back in 2007-2009 I never felt "Bioshock / Dragon Age Origins are rubbish because they're new" just because I previously liked System Shock or Baldur's Gate. Going back another 10 years, I also never felt "Quake & Thief are rubbish because they're new" in 1997-98 just because I liked DOS games. Going back further, I never felt DOS games were rubbish just because my first was a ZX Spectrum, etc. Even today I can and do play titles from 64kb 1980's emulators through to 2013, and yet there really is something objectively different this time around post 2014-ish where whatever previously made the feel of AAA games immediately "click" with me just seems to be missing. It's not just nostalgia either, eg, I completely missed Unreal (1998) the first time around but immediately liked the "feel" of the game and Unreal 1 engine (same as Deus Ex) playing for the first time in 2016 with no prior "nostalgia hook" there to overlook any faults.
Objectively the "feel" of the games has changed over time. Eg, the "raw" feel you talk about I identify with actually having full continuous uninterrupted control of your character (eg, Doom, Quake, Thief, Bioshock, etc) whilst modern "cinematic-first" games constantly snatch control back & forth in the most irritating way possible via micro-cutscenes, QTE's and turning every trivial action (picking up something, jumping over a 1ft high wall / climbing a ladder, etc) into some drawn-out over-scripted, animation heavy contexual sequences. What the newer games gain in "sparkly bits" they often lose vs older ones in fluidity of play.
There are also genre-level objective changes too ("streamlined for the casual audience...", etc). Eg, "Old school" RTS's have virtually been dumbed down into glorified MOBA's mostly because it's hard to do a decent console port of the former "designed for keyb & mouse" PC exclusives that neatly fits controllers and 10ft UI (consoles). For FPS's, fewer but more bullet spongy enemies is due to being designed around slower-turning "thumb-scrolling" movements of game controllers vs a large number of monsters requiring many more rapid mouse optimised "wrist-flick" fast turns. For same reason, the focus on aiming precision skill in shooters has been replaced with auto-aim and more "upgrade grind" as some 'substitute'.
Developers have also changed.
"2018 Single-player AAA's are too difficult to make" seems to be the new mantra of many lazy devs whose "can't do" is more like "won't do" purely because it's easier to throw an effortless loot-box saturated "Battle Royale" clone together than pull off a new Bioshock. Mobile gaming and related "pay2win" / MT / lootbox economics is an ever-encroaching cancer we never had to deal with in the 90's. Post EA-acquisition Bioware single-player RPG's have moved more into "mostly filler grind fests", ie, gone from like 66% main quest / 33% side-quest ratio's (DAO, NWN) into almost the reverse for DAI (35% main quest / 65% obvious filler), and that's on top of the
usual EA dumbing down vs earlier titles. Dumbed down sequels made +15 years later are generally failing because they were bought by pushy publishers who want to flog every acquired IP to death yet also lack the original team / personnel who gave the earlier games "that feel" in the first place.
"We don't make games only franchises" Ubisoft is still making re-textured variants of Far Cry 3 whilst modern "Tom Clancy" games have almost nothing remotely in common with the earlier "smart tactical shooters" (Rainbow Six / Rogue Spear) for which the rights to his name were awarded in the first place. And no-one loves performance crippling DRM like layering VMProtect on top of multiple layers of Denuvo quite like Ubisoft.
For Square Enix, Deus Ex: HR was just a lucky one-off fluke and Deus Ex: MD goes more hand in hand with Invisible War in being "dumb and dumber" when comparing 2 & 4 vs 1 & 3. (Mankind Divided 15hrs main quest length is half the game that Deus Ex 1 & HR's 25-30hr were for a reason - the dev (Eidos Montreal) wanted a proper full 30hr, but rumor is Square Enix told them to split into 2x "unofficial" parts after the success of episodic Hitman. However, since it had a weak plot plus was also crammed with garbage like tiered pre-orders and one-time use micro-transactions, the resulting "mixed / negative" Steam reviews and lower sales means "Mankind Divided Part 2" probably won't be made, which makes half-baked Mankind Divided feel even less of a proper Deus Ex game than it already did). And then there's
Thief 4 (2014) audio engine vs
Thief 1 (1997) audio engine (use headphones). Seriously, I can't even...
Anyway after that long rant whilst I've lost interest in modern AAA's, there have also been quite a lot more newer games from smaller studio's like Larian (Divinity Original Sin), Frictional (SOMA), etc, and far too many great Indie's / adventure / puzzle games to list individually here, plus a several hundred strong collection of Golden oldies to replay are more than enough to fill up my available gaming time without even looking at or worrying about EA / Ubisoft / Square Enix's future "games as a service" planned 'direction' anymore.