Enebias: I like any kind of game; I was just observing that mature themes in gaming seem pretty rare today, and more so in big budget titles.
Well, my point is that I don't believe this to be a recent development, I think mature themes in gaming have always been an exception, not just today. That's what I meant by singling out Planescape Torment, for example - PS:T is not an example for how games used to be, it is an outstanding game no matter which generation of games you compare it with. And if you just look at individual titles, you could prove all kinds of theories, even the opposite of yours. Doom didn't have more mature themes than Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider (1996) didn't have better characterization than Tomb Raider (2013), the story and setting of The Temple of Elemental Evil didn't have more depth compared to the Mass Effect series etc.
Regarding the easier difficulty, I can't say, as I don't mind easier games that much and prefer that to the frustration of having to reload every few minutes, so maybe you're right in that many AAA games try to cater to more casual audiences or that they set more store in visuals and cinematics than in programming good AI, but that would be an entirely different discussion.