It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that companies slowly lose the ability to create fun and creative games after a decade or more of success. Their innovation is slowly strangled out of them by the shareholder demand of infinite growth, which results in extremely conservative decision making. People who had passion move on or get old and lose their drive. This is not specific to the game industry, it happens in every industry.
Game series have been going to shit since there were games. Now it's Mass Effect and Dragon Age. In the early 90s it was Ultima. In the last 90s it was Might and Magic. In the late 00s it was WoW.
Putting social issues/commentary in games/movies/TVs isn't new either, it just bothers you now because you're old, out of touch, and generally pissed off at everything.
Yes an NPC in ME:A going out of it's way to tell you it's trans is ham fisted. I'm pretty confident there was ham fisted 'save the planet' or 'anti war' or whatever stuff in early games too but I just never noticed because there wasn't an internet forum full of grumpy old men to complain endlessly about it.
You lament the death of excellent old game series like Mass Effect and Dragon Age. I could too, but I'd prefer to celebrate excellent newer games like Oxygen Not Included, Horizon, No Man's Sky, Disco Elysium, Elden ring, etc etc.
The problem I have these days is not a lack of good games to play, it's that there's too many of them and I don't have enough time.
Mist
, the children (who are in their late 20’s and 30’s now) are DEAD fucking wrong. Doesn’t take a genius to look outside and see the results of the thought train and it’s devastating impact on rational humanity. At least we can rest assured EA and this lunatic developing this shit hole of a game can count on one unit sold through your wallet.
sakkath
swears it's all in our heads
