Modern Games are overpolished and generic

Modern video games, particularly the open-world games, have become boring over the years. I think that modern games are overpolished and generic, and because they follow the same repetitive standard seen in many other open-world games, it feels boring. Lack of creativity in the game’s overall structure. However, simplicity still works fine; sometimes a rough diamond is more appealing compared to overly polished titles.

Take Dragon’s Dogma, solid combat, an open-world setting that does involve a large open world, repetitive missions, and the general lack of polish, such as needing an item to fast travel, and no auto-regen of health. This lack of polish is actually a unique element, and other such factors include a multiplayer mode that is not a direct multiplayer experience, which is not played in the usual way. So generally, the game that does not follow the typical thing that is seen in all other games makes that game unique.

Novelty is essential. In the 8-bit and 16-bit era of video games, there were lots of platformers. While they all followed the same gameplay patterns, some were unique enough to feel different. Take Shinobi and then compare it with Ninja Gaiden. Same concept and gameplay in paper, but different experience with just about enough unique features of their own. What makes Horizon Zero Dawn different from the Ubisoft open-world games? What makes Ghost of Tsushima different from the Ubisoft open-world games? Both Horizon and Tsushima have their own different gameplay, but that is not the only thing that differs these games from the Ubisoft open-world games. Horizon and Tsushima have better storytelling, while both games have repetitive missions like the Ubisoft games, they are not in the same quantity, and the enemy encounters do not feel generic. Take the Far Cry series as an example; you will notice that most of the time, you are fighting enemies without even initiating the fight from your end. Both Horizon and Tsushima also do not have generic loot that is seen in Ubisoft games. That being said, both Horizon and Tsushima suffer from issues that are observed in Ubisoft's open-world games, but they feel substantially less boring and have more novelty.