Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer
It's not that they do anything wrong, it's that the don't do anything well.
It was less an RPG and more just a fps shooter with the same bare minimum of RPG elements as every other fps shooter.
The biggest games are the blandest because they're trying to appeal to everyone. But even people not into RPGs can like a good rpg. Which is why BG3 and CK2KCD2 are so popular.
Big studios aren't underestimating their audience, they're just counting on video game enthusiasts buying every major game.
I ran thru it on game pass, and it was alright, but I was kind of just going thru the motions. So I said "terrible" but I meant it was terrible at being a big budget triple A RPG.
It felt like a generic fps from 20 years ago, the only flavor was from existing IP pasted over it.
The way I would explain it is: they aren't just battling the current gen titles but also all the games released before them. So meh just gets drowned out in the sea of already released games.
I agree. Games feel like they're designed by committee now (very much likes movies, in fact). I recall SkillUp's criticism of Veilguard's writing as, "every interaction feels like HR is in the room." This nails so many design choices today. Safe and vanilla is boring. There are of course people who believe that nothing should ever be remotely challenging or offensive to anyone ever, but I just don't think they represent the majority of gamers. Attempting to please them at the expense of the much larger player-base is clearly not working.