I don’t think big companies know how to make a good FPS campaign anymore, let alone hone in on classic deathmatch multiplayer. The last FPS I bought was Half-Life: Alyx four years ago, and the first one to come along and interest me since then was Phantom Fury, but I’m letting that one iron out bugs for a few weeks before I pick it up. Even former TimeSplitters devs, given the opportunity to make a new TimeSplitters, made another Fortnite instead. Likely this new Perfect Dark was built to turn it into a live service that keeps players playing it forever rather than just making a fun deathmatch to play with your friends a handful of times, which would be missing the point. And all this is to say nothing about how those devs must be feeling when even a great game that sells well won’t save you from Microsoft laying you off.
I can think of plenty of games with writing I’ve really enjoyed in recent years, not the least of which is Baldur’s Gate 3 just last year, but FPSes in particular are in one of only a few genres where I haven’t been well served lately.
BG3 is another good example but surely you can agree that was like a drop of water in an ocean of sand. Games that well done are incredibly rare, and it mostly comes down to just writing. The actual game mechanics and graphics quality of games now are better than they have ever been for the most part. But the games are bad, not because of those things, but because the writing fails to capture the players interest.
I would not agree with that, no. First because I’d say mechanics are almost always the most important part anyway, and also because I’ve probably come across more stories that have held my interest in recent years than I did 25 years ago. Stories were pretty basic back then, more often than not. In fact, these days, I’ve been carried through mediocre gameplay by well-told stories more than a few times, and I don’t think that ever happened 25 years ago.
As someone with an avatar of the Q from Quake 1, I can avidly say that writing was not better in the past.
Just off the top of my head from the last decade:
-Baldurs gate 3 -Firewatch -Return of the Obra Dinn -Disco Elysium -Tyranny -Shadowrun Dragonfall -Red Dead Redemption 2 -Witcher 3 -Hellblade Senuas Sacrifice -Life is Strange -Prey (2017) -The Red Strings Club
Seriously, go check the story to Perfect Dark. Hilarious? Yes. A “good story”? No.
There are myriad issues in gaming now that weren’t there in the past, but good writing is (thankfully) still around.
The writing in Disco Elysium is so good that it wouldn’t matter if the gameplay between dialogue was just some match 4 bejewelled ripoff, it’d be worth it.
Anyway, I agree we’ve got so much better in the last decade+ at fitting fiction and gameplay together in a satisfying and complimentary manner.
I remember finding games like Chrono Trigger being as stumbling upon an overflowing oasis, compared to the paltry and usually badly translated heroes journeys that we typically got.
But now I can think of dozens of games, many of them indie, that have stories on par (and if I set aside my nostalgia goggles, even surpassing) that of old classics like CT.