It's not so much that the games are bloated (they are), it's that many are incredibly gated as well. There's always been super grindy and bloated games, but the degree it's done today is just different. You can't just spend two weeks putting in 100+ hours into a modern game and complete everything. It's no longer kill a million mobs to get this achievement, it's kill 100 mobs max a day until you kill a million. It's do this phase and wait a month for the next phase.

Diablo 2 is honest and open about it's grinding, modern day games aren't.

i personally think its because games are so expensive, it seems most studios want to make players feel that they get their monies worth out of the experience.

AAA games that are huge and sprawling are that way for a reason. they're AAA so they have the budget, time, artists, developers to make those worlds massive. whereas indie titles seem to hit the mark more for the kind of game you want.

a short focused experience. but there's like... tens of thousands of the kind of games you're looking for. just not many from AAA studios.

I am of the mind that the most important part of a game, is the game. Having fun playing a game. A good game does not need a story. It doesn't need to do everything. It doesn't need to have something new happening or being given to you every 10 seconds.

Look at all the top most played games/games with consistently high player counts. They're almost all some kind of competitive game that doesn't change too much no matter how long you play. They don't have hundreds of hours of content, dialogue, voice acting, etc. They're just fun.

Yes. They also put in way too much grinding.

I love long games as long as its easy to pick up and put down. Like with elden ring it took a bit for me to realize I can exit almost at any point outside of a boss fight and anything defeated would stay defeated and such. Only real downside is if you have injured something then it will be full health when you come back. So it was very easy to play for 15 mins and stop and an hour later play for 15 and such. cyberpunk and harry potter did that well enough for me as well.

I have some good news for you about the last couple of Pokemon games.

They might be, but most AAA games for many years just haven't been worth playing at all, much less forever.

Like 95% of my gaming is pre-pandemic.