I'd broaden that to destructible/deformable persistent world, where every object has physical properties. We're getting there actually, albeit slowly, since consoles (being in AAA focus) don't have enough juice to run fully voxel (or something similar) worlds, so we might be seeing some PC experiments until we come to Tim Sweeney's estimate of 25-30 TFLOPS from many years ago for fully voxel worlds. Next-gen perhaps, or maybe smaller games toward the end of this gen...

My pick would be (though I don't know if it failed, since it seems it's been in development hell for at last 4-5 years) Ken Levine's "narrative LEGO" idea ("The idea was for every person’s experience with the game to be unique. Characters would react differently depending on a player’s actions, and they would be thrust into different scenarios every time they played"). I'd love to see that game, it would probably be closest to AI narrator/Game Master, which will eventually come sometimes in the future. Pair that with fully deformable persistent world...oh, boy...

It's one of those games I also wish to do well, yet can't bring myself to starting it up :/

Maybe it will be better on PS5. Loading the game then trying to find a fun level to play, waiting for it to download, start and it's either over too soon or not that fun. Sadly 90% of the time you're looking for something to play or watching a loading screen. Perhaps when levels can load directly from the dashboard and Sony would populate the activity cards with high rated levels in your interest, Dreams would become more popular. The activity cards seem very well suited to something like Dreams.

However the majority just want to continue with something familiar, not learn something new all the time. After a long day, sit down with known characters, known controls, known goals, known escape. Trying new games can be exhausting, so while the idea is great, it doesn't fit all that well with what people want from games. A simple escape to relax with something they have control over, that is already know how everything works.

Red Steel. The original game had such promise but because it was rushed for launch the controls didn't work. The level design was actually really really good, but the slow turning and broken sword combat killed the game. The sequel was great, with some of the best sword-fighting controls of any game ever combined with slick IR aiming and the incredible ease of switching between the 2. But it didn't sell well and so the idea died. The idea of a motion controlled game where you can switch between pinpoint aiming and 1-1 sword fighting still has so much untapped potential.

In a similar vein, The Grinder. The graphics looked amazing for the Wii, even better than the Conduit games, and it looked like it could have been the Wii's Left 4 Dead, But it became vaporware instead of releasing on either Wii or Wii U. The Quantum 3 Engine should have been used a lot more on the Wii than just High Voltage Software as well. The engine could really get a lot out of the hardware and other developers could have really pushed it and the Wii to new heights if they'd used it.

The Star Wars Rogue Squadron Compilation. This one hurts the most. The game was completed. It would have fulfilled the promise of motion-controlled lightsaber fights with motion-plus. It could be brought to the Switch with minimal effort and just upscaled to HD and with the motion controls mapped to the joy cons. And they just won't do it. I don't know if there's licensing issues or if EA is just being horrible again, but this game should have released every year since work on it was completed and its a crime we still don't have it.

These days, "innovation" in gaming means finding new ways for game publishers to be able to reach into your wallet on an ongoing basis.

Agreed, more games if the option, so?

I didn't know about this one.  That sucks.  I just looked it up.  What I could find was that as Factor 5 went bankrupt, they sold the game to a newly created company that was basically just Factor 5 management and developers.  They finished the game in 2009, but due to lawsuits with former employees of Factor 5 that were not resolved until 2015, LucasArts decided not to release the game.  Once those lawsuits were resolved, it was just too late.

https://lostmediawiki.com/Star_Wars_Rogue_Leaders:_Rogue_Squadron_Wii_(lost_build_of_unreleased_Wii_compilation_of_arcade-style_action_games;_2009)

Include Monster Hunter 3U to your list of maps on hands, together with immediately combining ingredients! That was the main reason I got my U.

take your blood pressure meds and wipe the spittle from your face I hear you, we get games that have to be freeze framed, blown up and a pointer used to show us what we're supposed to be looking at, while in the real world we will be to busy trying to play and move through the damn game to notice, stuff like draw in, tiny numbers of unique npc's, view distances etc while showing some improvement it is limited in comparison to improvements made in gaming graphics.

compare it to a Christmas dinner where there's only so much seating with adults at the main table and the children along with a certain shady uncle sitting on child seating at the small table, except in the computer version it's the good looking that sit at the big table and the next time when they invest in an extension table the same people's ever growing arses fill the extra space. so the rest are still stuck but we also know what table has the real fun.

Brute force, Wreckless, Gunvalkryie and Blood wake for Xbox

The fault is focusing on shiny graphics and pushing more pixels (yeah I said it, 4K is a waste of resources) instead of stuff that might improve the games with things that can improve the gameplay.

People should not care that they can see individual pores on the face of characters or that light diffuses trough cartilage in the ear. Heck even raytracing in games is mostly just a waste of resources.

Even physics is more used as a gimmick in most games to make dead bodies slump or flags and fabrics move in a "realistic" way. At least with physics there are instances where the physics do play into actual game play but it is still mostly used as a gimmick for stuff to look nice.