agreed. Just one example is the sports genre. I used to love playing arcade style sports games (NFL Blitz, NBA Jam, NHL Hitz, Mario Strikers, MLB Slugfest, etc...), but now the sports genre is mostly filled with realistic gameplay and graphics. It's such a slog to play through a Madden, The Show, NBA 2K game these days. I like my games to move at a faster pace with more/nonstop action. These games just don't do it for me any more.

The "FFXIII has bad gameplay and design" is highly debatable, and the decisions made in that regard could have been more related to their goal of appealing to the western market than because of budget priorities.

Yes, budgets are limited, the point still stands. A game having great graphics doesn't mean that it has crap gameplay of that there was a consciuos decision to sacrifice gamaplay design for shiny visuals. That is more of a perception from a prejudice some people have, which for some strange reasons, hate cinematic elements in video games. 

I don't get how is that related to the issue of gameplay vs graphics. It's just an instance of adding content by recycling existing elements.

It was mZuzek who said that. And that’s who I thought I was replying to.

Either way, I find plenty of innovation in many games, even if they’re on the discreet side in scope. But none of those games, including BOTW, reinvents the wheel.

But some people here are incapable of objectivity, and throw double standards left, right, and center. Which is annoying. 

"Development of Final Fantasy XIII was a difficult one and ridden with miscommunication between different sections of the development team. Final Fantasy XIII had the largest development team of any previous Final Fantasy game, with some of the work also done in conjunction with the Final Fantasy XV team (then-titled Final Fantasy Versus XIII). At the peak, there were over 200 people working on it, with 180 artists, 30 programmers, and 36 game designers."

" Director Motomu Toriyama has said he lamented that Final Fantasy XIII was mainly criticized for its linear game design, and explained that there were several reasons for it. With a limited amount of development time and resources, the team made the game linear to maximize players' gameplay experience and to provide the same type of gameplay experience to all players. The aim was to offer the most entertaining gameplay experience. This approach provided players with time to familiarize with the battle system and the world, but it led to players feeling like the majority of the game was a tutorial. Toriyama believes this was a big flaw in the game."

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_XIII_development#A_problematic_development

The game's director admitted the game had significant flaws.  It's actually not debatable.  Also this was the largest team on any Final Fantasy game yet, but he still felt resources were limited.  Just look at 180 artists, 30 programmers and 36 game designers.  Most of the budget is going to artists.  There were definitely trade offs there because of the focus on art.

I am not sure if that is aimed at me or not.  But I think objectivity is difficult in a hobby that is driven by subjectivity.  At the end of the day thoughts and feelings about games is a personal opinion.  There is no metric that proves what a game is or isn't.  

For me BotW has a sense of freedom never seen before in gaming.  For others is was boring and bland..  the thing is neither of us is wrong.  

Just an illustration that games have budgets and corners will be cut as applicable.  I could easily see the cost of graphics resulting in cuts elsewhere.  

Dwarf Fortress is one of my favourite games of all time. The graphics are bested by games on the Apple Lisa from 1982.
The game doesn’t even have consistent interface. But as far as creativity goes, few games top it—Think of a game that has elements in common with Crusader Kings 2, Victoria 2, and Minecraft. Minecraft actually started as a cross section of Dwarf Fortress.

Unfortunately, Dwarf Fortress is too intimidating for many gamers—despite not being even close to as difficult as its reputation. But a much less intimidating version of the game is due out on Steam next month.

Also, the lack of creativity on realistic games has much more to do with the production side of development, not the creative team trading off creativity to stay realistic. The unfortunate side-effect of high fidelity are design-lawyers who use market research of existing products to dictate how elements of a game have to be. Indie companies can avoid this, but in the end, money is chief motivation of developers, they will trade off creative freedom for extra money. In the end, critics and gamers alike are far harsher on games that buck the trends than unoriginality in games. Talking, gamers tend to be much harsher with relatively benign monetization tactics in creative games than they are much more punishing monetization tactics that have been done a lot before.

Interesting, I didn't know that about FFXIII. Thanks for the info.

You've barely even played BotW. It's universaly considered to be one of the most innovative games in the last decade because of how it's open world is structured, because of it's traversal and because of it's sophisticated physics system. The fact that you think that BotW's combat system boils down to a slash shows how little you know about the game, namely nothing, absolutely nothing. The Switch doesn't even have an R1 button.