Yeah, I like deep world-building with a lot of thought going into it. And it enrages me if so many saying: why do you care about X, it just fantasy, so we can do whatever. But that just means no one cares about the world anymore - so why should fans?

I also see that phrase in 'hit 'n run' You tube comments on reviews. Social media bots. Or just blind fans repeating it.

Yeah, deep world-building requires a lot of thought, so lot of work and research, which all too often isn't the case and just gets hand-waived and replaced with modern thinking and sensibilities, thus inevitably loosing that so important aspect of almost every imaginary world, verisimilitude.

Hyper-simplistic writing is sweeping the industry.  Writing without depth, where the story, the plot, and even the dialogue are a shallow facade stretched over the bones of the game.  The modern approach seems to be that nothing really matters in the game-world.  There is no serious attempt at continuity or consequence.  When it comes to conversation, they toss aside actual human speech and instead pound the point home with the verbal equivalent of a giant squeaky hammer.  The story can be extremely convoluted but it doesn't have to make any sense.  Plot holes are ignored, plot points are dropped, and the direction is fixed to one outcome even if they obscure it with the illusion of choice.

Why, though?  Why is this the trend?

Emil Pagliarulo, the lead writer for Bethesda, said:  "We're going to write the great American novel. It's gonna be this thick, and on every page will be written comedy and tragedy and it will be wonderful, it'll be amazing. And you're gonna give this book, this great American novel, to the player and what are they gonna do with it? They are gonna rip out every page and make paper airplanes out of them. And they are gonna throw them around. And they are never gonna see your story. Because, the story is there but they are going to spend 30 hours making shacks. They're going to spend 20 hours looking for bobbleheads. But that's okay, we know that going in. That's the jagged pill that we swallow when we do this."

I think it's clear that this philosophy has pervaded the industry.  (This is NOT a post about Emil Pagliarulo, btw)

Is it correct, though?  Probably, to a degree.  A lot of people likely just see the wordy bits as rest areas between game-play.  Does that mean that writing should then be aimed at the lowest common denominator?  

Because it looks like that is what BioWare is doing in order to be accessible to as many people as possible.  They have points that they want to emphasize but they aren't subtle about the way they do it and they don't really care about how they get there or how they move to the next point down the line.  And, to be real, I'm sure that it's a way easier, cheaper, and allows the developers to be much more flexible during development.

Is this the future of gaming?

I think that's a bit inevitable, to be honest. Get too alien and you start to lose readers/players etc. from a lack of relatability.

How often have you seen proper period or setting-accurate religious sentiment being portrayed in historical or fictional works, for instance? Characters like Daenerys, Rand, Geralt, Frodo, etc. they all have typical 20th or 21st-century sensibilities.

Even in settings where they seem to have less familiar mindsets, they're almost never at peace with themselves and their environment (like Brandon Sanderson's characters).

Is this really a "trend" or just the state of gaming since forever? It's not like Mario or Street Fighter have deep narratives. Is this the future of gaming, or is this the present and past?

Is this really a "trend" or just the state of gaming since forever? It's not like Mario or Street Fighter have deep narratives. Is this the future of gaming, or is this the present and past?

Not a proper comparison because games like Mario or Street Fighter aren’t meant to have deep narratives and never have. A game like Dragon Age and a studio like BioWare are supposed to have deep narratives. It was their claim to fame for years.

Gamers like myself grew up on BioWare’s masterful storytelling in games like Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age: Origins. The biggest things we remember about their games is their narratives. So to see BioWare go from gritty, thought provoking narratives to this, and other narrative focused companies like Ubisoft, is a heartbreaking reality for many.