It feels like when Fallout 3, 4 and Skyrim came out you couldn't escape people posting about them for weeks, especially with Skyrim. Now the most I've seen are complaints about how disappointing Starfield was.
Is the game that much blander or does Internet culture just move on that much faster these days? On the other hand, I do feel like there was a lot more enthusiasm for other games like Elden Ring, and sometimes you get an Among Us that just completely take over the Internet.
counter: the "soullessness" (or let's be more specific, the adherence to formula, the creative safety, the rote blandness) of AAA titles isn't because the people making them don't care, but because the AAA mode of video game production places very tight constraints on that production so that even department leads can't impose their vision through writing, gameplay design, world and character design, or anything else without jeopardizing the funding of the entire project before release, which is only perceived as a risk by publishing execs, even if it's a development team with proven success. The problem isn't even design-by-committee so much as design-by-fear.
I was thinking it was a self-censorship kind of thing where only the most milquetoast liberals land the job but this is likely too.