A growing trend in modern gaming is this focus on "spectacle". Having these big set pieces to wow the player, impressive and flashy graphics that constantly push the boundaries, music that takes you on emotional roller coasters. Most (if not all) AAA games have these qualities. Which is nice an all, but you'll notice one thing about that list of qualities: it has nothing to do with gameplay.
Not so secretly, I did not like Breath of the Wild. While it was a fantastic game, it didn't deserve game of the year (in my opinion). Why? BotW almost completely deviates from the established Zelda formula. Instead of a focused experience on exploring dungeons and collecting new tools that increase your capabilities, BotW ditches all that in favor of a steady drip feed of mildly interesting content. Instead of crafting a world that serves a gameplay first purpose, they crafted a large open world only to come back later and scatter an assortment of random things to the player to do as they travel from point to point. In effect, BotW trades out the traditional focused experience of a linear Zelda to make a world with more spectacle, but less meaningful content.
This departure from focused gameplay is an increasing trend in modern games. Instead of crafting games that are playing to the strengths of the interactive medium, developers have been in favor of making their games as cinematic as possible while offloading any interesting gameplay direction to the off chance that the simple systems they've created can interact in an interesting way. To go back to BotW for a bit, maybe a handful of puzzles or challenges stand out. The ones that happened to combine systems in an interesting way. But most of the game was just trite. Repetitive and boring puzzles lacking much of any context. Compare this to any linear Zelda, who's dungeons and puzzles remain clear and interesting in my mind, even years removed from my previous encounter. Games seemingly aren't made with the same intention anymore.
I think Zelda isn't the only one at fault here. Pokémon has especially fallen victim to this. The recent mainline games, both Sword/Shield and Scarlet/Violet fall victim to being more spectacle than substance. The two games funnel you from set piece to set piece, with little in between to hold your attention. SwSh is just pretty looking hallways that funnel you from point A to point B. SV gives the illusion of freedom, but when every location is just open fields with Pokémon randomly scattered about, it doesn't feel like there's much actually there.
This even extends to fan games. Much of the more modern fan games have this issue where the focus on all the stuff that makes them stand out. All the spectacle. Having X number of gyms, of Y number of fan favorite features, or the darker, more mature (ie: edgy) plot. And I know you might want to say that these features are the substance, but I don't think thats even remotely true. Because most of the time, these features aren't even well considered within the context of the game itself. Sure, some fan game might have 20 gyms and 3 regions, but is it meaningful in any sort of way? Is it implemented in a way that actively contributes to the over all experience? Or is it just something to pad out the run time and slap on the back of the box to seem more appealing? Typically, it ends up being the latter.
When I think to some of my favorite games, of course they have spectacle to some degree. I, like most other people, like to see cool things and let my monkey brain go wild. Xenoblade has plenty of moments like that, where there's some crazy action scene or dramatic plot twist. But Xenoblade is also able to back all that up with actually meaningful and engaging gameplay. It's not like SwSh where I go down hallways to get the next drip of interesting spectacle. It's not like BotW where I wander aimlessly for the next hit of dopamine when I solve a braindead korok puzzle.
I guess what concerns me is that a lot of modern games are going in this direction. Less actual game, more spectacle. Which is fine if it was something like a 90-minute movie, but most games are 20+ hour experiences, more often 60+ to align with modern expectations. This just results in games that feel bloated because everything between the moments of spectacle is there to fill time and be just barely interesting enough to keep you playing. To put it simply: I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding.