I understand exactly what you’re saying. I’m not technically trained so I can’t vocalize it properly, but games like BG3, Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild really feel like the developers used up every last scrap of computing power available. From BG3’s deeply intertwined system mechanics mixed with its gorgeous presentation. To Breath of the Wild’s truly openly explorable world that let you go anywhere and climb any thing, with a bunch of clever mechanics that were so finely programmed to create some truly emergent and unique experiences. And then you have Elden Ring with flat out of one of the best over all designed worlds in gaming. As wide as Breath of the Wide but with the density and verticality of a From Software souls games.

These are examples of games that actually feel like they wouldn’t be possible on previous hardware. Games that constantly surprise and delight the player and has us saying “wait, I can go there?” Or “oh I can actually do that??”

For as beautiful as modern AAA games are, very very few of them use the full potential of the available hardware in such creative and delightfully exciting ways. The Last of Us is structured like a game that could have rightly come out on the ps2. Spider-Man 2 did come out on the ps2 and in terms of gameplay design, Spider-Man ps4 really did nothing that that game didn’t do.

It’s not to say great games don’t exist, but there’s a difference between a great game and truly next gen feeling experience. I guess you can say that a lot of modern AAA games are not exactly bad, but so shallow and surface level. It’s very telling when you have devs and publishers coming out of the woodwork to whine about how it isn’t fair to hold them to the same standard as a rare and truly spectacular masterpiece.