Sadly, the rot runs deep and I have no clue what needs to happen to remove the current cabal of talentless idiots who run the show.
Call me optimistic but I think the problem will correct itself at a AAA level, eventually, it'll just take a while. For one, you need more Veilguards/Avoweds/Halo Infinites to happen I.E. talentless/ideologically driven people given way too much money and leeway, so the people whose job it is to make a profit will be forced to take measures to stop the revenue bleed.
A lot of the modern foibles of the industry can be pinned on a complete lack of oversight for the most part. There was some kind of paradigm shift at some point in the industry (I couldn't pin when) where the corporate overlords of a game studio started giving said studio way too much slack and gave the wrong people undue authority over a game's development — not too bad if a competent people are given free reign, but potentially disastrous if they're not. We once had a period where it was too far in the opposite direction and gaming suffered, so hopefully being yanked back there will give us a period of equilibrium where games are good before the lack of freedom starts to fuck a game.
With Veilguard, EA finally put its foot down and fired everyone who had a hand in writing the content of that game, and the same process will repeat itself elsewhere with other companies if there's a similar string of failures. 343 Industries had to re-brand due to how shit their tenure with Halo has been and are hoping a remake of the 1st game will give them legitimacy in Microsoft's eyes and continued life. Bethesda have gone quiet regarding Starfield, slowed down patches and I wouldn't be surprised if they've only got a skeleton crew on the game to pump out the obligated piece of DLC as they go full steam ahead on ESVI. Avowed also bombed, the potential low figures only mitigated by a potential gamepass bump — who knows what'll happen to Obsidian if Outer Worlds 2 bombs.
I know this relies on 'Joe Average' not being a retard but like his name says: he's average. He might get suckered in by a high-budget sequel/remake or by the online praises of consoomers, but if online discourse around something is so negative even prior to release he might be put off. Unfortunately for the Oblivion Remaster, you're getting a game that was already regarded as being 'good' in the past and was shadow dropped — not enough time for shit to fester online to make discussion toxic enough to put off purchasing like with AC: Shadows. Unfortunately I don't think there's too much that could've been done otherwise to deter the average consumer from buying the remaster without there being a showcase or something prior. I think eventually the flaws might finally float to the surface, like with Starfield, once people stop culture war bickering (positive reviews have gone from 95% to 82% on steam since release and might continue to decline). I know that the damage is already done since the game has already sold copies, but it'll at least deter sales in the long-term and impact negatively the sales of the next game.
In recent years discourse online around games that try to make political statements or pander to a non-existent audience get so awful nobody can tell if the game is actually good or bad, so they don't bother participating, even to ask questions about a game's quality. If you put negative connotations in people's heads, they'll naturally be deterred from purchasing, at least right away, and might actually bother to do some research on their own instead of being
told how they should feel about a game (actually switch his brain on). It prevents people being suckered in by people singing a game's praises during the honeymoon phase and by shameless consoomers, so after the political slap fighting ceases they'll get a more objective look at the game. Where this doesn't work as well however is with sequels and remakes, since quality was already 'assured' from precedent, but if the devs show off the game prior to release and give fuel for online shitflingers to throw shit, it might mitigate it.
We'll make it bruddah.
