[swix]

I agree about lack of a "higher goal" in most games, same old basic recipes. I always think of a MMO-type game where you have really well made AI that can attack cities, little villages and things like that. This should happen in a none-scripted way, and that players then have to help each other out and combat these invasion type of things. This would give more purpose than "get to the next level" sort of scenario.

Games before used to "feel" mysterious. I am looking at you Ultima, Everquest and perhaps Anarchy online. Initially there was no guides or answers, you had to really explore and this made the world(s) feel mysterious. Anything could happen. Nowadays the entire game is datamined, guides are written and everything is known even before released, very sad. Perhaps "streaming" games could solve this issue, where no assets are present on no client, just a real time stream ala stadia. But, I suppose latency, graphics quality, etc makes this hard.