Unfortunatelly, I see it as a consequence of the homogenization in the AAA industry. Nowadays, all producers want games to have almost every ingredient that made a blockbuster hit sales.
That is the way that all big media with big capital behind it has gone. The moneymen have thier tick sheet of what makes music, a game, or a film successful, and they comission the developers to deliver. Input from creative types is increasingly pushed to one side leaving very room for originality in the end product.
The best examples of this phenomena at work are with all the new mainstream music coming out that for a short while, almost succeeds in making you think you like the tune. This is because the artist (or the business people behind the artist) is using parts of rifts from 7-8 really good and well known popular music tracks from yesteryear, and just welding them together in the best way that their computer programs can fit, before getting some dancer to sing/mime to the end product which goes on to sell loads of copies to unsuspecting kids. But those who know better, know that the tune is pure and utter sh1t, find it almost unbearble to have to listen to it, and wonder in vain if a time will ever come again when modern music that gets airtime on MTV and the radio will ever again actually be any good.
Thing with music is that just one person can still work on a tune and produce an utterly brilliant piece of work at relatively low cost. Thier tune may never become well known, but that doesn't prevent it from being a masterpiece nontheless, that can stand shoulder to shoulder in every department with tracks from the likes of Pink Floyd, the Beatles, or pieces from Mozart. With modern computer games however, thier are huge costs involved in producing something that is up to the visual standards that we have come to expect, which is perhaps why truly immersive games bristling with individual character and personality that have come from 'indie' developers such as Larian, the end product looks and runs like something from ten years ago (NB*) and would really struggle to pass quality control of the big publishers and indeed that of the gaming masses, despite the brilliance that lies beneath its damn ugly skin.
NB* Actually, some games from over ten years ago look and run much better than Divinity 2. If you haven't already played it, check out Gothic 2 with a widescreen patch. Gothic 2, released in 2002, in most repsects looks like it was a generation ahead of Divinity 2 and is a blindingly good game to boot......perhaps my fav game of all time actually.
