I don't know if I would consider Banishers a AAA game, but it felt like it got trapped in the need to have more open worlds and a lot of unnecessary content. It made it a real slog to get through. Even though you could just run through the story a lot of the side stuff felt necessary to get the full experience.
People on Era were giving Banishers as an example of AA.
I feel like this is a big part of my issue. I feel like a lot of AA games are just less polished AAA games. A lot of them aren't pushing an Uncharted 2 in 2024.
There's so many older experiences like Batman AA, Skyrim, Uncharted that were made by smaller teams by today's standards that are still well regarded. Some of them are being played by more people than the newer games. Starfield is being outplayed by Skyrim.
Why does it feel like there aren't many AA studios trying to make games like those?