That's a cynical way to view innovation.I would argue that necessity, boredom, or the desire to create leads to innovation...

...while the desire to make a quick buck, take advantage of the lowest common denominators, and take the easy way out leads to gimmicks.

I mean, look it up: gimmick has a very negative denotation and connotation both. Innovation is generally very positive.

Is there some overlap? Sure: the widemouth can, for example, was a gimmick; but it also is found on nearly every can of soda, beer, and drink because it was innovative, works well, and ultimately serves a practical purpose. Open-world level design is incredibly innovative and can be mind-blowing, but has turned into a gimmick and leads to many potentially-great games being incredibly dull.

I don't have a fetish for innovation, I just want there to be some substance when they add new things to games, when they develop stuff. I don't want to see great, innovative ideas turned into abominations, either.

Pretty much this.

Hype and advertising is killing it for me. I see absolutely no humility, no real innovation (only gimmicks). Nothing really looks fun to me, you know? It all is starting to just blend together and look like the same crap, it might as well just be the same three or four games from the same two or three megapublidevs.

Still waiting for them to tackle cross-platform play on Xbox and PC, that would be awesome.

@wiouds: both are repetitive somewhat. The very nature of sidequests/hunts pretty much guarantees this.

Still nowhere near as repetitive as fallout/skyrim. Witcher 3 side content is better than the main story content in bethesda games.

Also compare witcher 1, 2, and then 3. Massive improvements with each entry in the series.

What has Bethesda improved since Oblivion? Pretty much nothing. It's the same game with a different skin each time.

Yeah but you have tons of other rpg that do what they set out to do but do it better. Also a lot of the "having to do many things" and "big game" issues are dealt with considering how repetitive the actual game world is. Overall t hey just aren't that good of devs and recently they've given less shit about their games cuz they know fanboys will lick it up.

Honestly I don't know if they don't know how to develop properly and have no actual inspiration/aspirations for making a good product due to bad writing and all that, or if they simply don't give two shits and know fanboys will eat it up and fix it anyway.