Yeah. These games have stupid budget budgets that grow by the year. And while The Elder Scrolls team can point at Starfield, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 at the very least. Rockstar has just been pushing GTA Online since 2013 so even when GTA6 releases next year, that'll be 12 years between sequels when there were three games on the PS2, two games on the PS3/360 and three games on PSP/DS.
I actually didn't care for BotW, I don't really care about this "modern open world" but I haven't bought and I'm interested in The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. It's back to classic style Zelda which is really the best time. Classic Zelda games are "open" when it comes to classic standards, but this sort of open environment is your traditional adventure, where you're stuck into linear areas that have a little bit of freedom, so you finish whatever solution required in order to proceed.
That in itself is another issue about modern gaming. The modern day open world. Ghost of Tsushima, etc. Get on your horse or run in x direction for 5-10 or 20 minutes, once you get to the location you can finally start playing, and while you finally get to play after wasting around 20 minutes of your time, Ghost of Tsushima is like a poor man's Nioh mixed with watered down Arkham Asylum combat. Enemy has shield? Where each different enemy type has a specific action you're required to counter. I liked Arkham Asylum as it really works for Batman, but it's all gotten very lazy the more and more that you see this same combat used/ And after you clear out the one camp of enemies that took you 20 minutes to get to, you unlock a single unlock, whether it's a health flask that uses the Souls mechanics which are used in every single game released now days, whether it's one new piece of equipment, with it's extra health, etc. It's all just very lazy and very padded. Ghost of Tushima is literally a Ubisoft game. I don't understand how people can't see it. It's some of the laziest video game design, and as you said, same game, different coat of paint.
The biggest thing I hate about modern gaming is that the new games, and I've already stated this above, all try to be this catch all where they try to develop a game that has aspects of so many different games all in one. A big net to catch as many fish as possible. Instead of anything really great, at least in my opinion, we get something that's a bloated mess that doesn't do anything really well. But apparently the average gamer likes it.
It's like the average gamer wants to just play games. It just has to have content and it doesn't feel like it even matters what kind of content anymore as long as it's playable. When calling my mom and speaking to her one day, told her the same thing as what I typed in the above paragraph one day about how all games feel like they want to cast the widest net possible to get the most sales and it generally feels this way on so many games, including a lot of indies with how you almost never see indie games anymore that don't have some sort of bonfire/flash, procedural, or card system in it anymore. I told her that most video gaming now days feels like every game is developed to get as many people as possible to buy into them and feels your reward is little else than a participation trophy.