"Today's games are missing key components that games of yesteryear had in spades." was my closest choice.
Some things have been improved from old games, like controls, the physical aspect of character creation, HUDs and graphics. Sometimes newer games have even outdone old games, whether in terms of story presentation or gameplay elements, when it comes to various genres.
However, most games have abandoned a lot of important components of older games, that often lead to them to cripple themselves. In terms of story, there's knowing that less is more. A character babbling isn't characterization that's meaningful. Sometimes character have various degrees of importance they should get, thus some characters just need to be simplified to their general archetype.
Older games felt more ambitious, often being very experimental and at times mind boggling that they were given this sorta free reign. They were also more far less hindered by monetization schemes, which more than often tends to take something away from the game. Games nowadays try perhaps too hard to be accommodating to the player as well.
To give an example, we can look at The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall. That game had a shit ton of ambition. A world procedurally generated in large part and touched up after, that have thousands of designed cities and dungeons and even procedurally generated ones. That game had you physically controlling your sword to hit, it had an immensely customizable character creation that you could dabble in, or you could just answer questions to receive a class. Doors could be picked, but they could also be broken down with force, unless fortified. You could create your own spells even. Dungeons really felt like dungeons. You could easily get lost and they had puzzle aspects of them that you would need to solve in order to complete a quest (mostly pulling a lever somewhere though). It had a detailed 3D map as you explored in order to accomplish this. You even had climbing. Heck, it even had a horse and a wagon, in order for you to carry with your spoils from dungeoneering. It had a lot of flaws, especially bugs, but it had a shitton of ambition.
The sequel Morrowind, went in a different direction, instead focusing on a smaller, but more detailed and designed world. That's an honest design choice and Morrowind was a great game, but it also removed a lot of the ambitious features of Daggerfall. Heck, in order to relieve players of controlling swings of the sword, they just made you click. Which made for hilarious dagger spam. It was still hit-based though, making it a hilarious mismatch. Dungeons have also just been getting worse with each release. I wish they'd have made a mix of Morrowind and Daggerfall instead, perhaps holding down a bit of the scale of Daggerfall, but keeping the features.
As a newer example, you can see the same development in the Dragon Age franchise. DA:O is still the best, allowing my character to be the biggest piece of shit ever, while also relying far more on RPG mechanics than action game mechanics. 2 went for more flash, than substance.
Fallout also showed this development, with Fallout 4 being utter terrible in terms of your dialogue choices. That said, it also had interesting developments, like being able to build bases and keep communities. That was a great addition, too bad it did horribly in lots of other aspects.
You can also see this in MMORPG design as well, albeit that has become a rather dwindling genre. WoW is a great example of this development, currently stuck in a loop of expansion-only features and borrowed powers, dwindling of character customization and overall focus on cinematic presentation and linear quest progression. There's also MMORPGs like FFXIV that are surprisingly archaic and not making a seamless world. Traversing terrain feels terrible. One of the worst things in MMORPGs is also the trend of streamlining, that often cuts away unique aspects to make things simpler. Lots of things that MMORPGs do well, then to utterly fail in other aspects.
Really, old games were incredibly ambitious, despite perhaps the technology not existing to fulfill their fantasies at the time. TES:Arena allowing you to destroy dungeon walls. Lots of features that show a lack of ambition, being far more a reflection of what a business the gaming industry has become. It might also be how time consuming graphical development has become.
So it's not "old games were better", but more like "a lot of old games have lost some of the great things in older games, while improving in other areas".
With how easier it's to develop games and publish them nowadays, I do imagine we'll see more mechanically or narratively ambitious games. I think AAA plays it a bit too safe to expect much from them, outside of certain dedicated studios. Star Citizen can at least be seen as very ambitious, albeit I'm still a bit skeptical as to whether it'll avoid feature creep and actually get a somewhat whole release (even though it'll certainly continue development).
