this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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These days, probably Expedition 33, but there lots of others every year. Probably moreso than 15 years ago by raw numbers.
People over focus on AAA budget games, but there are several indie and AA budget games that are comparable or even surpass production quality of AAA games 15 years ago.
AAA budget these days should really be called like S-tier budget. In 2010 and earlier, the top end of budgets were like $50-100 million ($70-140 million after inflation) including marketing. Budgets started ballooning after that and hese days, top end budgets are more like $500-700 million)
Expedition 33 is great. Checks all the boxes from the meme, plus has a banger of a sound track!
Expedition 33 is freakishly good and it's actually more of a AA budget at est $30mil.
As you said, people shouldn't focus on AAA games as much as they do. Anyone who knows gaming in the modern day can fairly accurately predict that AAA games will be shit on launch, and will only sometimes improve to something playable eventually. Meanwhile, indie and AA games tend to be at least enjoyable at launch, and often don't have the bullshit gambling or microtransaction scams that AAA games have. Oh, and they also have soul, which a corporation shitting out a new game every year will never be able to replicate.
Honestly, the last AAA game that I enjoyed was Helldivers 2, and I'll still boo it for its warbond system, even though you can grind for the in-game currency.
Still, I think it's easy to forget AAA's successes next to the overall shitty syesten. Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Tears of the Kingdom, Spider-Man 2, Doom Eternal, Horizon Forbidden West, God of War Ragnarok, Ghost of Tsushima, Diablo 4, Armored Core 6 are all AAA with solid launches in the last 5 years as far as I remember, and arguably with distinct soul.
I agree with you on most of those, though personally didn't find much soul in Horizon Forbidden West or God of War Ragnarok. Likely just a taste thing.
Would you call HD2 triple A? I understood it was an indie studio until they released HD2, and floored absolutely everyone with how good of a shooter it was (considering HD1 was top down, and they had never done it before). Happy to be wrong, just how I understood it lol
That's true. I personally consider it AAA, since it was published by Sony, which does fit the wikipedia definition, despite it being developed by Arrowhead.
The thing is, a lot of people want high fidelity games, and you are typically not getting that from a mid size studio without awful mtxs etc.