Your opinion is valid, but “AAA” studios have lit themselves on fire, and a shit ton of objectively great games have come out and absolutely dunked on them.

A great example of this is balatro. It’s none of what you described, it’s nowhere near your typical cash grab AAA and it’s just a good game that did extremely well.

Another example would be Hades, just a monster of a good game.

Blasphemous 1 & 2, unknown studio, fucking killed it.

Also if you prefer not AAA games for story, what actually is a AAA game?