The good news is that all of the great games are still around and it's easier than ever to play them on a PC. For the most part awesome immersive games that only charge users once upfront are a relic of the past.
- Heavy Rain
- Beyond 2 Souls
- Detroit: Become Human
- Witcher 3
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Mass Effect Series
And then there are classic adventure type games from http://www.WadjetEyeGames.com
Those don't include any micro transaction and you pay once upfront.
I completely disagree with you here. Yes there are games which have micro transactions, many of which did not have them in the past, but that doesn't mean that awesome immersice games that only charge users once are dead. They're even more available now. The Witcher is a usually touted as the prime example, although it's a few years old at this point. PS4 has a few exceptional titles like God of War, Horizon, Days Gone, Uncharted, Spiderman, Ni no Kuno, Shadow of the Colossus RDR 2, in the last year. The switch has games like Captain Toad, Mario Odyssey, breath of the Wild, Mario Kart, Case of Distrust, super smash Bros while PC had Frostpunk, Hitman 2, Battletech, Into the Breach.
All excellent games in their own right, all released in the last 12 months, as standalone experiences. If you want to you can jump into any number of paid for multiplayer (division 2, world of Warcraft, destiny, COD, PUBG) or f2p (Fortnite - disclaimer I work on it, Warframe, League of Legends, path of exile, PlanetSide, Apex Legends). Yes some of those games have micro transactions, but for the most part they don't actually interfere with the game. Yes you can cherry-pick some of my specific examples and tell me in wrong, but you can't even begin to claim that gaming is in a bad state right now.
From skimming over your references roughly 40 percent of your examples have micro transactions and about 40 percent do not have rich narratives. Yes, I pulled these numbers out of my ass and you can nitpick them all you want, but I work in the gaming industry and know what I am talking about /s
AAA gaming is in an ATROCIOUS state right now. The rest of the landscape is pretty alright, with the Epic store burgeoning a second wave of indie developers getting off the ground and making waves thanks to the much lower cost to them to publish, and with first-party publishers putting out consistently amazing experiences.
However, behind that you have the larger, multiplatform, absolutely bank-breaking budget weilding AAA developers, putting out your CODs and your FIFAs, one of which happens to hold exclusive rights to Star Wars, all of them making cookie cutter, focus group tested, streamline developed S-H-I-T. The same damn games, over and over, ad nauseum, all of which are now pivoting to chase the Battle Royale fad because everybody wants to now be Fortnite despite the fact that Fortnite already exists and is being played, and the people who have that don't need or want another Fortnite.