I think one the main reasons creativity has gotten so low in many AAA titles is because game systems and computers have become so strong, that a cartoony or very stylized game wouldn't really show what a system can do; we pretty much hit the limit on those when the Xbox 360 and PS3 came out.
And when you make a hyper realistic world(which will almost always kill any chance for unique art-style), the actual gameplay, music, story and other features kinda have to be realistic as well, this means that you can't really have anything like platforms in midair, pitfalls, floating collectibles and unexplained talking animals, or else the game would likely be considered really weird or "too kiddie'
Levels are also kinda forced to look more like an area you could imagine people living in rather than mostly made just to challenge you, which seems to make games focus on using the enemies and other things to challenge you instead. Which is really sad to me, since creative and challenging levels (especially in racing games) is one of my favorite parts of games.
And since this all narrows down many games to be certain way, they come out really similar.
To the point where you could probably hack a stage out of one game and it would easily blend in the with the next.
And when you make a hyper realistic world(which will almost always kill any chance for unique art-style), the actual gameplay, music, story and other features kinda have to be realistic as well, this means that you can't really have anything like platforms in midair, pitfalls, floating collectibles and unexplained talking animals, or else the game would likely be considered really weird or "too kiddie'
Levels are also kinda forced to look more like an area you could imagine people living in rather than mostly made just to challenge you, which seems to make games focus on using the enemies and other things to challenge you instead. Which is really sad to me, since creative and challenging levels (especially in racing games) is one of my favorite parts of games.
And since this all narrows down many games to be certain way, they come out really similar.
To the point where you could probably hack a stage out of one game and it would easily blend in the with the next.