I think for most of your examples it's your rose-colored glasses speaking.
also a ton more Toxic and Mean
You're just forgetting all the console war stuff from the past. Or the "CoD lobby" type shit.
E3 or even Gamescom from the 2010s im like "Holy Shit look at all these Cool Games" but obviously nowadays its just "meh" really
Again, I think you're just not thinking about all these mediocre games that have existed since the very beginning. All the shitty movie tie-ins or whatever, that got pumped out all the time.
Gaming has been toxic and mean for a loooong time. Shitty games have been made since basically the very beginning.
Made it to Act 2 in my current Baldur's Gate 3 run. Since this is my first time going Dark Urge, I'm not playing on Honor Mode (although same difficulty settings, except not single save), and I'm definitely save scumming more, even if you ignore the times I'm just trying new stuff (did the exploit to kill Raphael in Act 1 for the first time for his loot).
I'm also using (sub)classes that I've never or rarely used this time. Swashbuckler is pretty neat and Druid Owlbear form is just dumb (in a good way). Frost Sorcerer seems neat, but I don't really care about getting enemies wet first for double damage, so I might just switch that build down the line. Wildheart Barbarian can really chunk, although it's mostly just hitting people with your stick. I then made Karlach to a dual crossbow Arcane Trickster, mainly for a token ranged build (I'm really melee heavy otherwise), but I'm not really feeling it, so I might change that up as well later.
I'm definitely starting to get burned out on BG3, since I played like 200h in the last two months or something. Although it's not like I'm fiending to play anything else right now (although I have a huge backlog), so it's still fine.