This logic comes from recent years when big publishers have become very risk averse and AAA releases tend to look alike within few exceptions.

That was the last time AAA publishers allowed devs to take risks. Those games, while profitable, were considered financial failures by executives.

That era taught the industry to be risk averse.

Gaming was profitable long before by decades at that point, mostly due to the quick evolution of technology propelling a lot of the innovation and novelty of new titles. Yet, due to how the economics of capitalism work, the industry reached the peak of how much they could ride those coattails before they had to begin creating their own industry growth, which was around the time of those consoles.

Publishers and Devs scrambled to find new ways to bring in more players. They eventually learned what worked and what didn't, and the economic necessity of growth forced those companies to rely on what they knew had mass appeal instead of taking those risks like before. The wiggle room just wasn't there anymore.

Yeah, even look at Sony. Recent franchises include a genetically modified clone orphan living in a land of sentient machines with vivid colours.

A father daughter love story told in the time of a zombie apocalypse. (Recent is doing a lot of lifting, lol,)

A samurai warrior, believed dead in a beautiful version of Japan, who sues the wind for direction. Here it's more the art direction.

Older hits, instead of using cars, used floating race pods. Some told stories using forward and back through time to allow a player and their inner soul/ghost explore areas differently. Others has you play as a set of androids staring to become sentient and making decisions for or against their programming, for their or others benefit.

The quirkiness has always been there. There is also lots of generic stuff and copied stuff. Wherever art and business collide, that's always the case.