"It feels like there's thousands of us competing for a handful of jobs,"
Isn't that pretty much it? Everyone wants to make video games. All of the sudden everyone wants to invest in video game development because they realized there's money in it. But video games are a big commitment for consumers (compared to most consumables), we literally only have so much time to dedicate them and there's SO MANY GODDAMN GAMES. Like, an Eldritch horror inducing amount of video games if you have FOMO. And that's still a drop in the ocean compared to all the people who want to make video games. Hundreds if not thousands of cool games go completely unnoticed by basically everyone every month, seemingly.
There's a bizarre sort of supply / demand triangle going on.
Is it weird that I think of Halo 3: ODST as one of the real detective games? Not because it's particularly dedicated to being that, but because the default ending of the game is that you don't solve the mystery and leave unsatisfied. You're just some grunt and what's actually going on is above your paygrade. Learning the truth is a bit of a pain in this ass but it's also basically half of the game's story. I think it was a really ballsy move for what it's worth.