Yes, these games made it big and were good, but did they really push boundaries and invent new styles of play? No, they are just a story with an engine - the OP is talking about JC going off and doing something "different."
Grand Theft Auto 3? The grand-daddy of open-world gameplay? It even gave birth to an entire genre of clones.
World of Warcraft? Didn't invent a new style of play? They took Evercrack and distilled it into pure, fine weapons-grade MMORPGing!
Metal Gear Solid? Didn't have an incredibly unique (and much cloned, and much parodied) style of play? Whose story and art direction is so famous that today we have people running around conventions with big exclamation marks over their heads?
Ditto Mass Effect - whose conversational mechanics practically redefined how all games do it today?
Arkham Asylum? Whose unprecedented combination of unique art style, stealth mechanics, pitch-perfect voice acting, investigative gameplay, and open-world format was widely lauded by both players and critics?
Oh yeah, those games. I'm sure the stories were not at all core to the games' success. It's all the mechanics, I'm sure.
Fortunately, I haven't played a single game you mentioned. So I can be serious and totally off base at the same time. However, I have played games by JC and they are more of the same. Hoping his next gig isn't Rage++, but something new