- Planescape: Torment -
It's not a role-playing game, it's a point&click adventure with tacked-on game mechanics. It would be a nice adventure game, but all the RPG mechanics do is just slow it down with pointless nonsense. Yes, you can play any character you want, but what's the point of it? You just play it for the story and the gameplay is something you want to get over with as quickly as possible so you can get the next part of the story.

- Hitman - (1 & 2 at least)
The big problem with this game is that the pacing is dictated by the game, not the player. In Thief you want to remain undetected and slip past enemies, but in Hitman you often have to put on a disguise and hide in plain sight. This means trying to act as inconspicuous as possible, i.e. walking at snail's pace. Even then the enemy AI is highly unpredictable, sometimes I can just walk past them carrying a sniper rifle and sometimes they can sense me from across the street. It also doesn't help that the levels have been designed with very specific solutions in mind.

- Crusader: No Remorse & No Regret -
The controls. Enough said.

- Ultima VII -
See Torment above. Yes, I can bake bread, but so what? I do it once, twice and then the novelty has worn off.

Gone Home. I'd say more but in the interest of not ruining the plot I will just say too little interaction and connection to the family for me to feel invested.

Definitely Command & Conquer : Renegade. The idea of experiencing the C&C universe from a 1st person perspective was incredibly exciting. What I expected, or hoped for rather, was to be a soldier on a vast C&C battlefield where 2 or more bases where battling it out. What I got instead was a mediocre FPS with a C&C theme. The only redeeming feature was the multiplayer, which was closer to what I hoped for, although on a much smaller scale.
Did you ever try Spinter Cell : Chaos Theory? It was released one year or so after thief 3 and I thought it was pretty damned good.

I don't know, but when "Set out on a cross-country journey to win back the love of your life" is the first thing written, what were you expecting? Your one major point is the whole point/plot of the game!! :-)

Just making conversation, but your post seems a little contradictory - "so interested in the game's concept... an amazing concept" - and then you argue that the very concept is what killed it. "forced to chase after your ex even though I hate the idea." ???

I also thought Riddick had some nice stealth stuff, though it was very limited. In fact I think the 'sneak up and neck snap' is the best stealth kill in gaming to this day. I replay those parts over and over. :D

Riddick's brutally kickass yes :) And now I regret uninstalling it before I finished it :(
I recently watched Pitch Black again. It's a pity that they wasted the concept's potential with the sequel, but I still have to see the 2013 film tho, so here's hoping...

Wasted what concept? He can't be stealthing everyone all of the time. That sequel was one of the best sci fi movies in years when it came out. Great fun indeed. Even better game, I love those horrid little kills when you sneak up on people.

The sequel was great. I've seen it dozens of times and I'm hoping one day I'll actually be able to figure out WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!!!! :P

Naked Lunch was easier to follow than that damn thing. XD

Glad you enjoyed it :) but I unfortunately found it very meh overall, except for the prison entry and escape scenes of course which were awesome!

It does indeed have some nice stealth-y bits from what I've played of it (about two hours into it). Shame that Riddick is so brittle compared to everybody else, and I can't get quicksave to work. Dishonored has some great stealth-y bits and so do the Batman: Arkham games (though the maps/rooms get a bit repetitive).

On topic: Gothic 3. I love Gothic 3 but its execution is massively flawed (mostly on the engine side of things). A completely open world game with a map that rivals those of The Elder Scrolls series? A war between Humans and Orcs where you decide the fate? Not a single invincible anything present in the entire game? The ability to be "the bad guy" or "the good guy" instead of being forced to the "good guy"? Interesting, varied and beautiful areas to discover? Multiple ways to build your character and tons of loot? Yep it promised and indeed has all of that. It also has a completely broken engine, tons of generic MMO fetch/eliminate quests, a main quest that is so absent you can literally completely forget about it and oh did I mention the completely broken engine that makes it nearly unplayable?

In short it promised a huge completely open world that you could actively decide the fate of (either good, evil, or neutral) with hundreds of hours of gameplay. It delivered that but in the most broken, nearly unplayable way possible. Given another year of development time it might've reached its potential, but the standalone expansion Forsaken Gods would've still killed the Gothic series (with Gothic 4 dancing on its grave).

The extended edition puts in an interesting couple of tid bits that makes a bit more sense story wise.

Omikron: The Nomad Soul - the concept is amazing but the execution, while not completely horrible, is a let down - I guess an engine just couldn't do FPS, arena fighting and open world driving etc. all at once back then...

Evolva - bit like Spore with an interesting evolve your troops mechanic but the execution was just WTF? head scratching - maybe I just never gave it enough time to get my head around it?

Edit - what about the time hopping, Manga FPS with an AI buddy from FPS master John Romero - admit THAT sounded pretty kewl in development... (Daikatana obviously)

Gothic 3.

A huge (and when I say huge, I mean huge) world to explore, without any loading screens.
Really, there are none. Houses are open to the world and can be entered, you can walk from any point to any other point of the map.

But! The game was rushed to release by the publisher, okay. But even that cannot explain all the horrible bugs this game had. There are so many. Playing version 1.00, you're just going mad.
No there are many patches by the community, the most recent one being 1.75.14. And it eliminates most bugs. But the game still doesn't run smoothly, no matter how powerful your computer is.

You're not missing anything with Riddick 3. It's basically Pitch Black remade, and not nearly as awesome. Seen it in the theater. If I had come across the director/producer afterward, they would not have survived >:(