The possibilities of sounds/movements/results are just about endless:
Miss, stopped by metal armour, stopped by leather armour, stopped by shield, direct hit to unprotected skin/flesh by various weapons makes a different damage depending on the weapon (sword, staff, spear, spiked club, morning star, bullet from sling, bullet from sniper bullet from hand gun, arrow from bow... each one gives a different type of wound) and how/where it hits (slightly touches the shoulder to make a rash, or sticks right into it to make a deep wound and make the arm unusable? hid the head which is protected by a helmet to disorient the opponent, or stick the tip of the sword right into his unprotected face to make an insta-kill and a deep hole where his left eye just sat?)
Don't be so hard on yourself, it's difficult to completely ignore the walls of text. Personally I'm just trying to get something to work - think two white rooms connected by a door (area transition), also a generic humanoid shape (that i have yet to bother creating), or really anything that can act as a substitute for a real avatar (hmm, I could maybe create a white block or a stick figure, without animations).

Think it? Change one room to grey and I LIVE in it. Oh and replace door with "curtain that doesn't quite reach the ground"

Also, see updated post.
Completely featureless walls (except the door), no furniture.

Sadly painty-artistic things aren't really my area of expertise for photography, writing or being awesome, I'm your man but not painty stuff

How did my rant against IGN turn into the ultimate RPG Design and Mechanics Discussion Thread?

Well in a forum many years ago, someone made a thread that crowned me king of dragging a thread off topic.
If memory serves, the thread changed rather rapidly to a discussion of why there should be midgets in OFP both because seeing them fire an M60 would be hilarious and because their small size would give them a smaller target profile and a possible tactical advantage

For such a smart person, you forget that the link in your first post is about RPGs...So we are gonna have to discuss what makes an RPG good...DUH!

Fallout 3 and RPGs were mentioned in your original post. They don't even have to be mentioned in the same sentence and they'll derail threads like these.

Um.. yeah... we may have a problem... we'll need a lot of graphicstuffs done. Care to convince someone else to join in our endeavor?

Classes are by far one of the worst things CRPGs have inherited from P&P (with levelling coming a close second). I have seen many games where a fighter cannot wear a wizard's robes, or a wizard cannot wear a thief's leather armor, simply because those items don't belong to that class. It makes sense for a wizard to not clank around in full plate or whatever but this should be determined by his Strength and Endurance, not some magic tag that says "only fighters can wear this, noob".
Classless systems like that of Gothic work very well. There aren't enough levels and experience for you to master all (or even most) skills and the best things for each class have the highest requirements, but if you want your mage to be able to equip a low-end two-handed sword or know how to fire a crossbow with deadly accuracy that's entirely up to you.

It's also, in my opinion, pretty acceptable that it's determined by lore that says that use of magic is greatly hindered by wearing iron/steel/metal/whatever, because it impediments you acting as a conduit for the magical energies.
Sure you can wear the metal plate, but don't be surprised when your magic bolt is miscast and just sizzles away like a pretty light in your hands.

The problem is that most developers take the lazy way out when implementing such lore by simply making other classes' armour unable to be equipped at all. Only a very few games (such as Arx Fatalis) implement it correctly and realistically by attaching skill penalties to heavy armour (with the penalties increasing the better the armour is). This gives a lot more freedom, because in some situations you can tank up with heavy armour to survive or run past a tough enemy, throwing weaker or less successful spells as needed.

Didn't the third edition of D&D use this system (casting penalty)?

Warlocks in NWN2 could take a feat that negated the magic penalty for chainmail armours I believe. And yes, they do use a different sort of magic than mages. One cool thing was how you could combine two spells to make a spell with both properties, spam it a couple of times and then have your warlock go into melee mode as the enemy got closer while wearing chainmail...