Agreed there are a lot more very cool mythologies to draw from. That would be something I'd very much like to see, as much as I'm a fan of the bog-standard medieval Tolkienesque settings.

To an extent I'd be one of those. As an example, take the base D&D setting. There are a few 'good' races and the rest are 'bad guys'. To me it just makes no sense that you're in that setting and suddenly you can have a mindflayer, vampire, or some other such creature join your party and off you go to do your dungeon delving, saving of the damsel/village/world, etc. Now, if they were part of your group for a specific quest (with a damned cool story reason), that would be fine. Or, as I noted before, if the setting supported this type of thing from the outset, that would be fine as well.

But yeah, I do find it 'ruins immersion' (as much as I actually loath that expression) to have some of these exotic/different races or characters as party options if the setting is one that is set up to cast them as mortal foes.

Not sure if I'm making my point clear, but I hope so.

I guess nowadays it would be called a dungeoncrawler? Personally i still count those as rpgs

No worries there, as there's a clear established reason why something like that might be in your party., I guess I'm looking at it from the 'traditional' setting standpoint where - to me - it makes no sense to have these exotics as party members.

Oh I totally get what you're saying, I wouldn't want say, Geralt running around having adventures with his drowner pal in the Witcher either. I'd just like more settings to feature different or a bigger roster of civilized creatures.

And using something else other than giants rats and spiders as enemies would be appreciated too.
I wish Japan would consider PC ports more often :(

I know that's kinda changing right now, but still, It can't happen fast enough for me

It's voice acting. Costs more to record VO for multiple races and genders. Elder Scrolls has no VO so they can get away with it.

Dragon Age 3 is confirmed to have more race options but also confirmed to use the same voice actors for all of them, because of costs.

Yeah, but that's only in the D&D setting, which is pretty much black-and-white anyway. Legend of Grimrock for example isn't based on D&D, and for all we know in LoG's world lizardmen and minotaur creatures might be living alongside humans. And all PCs are prisoners anyway, so they may even be evil and just forced to cooperate by the circumstances. That won't stop players used to the D&D setting from complaining, apparantly.

*cough* Shadowrun *cough*

I don't really count this as an example. Shadowrun has had many, many sourcebooks over the years to explain the existence of elves, trolls, etc. in the modern society. What I'm referring is something like, say, adding elves out of the fucking nowhere in a game like Call of Duty.

I'm with you. I realize now I was too narrowly focused on the standard setting and not looking at a bigger picture.

boys boys, this whole "story stuff" + dungeoncrawling has been solved years ago on pnp scene:

Xcrawl
Xcrawl - review

I happen to own a copy myself ;)

CoD would be easy enough to turn in to Shadowrun setting. I dont really see problem here.

Its all about having good enough writer really. Not that there are too many of those around.

Also dont forget The World of Darkness -setting.

Its modern with fantasy horror twist. Most know about Vampire, Werewolf and maybe Mage - but theres plenty of other stuff going on in there as well. Good ideas and some good novels. Clan saga was rather neat.

Once again, I'm not saying that you can't do it. I'm saying that it feels odd if you do it in a game that doesn't fit it. Imagine creating a realistic game and suddenly dumping those fantasy creatures in a completely cheesy way. Congratulations, because if you weren't intending to create a parody, you just did it.