Andy_Panthro: Have to strongly agree there - BG2 on higher res. still looks amazing to this day, and I love the spell effects. Games of that quality should be used as reference points for modern games.
Despite mass effect having nice visuals, the repetitive indoor environments and character/item models make me long for hand drawn backgrounds.
ilves: A big problem with modern RPGs is that they try to make a huge sandbox world each time. The problem with that approach is that it takes forever to create all the differente environments and at some point they start using certain cookie cutter formations and the world just comes out stale. They really need to either a) make a smaller, more interesting world or b) find out some type of algorithim that creates environments but makes them DIFFERENT on a mass scale. BG2 and the like were large, but at the same time those maps, mostly in 2-d, didn't require nearly as much work to create and they could focus on making them unique and interesting.
I thought Gothic II did this very well. The world was open but it lookekd very well made, you could tell that they put time and care into shaping the world and it came out looking very natural and beautiful throughout the different area's.
