Another caveat is that there are once again enough RPGs coming out for PC, and the big RPG drought we starved through in the mid 90s does not seem to be repeating itself and there is no need for a 'last hope' kind of game.

Wait — what? What the hell is this guy talking about? That's complete bullshit. The RPG drought of the past couple of years has been downright awful. As bad as the mid-90's, unless you count budget Diablo clones as RPG's.

I agree about technical performance though. Gothic 3 is horrible in that department.