Trust me... I know what you mean about the industry changing... I was there when Wasteland came out... bought it at the store and played it when it was new. And it's still an amazing game (yes I still play it when I get the itch).
A distressing number of gamers posting on forums and journalists writing articles about games lack this historical perspective. I loved Wasteland when I first played it on my C-64 around 1988, but I would have a really hard time getting into it today -- not so much because of the graphics (I play a lot of DS games) but because the interface is pretty clunky.
I wasn't putting FO3 down... just saying that it looks (and looks can be deceiving) like it will play more like a shooter than a CRPG. That doesn't mean I won't like it... I may very well love it. It also doesn't mean that just because the industry changes, that I have to change with it.
I felt that Deus Ex played more like an RPG than a shooter, but I also felt that Thief played more like an RPG than an action game. I'm pretty fast and loose with my genre definitions these days; to me it's more about the thematic elements of the gameplay than the mechanics themselves. But games like Zelda and Okami also feel like RPGs to me as well. I grew up playing D&D in the 80s and computer/console games like The Bard's Tale, Ultima, Might & Magic, Dragon Warrior, Zelda, Wasteland, Phantasy Star, and the like. They all try to capture that essence of what made a great session of D&D special, and while I could split hairs and label some games as action/adventure with RPG elements, action-RPG, tactical-RPG, etc, I don't bother because I see a very clear distinction between any of those games and Quake or Halo. And Deus Ex (for example), felt more like an Ultima game to me than it did a Quake or Doom game.
If CRPGs eventually all become first person shooters with stats (and less stats as the years go by)...
Fewer stats don't bother me. The Realms of Arkania games had a bit too much stat-crunching for my tastes, for example. And the Ultima games were always very light on stats -- especially VII, which is often considered the height of the series.
As an aside, I still find it ironic how the first-person perspective is generally associated with shooters now, when it was the dominant perspective in RPGs for many years: Might & Magic, Wizardry, The Bard's Tale, Ultima Underworld, Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, Dragon Wars, Shining in the Darkness, and The Elder Scrolls were all strictly first-person perspective games. The AD&D "Gold Box" games (Pool of Radiance, etc) all used a first-person view for exploration and an overhead tactical view for combat, as did the Realms of Arkania series. The first five Ultima games used a first-person view for dungeons, as did the first Phantasy Star game. When RPG fans go off on a rant about not having an overhead view (not accusing you of it here, but I've seen it a lot on other boards), I am admittedly a bit confused, as first-person was pretty much the default presentation for PC RPGs (albeit in 90-degree turns and 10' steps) for most of the early years. The overhead view used for towns and the overworld in early Ultima games was fairly unusual; the Magic Candle borrowed it, the Phantasie series and Wizard's Crown series, and I believe Temple of Apshai used a similar perspective. Other than that, I think it was mostly console RPGs like Dragon Warrior, Phantasy Star (towns and overworlds in the first game), and Final Fantasy that made the most use of the overhead perspective until well into the 90s. Real-time combat in RPGs is fine with me if it's done well (i.e. it's not an exercise in fighting with the control scheme instead of the monsters). I liked the real-time combat in The Summoning, Ultima Underworld, Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate (and other Infinity Engine titles), Jade Empire, and KOTOR. I hated the real-time combat in Dungeon Master and the Eye of the Beholder games, because you had to control 4-6 characters in "real time" yet the monsters didn't have to cope with a user interface and could attack you from all sides at once so no matter what direction you turned, your magic-users in the back kept getting whacked. Ahem, back to our main topic of discussion...
and if they all become 20 hour epics (sarcasm intended there) like some of the AAA titles that come out lately... I don't have to like it... even though I may still like the games (I will just like them on a different level). I will just get my old-fashioned CRPG fix off of my shelves of hundreds of games from the days of yore
I used to thrive on the 60+ hour epic RPGs, but that what when I was a teen and in my early twenties, living with my parents, and not in a long-term relationship. Now I'm 34, married, a homeowner, and we're looking at starting a family within a couple of years. I don't have the time for games that I used to. Both Zelda: Twilight Princess and Okami took me just short of 60 hours to play, my first playthrough of KOTOR clocked in at about 49 hours and the second at about 42. If the game is compelling and delivers a great experience all the way through, then I still enjoy the longer epics. But a lot of games bore me by the 10 hour mark. RPGs are bad for including a lot of filler (random battles, fetch quests, needless backtracking, etc), and in the end I'd rather play a game with a solid 20 hours of compelling, fantastic gameplay than one that is basically 20 hours of gameplay extended to fill 60 hours.
Also, if I remember correctly, the original Fallout only took me about 20-22 hours to complete, and I did the majority of the sidequests. It wasn't a terribly long game, and I was quite okay with that.
It's just that when you've been playing computer games since there's been computer games... it can be kinda sad to see things change for what some see at the worst, and others see as the better. The focus on graphics and short-attention span gaming make me a bit sad...
I don't see games focusing any more attention on graphics than they did 10 years ago or 20 years ago (and I've been an avid computer/video gamer since my family got an Intellivision in 1982). It's always been a big selling point, and it is a very visual medium. Granted, high-end graphics today are exponentially more complex than they were 10 years ago and thus require a lot more money and manpower. I think the "short attention span gaming" comes less from the "oh no casual gamers are taking over the market and are too dumb to enjoy the games we like" idea and more from the fact that the core gamers are getting older and our gaming habits are changing -- and game developement studios are primarily made up of lifelong gamers. As I said, I'd still love to play a solid 60+ hour epic RPG, but I can probably handle one or two of those games in a year. On top of that, when I play an epic-length game, I don't want to be staring at environments made up of the same half-dozen "tilesets" for 60 hours (hence why I don't like the Elder Scrolls games much). Epic-length content requires epic-level budgets.
But forget all that
... if Bethesda delivers on half of what they've promised, Fallout 3 could very well be a truly great CRPG... we just have to wait and see. It's hard to gauge when, on paper they tell you all this beefy RPG goodness stuff... but then the trailer shows very little, if any of that... instead focusing on how good it looks and how pretty the bad guys blow up.
It was a trailer put together to show in front of hundreds at Microsoft's press conference. The vast majority of those attending would be bored to tears watching him navigate dialogue trees.
