I was recently playing Oblivion a bit. Fine game and all, but ultimately another step in making ElderScrolls less hardcore and less... well roleplaying. Playing though newest Bethesda game actually reminded me more of Redguard(which isn't a bad thing since I liked that game) than Daggerfall. Yes to my surprise a series that was once a symbol of hardcore roleplaying in computer gaming is now traveling towards the path of action-adventure. Feeling pretty sick from it I've reinstalled Planescape:Torment to soothe my nerves. I'm now 15hrs into it. I've discovered that I don't remember much from this game, a very pleasant surprise. Anyway, after playing more of it I began to wonder: why such games aren't made anymore? There's obviously a great need for such games. And they wouldn't be that expensive to make. Tools are now pretty cheap and isometric game with pre-rendered backgrounds and 3d characters(something like Temple of Elemental Evil) wouldn't cost much to make and it would look more than fine. Instead devs "waste" money or another Diablo clone with pretty graphics. I can understand big publishers, but what about the small ones? Indie devs have picked the torch in strategy, adventure or sim genres. Sure, those games aren't that pretty, but they;re fun and most of all, not dumbed down. And recent example of GalacticCivilizations2(game from 4X genre, which is even more niche than hardcore RPG) shows that such games can do really well. Fortunately recently there seems to be increase trend of indie devs to try RPG development. LEt's see what will come out of this. But by "RPGs like that" I don't mean gameplay-only. I mean also setting. Planescape isn't exacly record-breaking setting when it comes to popularity. But thanks to that it was cheap and the setting is just amazing. No matter how much a developer will try, they won't make such detailed setting on their own. 2-3 years of few persons working on game world will never be able to compete with anything from Pen and Paper realm. Pen and Paper RPGs are an untouched gold mine. Rights to those IP would be dirty cheap and effects would be amazing. Look at JadeEmpire. Sure..Bioware spent lot of time on it and by videogame standards the setting is very detailed. But compare it to Rokugan(from Legends of Five Rings RPG) JadeEmpire suddenly seems medicore at best. And since Planescape:torment made such great use of SIGIL, I began to wonder how kick-ass a game based on WRAITH: the Oblivion would be. For those who don't know what Wraith is. It was a pen and paper RPG where players took a role of dead souls wandering in underworld. I recommend reading about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wraith:_The_Oblivion Just like SIGIL represented what was best in the setting and used it to make Planescape:Torment such a masterpiece. A Wraith cRPG set in Empire of Stygia would quite likely made the best setting ever seen in videogame. Imagine the possibilities. In ToEE there were different starting sections depending on your your allegiances. In Wraith you could start while being alive and roleplaying through one day of your life that would end with your death. Only then you would begin a real adventure through the afterlife Ehh.. I guess all that's left for me are hopeless dreams of Wraith:the Oblivion cRPG running on Temple of Elemental Evil-like engine.