There were 2 RPGs these year that i really liked, it wasn't ME and it wasn't Skyrim. It was their "smaller" and a few month late cousins Dragon age origins and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
Both killed by their dumb publishers :/ Now, most people liked ME more than DAO but i didn't, i enjoyed it way more than ME and ME2.
I really liked the silent protagonist which thoughts were given a voice by the people he chose to partner with and the influence he had upon them, how you could play a "power hungry" character and the game would actually mold to that character and be harder in the beginning and easier in the end when your blood magic or arcane knight powers were actually useful. How you could play a good guy knight and the game would be harder than if you played a "rogue" character that was out for profit.
The combat is what i enjoy most, really hard and really strategic. If you wanted to finish that game with no side quest on the first playtrough on nightmare difficulty you would fail like shit due to lack of items and knowledge, thats how an RPG should fucking play out ! There were actual objective choices, if you chose to side with the "good" and "honorable" dwarfs that had no initiative than it would turn out worse in many ways than siding with the corrupt but very much prosper seeking noble houses. If you wanted your best friend from the college to go free you had to sacrifice the wive of the red cliff king and not get the best ending from the "knightly" pov but get the best ending from the " Im not a douche, i forgive and save my friends" pov.
It wasn't some stupid CHOSE RED BE BAD or CHOSE BLUE BE GOOD joke of a "moral" system, it had a level of complexity and your wit in speech and moral compass of your character actually affected the damn game and the damn ending as well and every one of your party members in a huge way.
Also... let's talk KOA, that was a game which played way to "mmo-ish" but the combat was great and really the only weak point was the fact that it had no difficulty on which you could complete most side quest and not get horribly overpowerd... really game devs. please add difficulty levels for each and every one of us :/, not everyone wants to complete only the main story and not everyone is retarded.
Yes it was grind-ish and yes most quest were not that interesting but there were actually quite a lot of new creature to be encountered and quite a lot of "hidden" lore if you looked for it.
Also the ending zone was a let down, you don't mold half your fucking game to the idea of "we are preparing for a war" and than the war is actually you going in and slaughtering about 100 packs of 5 NPCs each to than fight a very let-down boss. I mean, common, the last boss is supposed to be a god and you can literally stand in 1 place and press 1 button to defeat it, MOST ELITE NPCS ARE HARDER TO BEAT THAN THAT WAS !!!
And both games killed by, guess what ? Retarded devs/publishers.
Dragon age was killed because ( despite very fucking good sales ) EA felt it would be better to turn it into a new Mass effect franchise in terms of choice and dialogue and the devs were retarded enough to completely ruin combat ( who the fuck, who the fuck, thinks that randomly spawning enemies in the middle of the battle is a good idea ? In a game that previously was based around the idea of facing powerful enemies by PLANING AHEAD... kinda hard to do if you don't know what your fighting and how many of them there are ).
The devs that developed KOAR were killed because they tried making an mmo at the same time and ran out of founds, when will people stop trying to create WOW 2 !? When ?
Kotor failed, Rift failed, LOTR online failed, Aion failed, LA failed and a bunch of other that i can't remember failed. Is it that hard to understand that your game won't be " the next big sub based mmo" no matter how hard your try ? Is it ?
Fuck girl blogs, if you are unable to get laid, talk with girls or fuck a particular crush of yours there are so many things that can help you do it from alcohol and weed to pick up guide and gay friends.
But nothing can fix the fact that Dragon age Origins and Kingdoms of Amalur will never see a sequel and nothing can fix the whole in my heart that those 2 games left :/