I know how you feel. My worst gaming experiences this generation were western games. I feel for two "game of the year editions" of critically acclaimed titles "Borderlands" and "Oblivion". I have played both for 20-30 hours and I was not entertained more than 10 minutes. Since there is no real story progress, rather unconnected sidequests arks, I didn't feel connected to the game. Having a silent character was also a big problem for me. I do not like Moral systems and decision trees too. Online gaming is also more often annoying than interesting.
I had the most fun and thrill with total linear games. FF 13 was the best game I have played on the PS3 so far, although it recieved a lot of hate. I don't see why Sidequests or Nonlinearity could make a game more thrilling. It offered less freedom than other FF, but I can see that this was intentional, because you were the hated enemy in whole Cocoon. You should feel like you are being chased and have no time to take a breath. It was a brilliant game in my opinion.
Borderlands... i don't feel it is a rpg. It is just another Egoshooter with a boring story, no charakter development, to much violence, ugly characters and tons of senseless sidequests. I still wonder why I should even bother looking for that Pandora chamber, why the enemies have the key and what the whole game is about. The whole game is pure repetition with random loot and always the same enemies.... I still wonder why it got more than 70 % with such huge gaps in character development and story....
Oblivion.... I always thought I like RPGs until I tried out Oblivion..... Never played a RPG with a silent character before, and I should never try it again. Again, after 20-30 hours still no clue what this whole game is about. The main character has no motives, "exploring" random dungeons for random loot was not really interesting for me, Sidequests are not really thrilling... I gave up, I can not name a single thing I liked about it. It sure offers a lot of content, but it lacks the main story for me, that gets me connected with the game and gets me thinking about what is going on.
Maybe that is just a (sub)cultural difference in gaming taste. I came to the conclusion that Sandbox games and WRPGs and Egoshooter-Action-Rpgs-hybrids are just not my taste. So I should better stay away for the likes of GTA/RDR, Bioshock, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Borderlands and InFamous in the future, regardless of "game of the year awards".
In Fact I can get more than enough games per year from Square-Enix, Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Konami, Capcom, Level-5 and several japanese Games. The only strong point for Western Games for me are offline Coop-Games. There are not many japanese Coop games available in Europe.
I do not mean that they are bad games in general... It is just that they do not offer that want I expect from gaming. Linear games often deliver a more intense gaming experience to me and I got bored really quickly with sandbox games.
For a better understanding, I have played these Sandbox-Games/WRPGS so far:
GTA 3, GTA 4, Assassin's Creed, Deathspank 1 2, Borderlands, InFamous, Sacred 2, Oblivion
