It's never to late to play games that are remembered by the story, IMO.  I missed several great games between 1999 and 2006, but going back through these old gems doesn't overshadow the greatness that these games portrayed.

Are we back to hailing KotOR as the greatest WRPG ever again? *sigh*

Listen, BioWare has never - never - made a truly potent story. Look at KotOR. That game had so much potential. It could have examined the nature of identity (are you the 'real' you?), memory (how do you know anything you have experienced was real?) free will (were your actions effectively orchestrated by someone else?), the good/evil dichotomy (what makes an action 'good'? what does 'good' even mean?), as well as a slew of other psychological themes. Instead the game resorts to simple black and white morality, with the main cast suffering from laughable stock "I'm evil cuz I'm evil" motives. No, it was the sequel, made by Obsidian, that brought these themes up (and more).

What BioWare does, and does well, is to craft epic, well told stories. It's the basic Hero's Quest - exactly what you would expect, no more and no less. It can still be an enjoyable ride, to be sure, just don't expect anything too profound or original from that kind of story.

Classic fantasy FTW!

Bethesda is not on a decline, they've been consistent and kept the idea since Daggerfall - to put the player into a huge world letting him be free to do what he wants.

What's wrong with Oblivion? It's fundamentally the same as Morrowind xcept for the level system of enemies.

Oblivion took away many character attributes/skills.  This really simplified the character development, allowed them to scrap tons of armours.  The consolidation of weapon skills made weapon selections kind of useless.  The horrible implimentation of leveled enemies (there is nothing wrong with leveled enemies, but Oblivion did it wrong).  The actual shrinking of the world has occured slowly, reducing the amount of area and NPC's from Daggerfall-Morrowind-Oblivion.  Oblivion only seems to have 3 different missions, which obviously get incredibly annoying after the 3rd one.  And the strange idea that you could become the master of every guild, something that seems a little strange for an open world game because this doesn't give the player the feeling that they actually influence the world.  I could continue to go on with more faults, but my initial hate for the game has faded over time and I have attempted to forget all the problems with this game.

EDIT:  I know lots of people loved Oblivion, but I have failed to the get the same immersion that Morrowind gave.  This really ruined the game for me and possibly why the flaws in the game really rubbed me the wrong way.

U fail in ur bashing of Oblivion.

1. You are nitpicking. A few less skills and armor types dont affect the overall quality of a game. Well, yes as a hardcore fan obviously I would like to have as much stuff as possible too, but like Todd Howard and other devs have said, a great developer knows when to add stuff, but also when to take away stuff.

2. Leveled enemies is the only major flaw in Oblivion. Even the devs agree with this. That's why they fixed it with Fallout 3.

3. The land mass of Oblivion is bigger than Morrowind. This has been debated and decided on the official forums a long time ago. Morrowind apears to have a bigger world only because they're so many mountains you cant directly walk over, but u have to snirkly through roads around them. Oblivion is the biggest single player game ever made. And the best too.

I do agree that many of my nitpicking is simply that, but in my edit I noted these faults probably stood out more to me because of lack of immersion (and this my be personal issues with the game, probably stemming from the horrible leveled enemies implimentation).

As for 3, Morrowind felt bigger because every city had a very distinct fealing.  It appeared and felt like each city belonged with the surrounding environment.  This was something Oblivion didn't accomplish, and this made the world feal smaller because most of the cities had similar surrounding environments.  This similarity in environments doesn't make you feel like you have actually accomplished any real travelling.

I do understand why many people enjoyed Oblivion, it just didn't fit into what I wanted in an Elder Scrolls game.  I'm just hoping that Dragon Age can live up to my standards I have personally expect in a WRPG.

A few things.

It's a different company now. Things get worse. Look at Square-Enix. By your logic, Square-Enix is the best developer in the industry.

The newer games by Obsidian(last 8 years?) are fall less prestigious than Fallout 3, and I believe, have worse review scores?

Just because you are a PC fanatic, doesn't mean you have to be an elitist.

Yes, Black Isle Studios is awesome, yes KoToR II was worse than KoToR, and yes, this has been discussed earlier betwixt myself and other PC fans and we came to an agreement.

Read that for further comment.

I'm getting really sick of PC fans lately, seems I've been running into them in every other thread, being all elitist and saying that the game industry sucks, because they no longer have any exclusive games of their own.

I should make a real, fleshed out, PC is doomed, thread after a couple of weeks of investigation, just to enjoy the butthurt. The base argument very few exclusives, and less in the future due to no first party games, along with diminishing returns on graphical capabilities should be enough to dish out plenty of butthurt if presented correctly.

.....it could be....epic? Hmm.

Kotor to Kotor II was a letdown, but that's because I thought KOTOR was so awesome!!! Not thaT kotor II was bad.

Are we back to criticizing other people for having an opinion? Get off your damn high horse, sheesh.