That's true, Bethesda are focusing on the wrong things since they bought the IP, of the "new" fallouts, only New Vegas is more than so-so, and it was because it was outsourced. I am hyping myself up for Wasteland 3 as thetrue spiritual successor of the original masterpieces.
After Oblivion, Bethesda's games become sandbox themeparks where you can do a lot of stuff with little substance while chipping away any RPG mechanics.
I think Oblivion's success despite its shortcomings on the RPG side gave them the message that this works and Skyrim's success reinforced it even further.
Though personally i find Morrowind the best of their games by far, especially on the writing side (not a surprise considering the writers they had - and lost right after Morrowind). Not as chaotic and repetitive as Daggerfall and Arena's random generator-based worlds, yet still with solid RPG mechanics, writing and exploration.
I own Wasteland 2 but I haven't been able to make myself play it. It's my own failing, but it's just so old-school. It's very hard to find a game that keeps old-school charm without the old-school mechanics.
I recently started again after an abandoned attempt to play it when it came out. Surprisingly, it does not look or play bad at all, it is just unapologetically hard game, if you build your party the wrong way, you won't be able to progress. Hopefully with 3 they will balance it out better. You should also take a peek at Metro: Exodus, if first person post-apocalypse is your thing. Short and far from trully open world, but very well made and atmospheric
I didn't find it hard, I just found it boring. With some truly terrible design choices because it was trying too hard to be oldskool. It seemed to be pretty easy if you min-maxed your characters.
I remember getting to the 2nd map (Los Angles?) and the first mission was this huge map which was hardly used. Massive waste of my time baby sitting and watching people walk.
And that was when I had enough of the game designers wasting my time so much and stopped.
Tyranny's got a pretty good balance of old-school CRPG feel without old-school difficulty or unfairness. Good gimmick & setting, and good-enough story, to boot.
Shadowrun: Dragonfall and Hong Kong are also really good. I hear "Returns" was OK but not nearly as good as those, haven't bothered with it.
Divinity: Original Sin seemed really promising but I got sick of it crashing like 1/hr and dropped it.
Perspective: aging former gamer whose access to long gaming sessions for deep single-player stuff is now tightly restricted by adult responsibilities—i.e., kids.
Favorite older games of that sort, for reference, are Baldur's Gate, FO1 and (especially) 2, Arcanum, and (stretching "that sort" a bit) Darklands. Still haven't beaten Planescape: Torment after my game started repeatably crashing ~2/3 of the way through years ago, but that was really good.
Seconding the Shadowrun games from Harebrained Schemes. The mechanics in the first one (SR: Returns) are a bit meh, decking kindof sucks, but the story is Pretty Darned Good. Dragonfall follows up with adding a GREAT set of supporting characters, and adds some neat mechanics. Hong Kong is fantastically done, and mixes the best of both.
The story lines are linear, but the stories are rather good. There's a lot of user generated content, and some are OK, but none of them are as good as the original. (I _think_ someone remade the original game's campaign in the Hong Kong engine, but don't recall for sure.)
Shadowrun: I can only recommend using mods to play returns in HK or DF (iirc you need the game files of returns). While it’s a somewhat linear story, the story itself is still amazing and feels more Shadowrun to me than the others. Playing it as a mod ensures you get the QoL improvements of the later games.
DoS 1/2: Never had any crash in either game and played both from release on.
I agree that Returns wasn't as good as Dragonfall (I've yet to play HK), but I feel that the plot is more focused, as there's not that 'collect money' part in the middle, like in DF, which slow down everything. And I've felt the ambiance way better in Returns (of course that point is a big YMMV).
Yeah I actually think 2 may have been the one I tried, not 1. IIRC I played it on Mac (Intel graphics) and my Windows-using friends reported no such problems. So it was probably just my machine, but regardless, it seemed good but I can't personally provide a strong recommendation for it as I only made it a few hours in.
