Thats not what you did in False Prophet.
Sure. Sure.
What we're [you're] all forgetting in our [your] desire to magically transform 'simple' RPGs into works of academic genius is that you're all talking about completely different historical disciplines. If a developer was to achieve all of the things that are being suggested in this thread then they'd have to be more well-read that a don at oxford university.
Understanding and closely examining different historical cultures - That's actually Anthropolgy
Understanding and closely representing what lesser known historical cultures used as objects of daily life - That's actually Archaeology
Understanding and replicating historical events within a new setting - That's regular History
Understanding and taking inspiration from historical fantasy - That's Literature
Creating any kind of narrative which attempts to use the above - That's Creative Writing
In most of these cases it takes a lifetime to become an expert in any of these fields to a point where what would exist in a game would look 'competent', and whatever was included would still get criticised by other experts who held a different view, cos even experts disagree. Sure, a developer could have a personal specialist interest they've self-read and insert their ideas into an RPG, but its not something you should expect as a genre norm as a result. When people add interesting and curious bits of originality to an RPG its not supposed to set a precedent, all following RPGs do not have to adhere to the individual sparks of interest from every other game. And if those sparks
do become norms, do you really expect developers who didn't have that personal interest in the relevant subject to produce the same quality of content as the original, or do you think they'll just do a popamole version which quickly becomes a tired and jaded cliche?
Anthropology, huge sidetrack. Archaeology, huge sidetrack, History, huge sidetrack. If someone's going to be making a living out of Fantasy Fiction then the field they should be concentrating on is... Historical Fantasy, from Homer to Conan the Barbarian. And the reason I say this is because of structure. Fantasy, as a distinct brand, isn't merely "something that's made up", its a whole network of established emotional hooks which is restrictive within it's conventions while being unlimited within those conventions.
It's not that deviation from fantasy conventions are bad in a game, quite the opposite, they do add a spark of originality to that specific game, its that each time you add a spark which pulls you away from the conventions you are, essentially, pulling yourself away from fantasy. Factions, crafting, castle/house-building, backtracking, menial quests et al and forever etc of the many things that's I've long since stopped keeping track of, are all things which prevent the player from
moving forward with their adventure. Sure, its nice if any cultures you do happen across in your journeys are decently fleshed out, but you really don't need to know
that much about them, just as long as what you do experience makes it feel like the cultures are 'real' and 'imaginative enough' for the setting in which you encounter them. So a starting hub probably more-so than a village you pass through, etc.