Roshambo, Naked Ninja, your argument is reminding me from an excerpt from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which went more or less like this:
(...snip)
"You can lump that hat if you don't like it. I dare you to knock it off -- and anybody that'll take a dare will suck eggs."
"You're a liar!"
"You're another."
"You're a fighting liar and dasn't take it up."
"Aw -- take a walk!"
"Say -- if you give me much more of your sass I'll take and bounce a rock off'n your head."
"Oh, of course you will."
"Well I will."
"Well why don't you do it then? What do you keep saying you will for? Why don't you do it? It's because you're afraid."
"I ain't afraid."
"You are."
"I ain't."
"You are."
(snip...)
By that, I don't mean to call either of you childish, but to show you how this argument is not going anywhere. If you want to discuss how games nowadays are less imaginative, or how Bioware's game won't be anything other than cliché, or something like that, start providing examples and logic, instead of getting nowhere like this.
For example, suppose I am going to start arguing that Ultima 4 had some very original features. First, I might mention how CRPGs of that time were mostly focusing on gameplay elements, having little or no narrative element. Then I could mention that, while other games (like Infocom's adventures) were focusing on narrative, they used the narrative as a puzzle to provide the only gameplay (which is very different from the usual CRPG gameplay).
Ultima IV instead managed to link many of acts of the player to the narrative of becoming an avatar. Then I might go deeper into the topic of hw the story was told, how it was fragmented and how some fragmentes allowed you to make some choices that would drive the narrative, etc. Then I probably would defend the apparent simplicity of these choices and story, and the fact that the story has only one possible ending, by showing how other games simply hadn't been able to do what Ultima IV did on both fronts.
I think that this is a much better way of arguing because, even if the other party is deaf to your arguments, at least you will have a better idea about what you are disagreeing about. Also, I frequently end up learning something new when I try to write objectively about something.
Old school hard core gamers who Im not even remotely sure will ever be satisfied until Hell freezes over. Even then, Hell freezing over might not be original enough for you. Its already been done. darn.
