And now there's Pillars.
I'm a storyfag. Or more like lorefag really. If a game gives me a world that's coherent, believable, and lived-in, I can forgive a lot. Pillars has that in abundance. It's far better in this respect than any IE game other than Torment. We have nations fighting wars for reasons which make sense, with power relations changing, alliances shifting, fortunes reversing, and reversing again. We have technological, scientific, and social progress. We have people with complex relations to their gods, whom the follow -- or hate, or resent, or wrestle with -- for human reasons. We have -- finally -- put to sleep the Scots dwarf, with subraces no longer forming only their own cultures. In fact we have a range of cultures that's far broader and more interesting than anything I remember seeing in any cRPG, and drawing from a much broader range of historical cultures than just about any other game I've played. Eora exists for its own reasons, not just as a sandbox for you to play in.
The writing and story were really good as well. We had a compelling, memorable, and really well voiced antagonist, equally compelling allies like Lady Webb, and a general flow that kept a lot of freedom without losing momentum. Not flawless, mind: like most games with a blank-slate protagonist, the main story had some problems with character motivation and acknowledgment of character choices or background (what if I thought being a Watcher was the coolest thing evar?) and the companion writing was somewhat uneven, but I was only disappointed with one of them, and there only a little. The companions' motivations for hanging out with me made sense, for the most part and with relatively minor exceptions, and they had distinct and interesting personalities, even the not-so-likeable ones. We've come a long way here from "For Shar!" and "For the Balance!"