Please offer some suggestions :)

[Nihilis]

Dear reader,

I'm soon to take delivery of a new gaming PC that's a lot more capable than my previous PC.

Therefore, I want to break it in a bit.

The main games I play are WoW, Shogun 2, Crysis, L4D2, Mass Effect 2.

I'm looking for something new and exciting

I'll just provide a run down of my likes/dislikes so you can get an idea of my style for inspiration:

• I love RPGs. One of my all time favourites was Oblivion (and I loved Morrowind just as much) for it's depth.

• The KOTOR games were sick, and I love their philosophical, deep characters and the excellent, thought provoking script and lore. This is very important for me - I crave immersion, and relish in depth and atmosphere.

• Mass Effect was great from a story point of view, but I felt it lacked the depth that KOTOR had for me. It somehow replaced the atmosphere and lore of KOTOR with stronger graphics and gameplay. 

• I liked Dragon Age: Origins, but I did feel it was a bit... Hmm, convoluted. It was a winning formula, but didn't do anything really special or new for me. The story and lore didn't feel like they flowed very well for me. Dragon Age 2 seems like a console port to me, so I'm not planning on getting that.

• I don't like COD as I feel it's too generic and poppy. It's too gimmicky rather than the realistic shooter it claims to be.

• Crysis was great simply as eye candy, and I enjoyed the open, sandbox style. The plot was interesting, and at times unpredictable, but I didn't feel at all attached to my character, and had no immersion. Solid gameplay, but it did become old after a little while for me.

• Stronghold was an all time favourite as well, simply as it had a simple, strong mechanic, and a lot of options for variety, with a rich atmosphere.

• I'll just add that I'm very unhappy with WoW at the moment. I feel the game has moved too far away from it's roots of lore, immersion and atmosphere and more towards instant gratification, and is now more of a hand-holding, controlling lobby than it once was. Cata is a bad example of what I enjoy, whereas Vanilla, TBC and even early Wrath were really fun for me.

My biggest excitements are Star Wars: TOR, Guild Wars 2 and Skyrim.

Importance:

1 - Depth/Atmosphere
2 - (Hinges on above) Immersion
3 - Strong, Fun Mechanics
4 - Graphics
5 - Not controlled or limited more than strictly necessary.
6 - Not simplified from prequel or designed to be more "mainstream."

Thank you for reading so far. If you have, I'll assume you are still interested in the topic and are willing to help me

So, that being so, if you have a spare second, could you suggest any games based on my requirements for me to play over the coming months?

Thanks so much for your help.

 

[crewton]

First I want to say that we are so much alike that I'm pretty sure I wrote your OP. I actually just bought The Witcher which should be coming soon. The Witcher 2 just came out and I figured it would be a good chance to have a couple of games to play while waiting on SWTOR and Skyrim assuming The Witcher is any good ($13 at gamestop so why not give it a try).

 

[HEXiT]

playing witcher after witcher 2 and i gotta say i prefer the second installment.
if you like depth and story then halflife 2 is hard to beat as is the original deus ex (get the texture mods to update it) yes they are older games and show there age in parts but if you havent played them and take them for what they are you should still get something out of them.

 

[Nihilis]

I played the original Deus Ex, and you're right, I enjoyed it very much Half Life 2 is something I must get around to playing.

As for the Witcher, I've heard some quite negative reviews of it, and its (pseudo)sequel?

I'm considering picking up Rift, as I hear the storytelling is very good (better than WoW currently?) Equally Starcraft 2 might be fun?

Thank you both for your great replies