RPG Roundtable #6, Part One

The first installment of RPGVault's sixth RPG Roundtable feature is now available, which includes comments from Heuristic Park's D.W. Bradley, BioWare's Ferret Baudoin, and others. Ferret's response to the proposed statement, "They don't make RPGs like they used to":
Many old RPGs stand the test of time admirably - well, as long as you have a tolerance for dated graphics. They sometimes had a scope you just don't see any more. There was a lot more exploration, side quests, and things could be huge (perhaps too huge, honestly). Content was bloody cheap back then; a designer with a great idea could cheaply implement that vision until really late in the project. Even if it required a new art asset, you could buy some gullible... I mean, "kind-hearted"... artist a pizza and boom, you got your shiny new 2D sprite. Players also had the expectation that they didn't have to see every little thing in the game; something could be a snazzy text description. So, old games could tap into the power of a player's imagination like books do.