Yeah that is one thing that is always really disappointing about new RPGs that come out. I don't know if Elder Scrolls can be picked for an example of this though - you can't pick fruit out of the trees, but you can spend hours reading the books in that game and there is just loads of crap to find. It's all pretty boring and samey but I don't think it's an example of this streamlining that RPGs have been doing for the past 10 years or so. It's just the pursuit of being the best looking game around because people seem to think that this even matters. I played FFXIII recently and the game looks very detailed and everything but you just KNOW that there is nothing behind it and it isn't exciting at alll. 'Wow look at that giant city over there in the distance! Well, back to walking in a straight line and doing boring fighting' is the kind of feeling I get playing alot of recent RPGs. I played Lost Oddysey ages ago and it had the same problem. They just cut everything out that doesn't contribute to the appearance of the game. The gameplay itself in these games is still boring, there just is even less to distract you from that now.
The sense of awe and excitement at wandering around in a different world comes less and less because games seem to think the way to acheieve this is by alot of flashy graphics instead of making available to you the detail of that world in a convincing way. Once you know everything about a game that feeling fades away, and if a game is just about showing you a bunch of nice looking places you can't explore then that feeling dries up just as soon as that thought hits your head.
I haven't played alot of PC RPGs in my life but the few I have played make it pretty obvious this isn't as big a problem with them. Maybe they have different problems. Like having too many numbers and class choices and everything being huge but totally generic.
For exploring I think first person is probably the best way to do it. You've got the most control over what you see and the most detail, without some abstraction in front of you making you feel a bit alienated. That's probably why FPSs have turned out to have more detailed worlds than RPGs, just because the mechanics that are best for shooting also happen to be best for exploring and it is easy to include them both in the same game for that reason. Not that most FPSs do it really well or anything but I think most of my favourite games for exploring are first person, apart from a few story driven ones (where it is better to see the character you are playing as on screen, because you aren't supposed to really be getting sucked into thinking YOU are there as much, but it's about exploring the story).
Older games are different, though. I remember when I was little the feeling of wandering into an area in some open-ish world game that you weren't supposed to be in yet was usually pretty scary! Like the usual colour of the bushes would change to a slightly different colour...and that meant trouble. You were far out of the safety zone now. That's something you could still do nowadays, but I think I brought it up to explain that way that older 2D games can still be pretty immersive and exciting to explore. I think you mentioned something about this ragnar, where the limitations of what the designers could actually show you meant alot of games winded up alot more interesting than they might have otherwise. There is enjoyment you can get out of games that doesn't really come from anything the designers themselves thought up, but just as a fact of you being sucked into this other place and how you react to it and feel.
It's like how people sometimes talk about how games like Super Metroid are 'lonely' games. I didn't so much get that feeling from that particular one, but I totally get what they mean when they say this. It's present in games like metroid, and in other games now like Shadow Of The Colossus, where it is kind of the point of the game and definitely intentional but then you get alot of games where things can feel really barren and lonely in a similar kind of way, while it isn't the intention of the developers at all. Like I just played through the first Sonic game and this is a game which is supposed to be light, breezey fun but that game is actually kind of empty! It's just you, this blue hedgehod (with none of the usual sonic stuff attatched), wandering through these kind of generic levels, fighting this big fat man in a hoverboat. The second level especially feels a little isolated and threatening while you are playing it.
The examples I am giving aren't great, I wish I could think up some better ones.
