ResidentLeever: Cool, can you give some concrete examples of this?
Sure, for starters: Outcast is basically an RPG but it's not that noticeable as the game avoids any of the dead giveaways like a character building, stats and formal quests. You have conversations with many NPCs and they give you tasks but they are just captured as loose notes in your log and get greyed out once they become obsolete. You don't become stronger through better stats but through better equipment and performing quests that e.g. weaken enemies because they become undernourished or weaken their guns because you've cut off their iron supply (so effectively you get all the development as in an RPG but through plausible means). There's tons of alien language in the game and it's not translated by the game itself, you just learn it by playing the game. And you find things and characters through verbal descriptions rather than markers on a map or something. If you ask for someone's location, even generic NPCs will tell you the rough direction and distance and if the character you're looking for is nearby they will actually just point at him. And well, the basic gameplay is not like in an RPG - you get to shoot like in a shooter, you get to use stealth, you get some 3D platforming. It pretty much is an RPG but just doesn't show it.
And Gothic of course stands out with its crapload of details. NPCs have their day and night cycles, they work, eat, sleep and talk to each other. They react to stuff like walking through their homes or entering areas that someone of your social standing is not allowed in. And there's also tons of scripted reactions. The philosophy is similar for your character, you can engage in lots of activities just because, others are very much important. You can grill meat to improve its qualities, if you want to look at a map you have to actually buy one and your character will have to open it each time you want to see it. And some creatures are active by day, others are active at night and they give different places totally naturally different levels of danger. Forests are dangerous because that's where you'll typically find wolves, mountainous regions house these weird dinosaurs and the orcs' territory is dangerous because orcs just happen to be friggin' tough. There's no level scaling and such crap that may make the small creatures more powerful than any large one. Then there's the fact that the game features a very specific society (or rather three of them) and their differences are just gigantic. You feel the different hierarchies and moral codes in every quest and interaction with any NPC from either camp and you have to engage with these particular societies and their characteristics to get ahead in the game. And while you do build your character much like in other RPGs, you need teachers to actually get better. And access to better equipment is achieved by rising through the hierarchy of either camp. And, much like Outcast, Gothic avoids just feeling like an RPG by having core mechanics inspired by action games, with action oriented melee combat (even though it IS lousy by today's standards) and platforming and climbing like in the Tomb Raider series which in turn is used to allow for more rewarding exploration.
I really don't do these games justice by just listing features, though. In both cases it's really about the whole package and overall feel that all these small things create.
