I have sort of the opposite opinion from Bioware's founders. I think that too much innovation is killing Western RPGs for a lot of RPG fans. Looking at my father for example who is the one who got ME into RPG video games, and the fact that he can't stand most modern RPGs with their obsession with real time, MAYBE a single customizable character that is "you" (as opposed to making your own party), and inserting action elements. My dad hates JRPGs with a passion (I play them however), he likes WRPGs, but in general feels that pretty much all of the current ones over the last decade or so have blown chips. Dragon Age: Origins (ironic since I'm responding to comments made by Bioware) being one of the rare exceptions, but honestly that interested him MORE by going back to the basics on a lot of things, than because of any of it's "innovations".
See, a lot of the appeal to RPGs has always been in the thinking that goes into them, mind before twitch so to speak. The various "innovations" we've seen have been successful in pulling a more "common" kind of player into the genere, with things like "action RPGs" that are twitch fests with minimal statistics, but some RPG-like customization (think Borderlands). When you get people saying "I hate turn based, and don't like too many numbers that are going to make my head hurt, but I like RPGs" I think it kind of shows that really RPGs are losing themselves rather than innovating so to speak.
I think JRPGs continue to have the audience they have always had, and probably a bigger one than ever before in absolute terms, but the number of customers reached has not been constantly expanding which to many seems like a failure where success is seen as growth and expansion as opposed to catering to the same, stable demographic which I think JRPGs do for the most part.
By the same token I figure that if some game develeopers wanted to go back to old school type play with new technology/graphics, say someone deciding to resurrect "Wizardry", singe player "Ultima", or "Might and Magic" (prior to that "Heroes Of Might And Magic" series) they would find a dedicated, consistant, audience. However it would not be the kind of success big game producers are aiming for. The idea being that the lower the common human denominator you can aim at, the more money you can potentially make.
So far Bioware has managed to put out a couple of games that seem to walk the fence between old school and new school fairly well, but I think they misunderstand some of their own success, while at the same time criticizing those who are content with a stable niche market and fanbase.
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As far as moral desicians go, well I will simply say that I don't think we're liable to see the kind of desician making and such people want to see in RPG games until society grows up a bit more, and can drop a lot of the political BS.
For example, a lot of very good points can be made in defense of taking slaves and such at a low tech level. The choice being in many cases between putting everyone to the sword, or enslavinng the survivors or whatever. However you start inserting that into a game in anything less than a modern, politically correct, entirely black and white fashion and people are going to freak out to a point that most game developers aren't willing to risk it no matter how many units they move.
Just imagine a reaction to a game based around say "Gor" with the player in an equivilent role to a Lord Of Ar (arguably the good guys). Even if you insert enough "earth mentality" into the game to cast doubts on the slave system, the idea of someone being able to rule/conquer that way and take slaves while still being good and honorable (as opposed to a demonic, puppy kicking jerk) is too much.
Thus moral desicians in games are going to remain totally good or totally evil. Not only is it easy to track, but the stereotypes also prevent "misunderstandings". We're a long way from a game that can properly allow one to portray some of the "anti-heroes" and "dark heroes" in fantasy properly in anything resembling a sandbox RPG format. I don't even know if something like that could be tracked, but even if it can it's not just a question of implementing it, but also reaction. When a game industry is unwilling to defend simple things like violent content in opposition to guys like Michael Atkinson, I can't see them developing things that are going to be just as touchy, if not more so.
