Wall of text incoming, feel free to just skip reading all of this. Most will probably just be me ranting about nothing important.
Planescape Torment wasn't exactly loved because of it's amazing combat and that was the only place where character stats had any relevance besides dialogue skillchecks (which this game does seem like it is going to have as well btw).
True, but I never had any problem with Planescape's combat. It was just like the combat in Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale but with less choice of spells and weapons and it still used the character's attributes and skills for that too.
Since I prefer martial classes to spellcasters, I actually enjoyed stabbing stuff around in Planescape.
Planescape's goal wasn't really focused on combat either, combat was there, but for the most part, we don't have to fight much in that game (unless we go and force attack everything or something) and in some fights, we can just sneak past the enemies and move to another area avoiding the fight entirely (using the sneak skill).
While in this game, it seems like it will be like any other 3rd person "action RPG" these days like the Witcher 3 or Souls games and stuff like that. Combat will be plenty and depend on player's skills. This creates a disassociation, where in dialogue the character is being the character, but in combat, the character is being the player. I can't explain any better why I never managed to get into these types of action RPGs.
I can only say that they are not made for me, others can enjoy them all they want though. I'm not that self-centred, I like people to have access to games they enjoy and have fun with.
My wife kinda liked the Witcher 1, but loved the Witcher 2 and 3 and beat them +all DLCs, while I didn't like playing them at all and didn't even finish them, but I liked the Witcher 1 and beat that one. I just don't have fun playing 3rd person action RPGs like them.
I think it's not just the player's skill that puts me off, it's also the camera. I like "tactical" more than "shooter", what I mean by this is that I like to be able to see the "map" and what's around the character(s) at all times when possible, I really love planning and moving characters like pieces, finding the best tactics and strategies, character placement, how and when to use which character skill, precise AoE strikes, etc. These games make me have to use my brain more than my reflexes and muscle memory.
Basically, I like tabletop RPGs the best, so games that allow to somehow be played like TT are what I really enjoy.
"Shooters" (and I don't mean just shooter games, but any game that's real-time and first or third person) don't offer me these things. They are focused on what's in front of your character, the character sees what you see, and this turns it into the player. It only sees what the player sees. There's a focus on reflex and muscle memory for fights, instead of tactical and careful planning and placement.
So in the end, they play very differently for me. In the genres I enjoy, the player is the brain of the characters, it tells the characters what and when to do everything, and then the characters try to do it to the best of their abilities. In the other genre, you're the body of the characters, you don't tell your characters what and when to do things (and then they have to try and do them), you're actually doing those things for your character instead.
Example: "Old style" RPG - You select your character and tell it to attack a particular goblin, your character starts swinging its sword and hits or misses depending on how good it is with that sword vs how good the goblin is at avoiding being hit.
"More modern style" action RPG - You tell your character to attack a particular goblin, and then you have to aim and swing the sword by pressing buttons on your controller/keyboard. It's sword hit or misses depending on how good you are at aiming and swinging vs how the goblin reacts.
It's just preferences, I enjoy using my brain in games more than my body.
This is an opinion that I see repeated too often nowadays and I feel like it has grown into a cliche already. As a teenager, I immediately felt drawn to the Fallout franchise upon watching the trailer for the first game because it exposed so much of what the game was about; it's themes, aesthetics, ideology, atmosphere, context, setting, narrative setup, etc... And I was absolutely right to be excited about that game exactly because the ideas and sensations that trailer conveyed reflected what the game indeed was about, without the need to show any gameplay footage whatsoever, which honestly I think it's the reality for most of all video game trailers out there. This whole "gameplay is the only thing that matters" mentality feels to me like strictly reductionist and that it ignores most of the artistic aspects of the game.
For me, it's the opposite. I'm old enough that I have seen most of the evolution in the gaming industry. Games back in the 90s and early 2000s were different from games in the 2010s to now. Marketing strategies were also different.
Over the years, I bought many games based on trailers without any gameplay, or on the official descriptions of the game (stuff like "Experience a vibrant world with real-life characters, choice and consequence, where you can influence the fate of your kingdom, blah blah blah blah.") and then when I actually play the game it's not what I was expecting at all.
Too many times this happened during the last three decades or so. And the worse thing is that it happened way more just in the last 10 years. Because companies focus their trailers on cinematic experiences instead of gameplay. They make it look nice and all, but then the game might be horrible to actually play it.
But using your experience with the Fallout 1 trailer. IIRC, the trailer was just the game's intro, so no gameplay, like you said. But it shows the background of the game's world in the ads on the tv, it shows how advanced it was, it shows how the US annexed Canada, it shows how normal it is to execute people on national tv while laughing and waving to the camera, etc. Then it shows how the world is a ruin in the present days. Then it has the narration of war never changes, where it exposes the player to "human nature" and what was happening with the world, all of the wars and what they were being fought for and how that led to the apocalypse, it also explains what are vaults and how people survived the end of times.
So indeed, Fallout 1 trailer does a great job in explaining what the game is about, especially since the game does focus on these themes of human nature, apocalypse, survival, vaults, etc.
Now imagine that same trailer, but without the last part of it (the mention about Vault 13) and then the game you got was Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel for the old consoles. A game where the background of the world is the same, but the gameplay is different and focused on real-time combat, instead of all the themes present in Fallout 1. I'm sure most people would be pretty disappointed by it. But if the trailer then had some actual gameplay in it, anyone could see that the game wasn't what they were expecting and steer clear from it.
Still using your experience with the trailer of Fallout 1. Notice how mention all of that trailer shows, explains and offers us? Now compare it with most trailers without gameplay in the last decade.
Trailers "these days" don't offer exposition or background nearly as much (or at all). They offer nice cinematics and action with little to no voiceover or text that tells us what the game is all about. Just look at the trailer you posted in the first post. It shows us how cool the looks of the game are (except the elf) but tells us nothing about the actual game, its world history, what the game is all about, and what themes are used or focused on. It just shows us cinematics, some blood ritual and the character stabbing some enemy, some actual gameplay in a short couple of seconds combat scene with dodge-rolling... It doesn't even show any dialogue scenes, we have to go to Steam to see 2 screenshots of dialogue scenes in them. If someone only watches the trailer, they will have no idea there's even dialogue in the game, this is weird for a game that mentions that "dialogue is a key aspect" of the game.
Very different from the good old Fallout 1 trailer.
