The Escapist - Roleplaying: Evolved

This article at The Escapist looks at the roots of roleplaying to illuminate the evolution of the genre - or the lack of it.  Here's one of the central arguments:

Consider this: Back in the day, Dungeons & Dragons gave us six primary characteristics - Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. Each was represented by a number on a scale, but the most important statistic for determining a character's overall effectiveness was its level. Fallout 3, the game of the year in 2008, has seven primary characteristics represented by numbers on a scale, including Strength, Intelligence and Charisma. Agility stands in for Dexterity and Endurance for Constitution. Levels? Check, and now as then, they boil down a character's overall potency to a single number.

Fallout 3 isn't a bad game, and it doesn't stand alone in committing this particular failure of imagination. A determined ludo-archaeologist could unearth Strength and Levels in the many progeny of D&D from one end of GameStop to the other. But it's a perfect example of how far roleplaying hasn't managed to come in 35 years. For everything that Fallout 3, Mass Effect and the others bring to the table, what's the point of the Strength and Levels, for crying out loud?