Larian Studios

one of the screenies of RRR featured the look of a game editor, particularly item editor. having tools that made game making/editing easier are also precursors to having better tools for the engine that is made to last at least for a few releases. this i remembered from lar's interview as he did mentioned about having the game engine to be reuseable.

about bink, true it has been some sort of a standard for as long as i've played windows-based games. but i've noticed that some game devs also use others, for example microsoft games will use (obviously) windows media video, & blizzard (for warcraft 3 & also future pc games, i think) as well as relic use DivX format.

use of ogg vorbis format is only recent, i think. with demand for higher quality without taking up too much space, ogg seems to be a good choice even over mp3 as it's open source as opposed to mp3 with its licensing issues.

i agree with alrik about having 800 X 600 as minimum instead of 1024 X 768 as there are many gamers still with older systems who may not upgrade anytime soon. trick is to make the game not only workable but still playable at lower resolution & details. for example, unreal 2003 with all details & eye candy turned off, the graphics still rock.

graphics-wise for RPG, DAD, u should check out neverwinter nights. it's fully T3D with bells & whistles on. any more of those RPGs with a lot of 3D eye candies, myrthos? oh yes, deus ex.

still, personally i have a soft heart for isometric view RPGs like DD & Nox. it may be static environment but it's gorgeous.