The 2000s RPGs are dumbed down considering how good writing was in late 90s both in BG2 and Planescape Torment as well as better RPG mechanics and attention to detail. And these 2 titles had beatiful art. To this date the still remain as a gold-standard. Fallout 3, DAO are very shallow compared to this game.
There are exceptions such Disco Elysium and Witcher 3 that are really new masterpieces, but in general RPGs have been dumbed down.
IMHO, "dumbed down" is one of those phrases that's best avoided. In saying so I'm speaking as a gamer, not a moderator, there are no rules against it, but I think there's a risk of alienating the very people who might enjoy exploring stuff that has more complexity to it. I speak as someone whose belated introduction to RPGs (by which I mean I've been playing video games on and off since the 1970s... the "off" tended to happen as I'd repeatedly missed the genre that really appeals to me) was by way of the much-denigrated Oblivion. Which felt overwhelming at the time, bearing in mind I was someone for whom Half Life 2 was pretty in-depth, but soon got the hang of it, and not much later understood the criticism, and then understood modding and that other people had fixed it and with the FCOM meta-mega-mod and a bunch of my own stuff it became a game absolutely worthy of the title RPG. And by that point a lot of the still ongoing comments about it being "dumbed down" were looking conspicuous by their absence of detail, originality or any solution to the problem.
Which sounds like more of a criticism of your post than I'd intended; which is not what I'd meant, just that the message may have more impact by focusing on constructive criticism. I learnt much more from the people who fixed the problems than the ones who made a passionate but rather non-specific argument.
