(I hear some gamers on YouTube groan when there is nothing in a room they explored. "Why is this room even here?? There was nothing of value in it." Which I totally disagree with.)
This just made me remember tabletop D&D about a year ago. There was one room in the dungeon with nothing in it. We spent ages searching for a secret
One game I really enjoy is "Thief 2: The Metal Age."
I've never played a Thief game apart from the Thief 3 demo, but I played Deus Ex many times, which I understand shares a lot of stylistic similarities. It's a good point that older games couldn't support the amount of junk that can be simulated in a modern game. Deus Ex was also IIRC one of the first games to introduce readable books and the like. although I used to think the printout of the DX script was impressive (~1ft tall) until I saw the game that's coming out soon that's supposed to take the "longest script" crown from BG3: I think that was about as tall as a person.
Inventory management can be a bit dull in a lot of modern RPGs, because they do sometimes encourage "pick up everything" until suddenly you can't move, which just isn't fun. You could have Thief-style instant selling, although that would stop you haggling and taking charisma boosts. I don't necessarily think it's a good idea to remove carry limits as some people suggest, because there is something in deciding what to carry. But I wouldn't mind if you couldn't pick up cheap junk, only usable equipment (although you'll still get a big pile of leather armour and goblin weapons) and valuables. There isn't a crafting system to use that junk, anyway.
To be honest, I played Cyberpunk 2077 recently and I was overwhelmed by the weapons. It seemed every enemy had a different weapon, because of the combination of types, levels, brands, quality, and modifications. That time it wasn't even all junk, but potentially useful! But I just ended up selling most of them because I didn't want to spend the time comparing all the stats instead of playing the game.
