Words, like combat, should be an element within an RPG. Without words in some form, you would be largely clueless about the RPG world; although exploring and making sense of a totally wordless world might actually make an interesting game.
Pre-determined branching dialog was never a particularly good thing, but it has now been pretty much entrenched by the move towards spoken cinematic presentation. I agree it can get quite tedious when it's taken too far, unless that's what you are really like, just as too much combat is tedious.
For my tastes, an RPG should be as open-ended, enabling and permissive as possible; unfortunately most video-game RPGs have become formulaic and narrow, because anything else is risky.
