Ehhh... kind of? Honestly, that's going to happen anyway. A lot of those games were overly complex (Baldur's Gate, for example) because they tried to create a ready-to-play D&D campaign for PC, and didn't trim any of D&D's unnecessary mechanics. I love BG to death, and I still herald it as one of the (if not the single) best RPGs for PC, but there's no doubt it suffered because of its complexity, especially today. Gamers these days are used to hand-holding and spoon-feeding, so when they're forced to not only read dialog for quest clues, but also read sometimes wall-of-texty entries in their journal, a lot of them lose interest fast. I'm not a huge fan of the hand-holding, but regardless of it existing, that's the "norm" for games these days, so players trying to pick up that old classic are often turned off by the lack of it.Ihateregistering1 said:Because of that, I think a lot of PC gamers blame consoles for great IPs such as 'Syndicate' being turned from a strategy game into a FPS, and the same thing happening with "X-Com: The Bureau" (some hardcore enthusiasts were also turned off by a lot of the simplifying that took place in "X-Com: Enemy Unknown"). I know some were also mad at them turning "Dragon Age 2" into a much more action-oriented game than the original Dragon Age (which was supposed to be something of a revitalization of the 'Baldur's Gate' type of RPG). Whether justified or not, I think a lot of PC Gamers blame console gamers for these sorts of things happening.
Dragon Age tried to bridge the gap, basically; take a story as epic and immersive as Baldur's Gate, strip down as much of the "needless" complexity as possible, and capture the attention of a new generation of RPG gamers. That idea had great merit... unfortunately, they stripped out pretty much all of the complexity, and also the story and world weren't quite as immersive. Bit of a letdown, even looking at it from a "baby's first baldur's gate" perspective. Oddly enough, I think Mass Effect succeeded where Dragon Age failed; the characters, story and setting were easily as immersive as Baldur's Gate (despite the vastly different setting), and the combat was "new" (>.>) and "refreshing" (<.<) to the RPG crowd, basically taking a moderately well-designed shooter and setting it in an RPG universe.
Games are going to evolve, and I think trying to keep it accessible to a new crowd is an important aspect of design. The truly legendary games will be easy to get into yet deep as an ocean, giving players plenty to learn and explore after the initial "woo this is neat" phase wears off. The old fogeys bitching about "ermagerd games are 2 ez" and ignoring the benefits of that design aren't really being realistic.
And, as you said, there are plenty of difficult and complex games being made even today. Hell, FTL is a good example; not the biggest game, and definitely not the prettiest, but wow that shit is hard. The library of PC games is just too massive to not find any "hard" games, really; anyone claiming games are too easy just aren't looking at all.