Barrels'o'fun

I played around with Dungeon Siege 2 over the weekend.

It's pretty, but nothing that hasn't been done 500,000 times over already.


And seriously, what's the deal with medieval RPG's and empty barrel smashing? Why does every single game like this devolve into "smash 50 barrels in an area and find 1 gold piece in about 10 of them, and nothing in the others"?

Why are there so many barrels lying around with nothing in them?

Why are people putting one or two gold pieces in random barrels anyways?

Why can I carry 8 suits of armour on me, as well as several swords and an axe and 2 shields?

Why does everyone have a stupid name like "Valdis" or "Ventar" or "Aelurin" that I can't possibly remember, and therefore makes the story impossibly difficult to follow?

How come when I kill a guy who was just attacking me with a huge sword, there is no huge sword on the ground when he dies?

Why do most fantasy mythos' end up having "objects of power", where the main characters get most of their abilities from objects, rather than innate skills?

Doesn't that kind of send a materialist message, that you can only get places if you have certain things?

For that matter, why do they all have elves and orcs and goblins and silly stereotypical tribal midgets that talk like Yoda on crack?

Where is that large automobile?

Is this not my beautiful house?!

Is this not my beautiful wife?!!

Well... how did I get here?