hexperiment
The Experimentalist
Except all those games were made by one company, Bioware. It's hard to see it as a trend if one company just like making RPG with defined character. I like ME because it was a good third-person shooter action game but not as an RPG. It's barely an RPG in my opinion. The world may be engaging and the characters are well-designed but there is no role-play value. It's all scripted and you get to choose which scripted dialogue to go with. We could discuss about this in another thread though.Mass effect, Mass Effect 2, Mass Effect 3, Dragon Age 2, Star Wars The Old Republic.... It's definitely trending in the big name RPG series, with the exception of TES. Dragon Age origins received a ton of negative reviews in regards to not having a main character voice, although it was one of the only negatives about the game.