Half-Life 2 is one of the most vapid, soulless things I have ever experienced. The obvious craft, care, and polish make it incredibly fun to play...and utterly lacking humanity. It's like a game designed by an AI or an alien: perfectly honed, but with no understanding.
I don't think it's really fun to play, either. The gunplay and AI are very poor.
I loved Fallout 3 (have yet to play Skyrim), but I think Gothic set the standard of open world RPGs as it came out before Morrowind. There were open world RPGs before that but I don't think they're were modern as they were mostly procedurally generated, fugly and had flat terrain.I actually give Beth a lot of crap as a rule but I do think they deserve a lot of credit for setting the standard for open world RPGs. It's unfortunate that they don't do anything that deep or interesting with them though.