Surely, I am overexaggerating at some point and you are right all RPGs are using cliches, but why do you think some are getting rated very high and others get completely forgotten. It's about presentation!
I give you an example of how I look at this things:
Let's talk about The Elder Scrolls and the Dark Brotherhood. This is a vampire theme, super stereotypical, nothing really innovative there. BUT I haven't met a single person yet that would have denied this questline being amazing/entertaining. So after this questline was well received in the the Oblivion game, what have they done with in Skyrim ? Well, they just took it again, added some similar generic quests, some unique quests to continue the brotherhood story and everyone is going nuts again. Again great, at least that's my opinion and everyone I have talked to about that. You do not have to reinvent the wheel. One of the most important things to mention is that the Dark Brotherhood is an element Bethesda did not really advertised with in contrast to Obsidian with the pirate theme.
Let's now take an example from Deadfire, the Flying Dutchman cliche. A very obvious element from the pirate theme. Davy Jones aka Lucia Rivan here get's introduced. You get the story told about Lucia by the kid that survived. Furrante, Aeldys and Yseyr. All of them telling you about her, it's really cool, honestly. The introduction was perfectly fine, but when you finally are able to step onto the Flying Dutchman things are getting really disappoiting for me. All you do, after finally meeting Lucia, is: Talk to her for literally less than 5 minutes and to decide to kill her and take the ship OR if you have the skill check trade the ship for your own ... That's it. That was SO disappointing. That's an element from the pirate theme, that Obsidian did advertise with, am I right ?
I mean there is nothing behind Lucia Rivan. You do not really listen to HER story, what does she say, what is her real intention, you cannot side with her and take revenge or something like that, maybe she is looking for some kind of salvation because she is cursed and you might help her, not even a single quest that you directly get from HER. I just think you could have done alot more with the Flying Dutchman cliche. That's why I am saying it's about presentation. I like the pirate theme actually, I would have liked alot siding with her, being a part of the undead and doing some cruel quests for example. Unfortunatelly you cannot.
Edit:
I actually also want to mention a great example in Deadfire. Let's take the cliche of "there is drake terrifying the village and you are the hero to climb the mountain and kill it". This cliche is used for Beast of the Winter, which is btw my favourite DLC. Just look how Obsidian presented it:
- you are being introduced to some kind of cult, everyone is waiting for you and wants to hear what to do next
- you actually have no clue what is going on
- out of the nothing the drake appears and you think everyone is going crazy -> they want to get killed on purpose and are looking for some kind of salvation this way, no clue, mindblowing for personally
- you follow the drake into a cave, into the Vytmadh where he has an never-ending battle with Rynhaedr
- you replay older scenarios, which are frozen in time, SUPER cool
- and even more stuff ...
THAT is amazing presentation, let me tell you that. BW was awesome. Same applies to others DLCs. They are really great. That is a way to use a cliche and present it where the player, at least me, doesn't instantly know what is really going on and what to do. The problem is: when the DLCs are much better than the actual main game, you might get bad reponses/reviews. Even if they would buy the game NOW with all DLCs, they tend to play the main plot first before exploring the rest. That's problematic.
Dont't get me wrong. I really do not want to brag more about it. PoE2 is really awesome. I have played almost 800 hours by now. More than twice as much as in PoE1 because in Deadfire there is alot more to do and to explore, but some elemets are just so poorly presented, I am sorry.