Heresiarch

Gear should become better with game progression. Whether it is done via cumulative "plus ones" like in DnD style games or by adding material type like in DAO or adding additional adjectives to reflect quality like in M&B, I really couldn't care less. As long as they are easy to compare and names do not become ridiculous.

You shouldn't mention Minoans. With their women outfits I can foresee them becoming another fantasy iteration of a drow-like society. Only with bulls and double-sided axes this time around.

Come again, a female dominated society? "What, kinky stuff? Yeah, I'm game."© I would certainly no want such a thing. No matter the intentions, it will just end up being some perverted sexual fantasy come true. Very much like the DnD drow.

There is a problem with representing technologically advanced items in a fantasy universe. Say there's a flintlock weapon at some point in time. In a few hundred years there are going to apper percussion caps and cartridges. Heavy armor becomes useless and so do havy weapons, designed to hack through it. From there you get multishot weapons like carbines and revolvers and in about four centuries your humans are running around with battle rifles and machine guns. So much for millenia-old elven rulers and ancient castles. Speaking of which, they become obsolete by the same time you introduce canons. In the end you are left with snapshot stories about a specific period (much like IRL) or you have to make sure the technological level of your universe progresses with time. Which creaes certain difficulties, since soon enough your elves are going to call themselves "eldar" and your paladins start shouting, "For the God-Emperor!"

Alpha Protocol did it pretty well. Not to mention that this sort of thing (I wouldn't call it romance, really, not after the table scene with SIE) is espionage classics. In DA II romance was ok, although everyone and their grandma trying to hit on me was freaking me out a bit at the beginning. Still the characters are likable and I can image all of them being popular romace options with some player niche. Sex scenes in Witcher 2 (most of the romance there is implied, not roleplayed) seemed quite tasteful and fitting to me. I don't mind sex scenes as long as they are not too graphical and don't go all IKEA style. It is much better than a stock blackout screen. That mentioned, I think romance should be more about relationships with the character (like it was in BG2 or PST) than actual sex. It should make NPC behave differently, say and do diffenrent things not only in the designated dialogue, but otherwise too. So introducing the sex scene as the only reward for having the romance at all (yeah, talking about Mass Effect here) feels extremely cheap and anticlimactic. Love is about emotions. When it comes to that the neck-biting dialogue with Annah in Planescape: Torment has more weight than all romances from all ME and DA games combined.

How about not having an archvillain at all? Same goes for epic battles for survival of all humanity, elvinity or all organic life in the universe. Those plots have gone stale in fantasy genre a very long time ago. You can make great story with something very close and personal like in Planescape: Torment. You can play through the whole game without having any sort of ultimate nemesis in sight like in Alpha Protocol.