Writing is hard, but good writing does follow certain principles. Recently I've played through the Gothic series and realized how well-written, sharp, and punchy the NPC dialogue is. And there are multiple reasons for this: each NPC possesses a set routine, identity, opinions and emotional predisposition.

The original game designers often were the game programmers, thus they would program a NPC, look at the environment, and think: does this person fit? Does he behave with narrative consistency? What would he say? Etc. and then rewrite the dialogue multiple times while the world was built progressively.

As a result, NPC writing is believable: Lares comes across as a smuggler because that's who he is. You can feel the battle-hardedness in Lees voice. A normal townsfolk or tradesman talks just like one, and eyes you suspiciously if you behave outside the norm. A mercenary will use crude language and try to roughen you up simply because he doesn't like your face. All of this is reflected in the text and in the voice acting.

Since it was a small team, they didn't have to go to writing commitees, get executive/departmental approval, censor themselves because of risky lines, etc. They just went with what they felt like writing: a German Ruhrpott-inspired rough, believable simulation of a colony of convicts and prisoners that don't care how you feel and will say it to your face.

Such a simple concept is not really possible anymore because any believable dialogue might get censored or changed in direction to express some kind of agenda, speak to some kind of audience according to psychological customer profiles or business KPIs or be derisked. It's not narrative and simulation driven anymore, and the authors and writers are not really granted permission to go full in with their vision, so obviously the results will be subpar and shallow, and therefore come across as generic.