Karovorak posted... It's not only games that changed, it's the players too.
In old school RPGs people were talking to everyone they could see.
That's not the case today anymore, and if they do, they spam the A button to skip the text. Myself included.
As a kid, more or less anyone in class had Pokemon Red or Blue, and everyone of us was able to get HM05 Flash even without guides or internet or whatever.
"Random ass NPC at random ass location in the world gives you key item you may need" simply doesn't work that good anymore.
EDIT: And to be fair, it's some really bad kind of fake difficulty. Getting lost because you didn't remember random NPC X68A, who gives you the hint that the assistant of the professor (random NPC B67H) waits for you at some house in somewhere somewhere isn't hard, but simply missable.
Also, games are too large I think for that to work. Not knowing where youre going when the map isnt too huge is one thing. Not knowing where youre going in a map like Cyberpunk? Yeah, fuck that.