This is a really weird analogy, but this reminds me of snow crash - individual areas secured by their owners, and huge unprotected wastes and everything in between. Too far fetched a nerd reference?

I actually have the same problem - I simply can't remember lyrics. Oddly enough however I'm actually quite good at memorizing lines for plays and things of that nature. Although I know you meant it partly as a rhetorical question, I find that if you memorize meaning and not how it "sounds," it's a lot easier to remember. I know some people who can memorize songs after listening to them just once, and they memorize completely by sound, they can sing it back to me, but they don't actually know what any of it is, and if they misheard a lyric don't correct it in their recitation, even if the mistaken lyric now makes no sense what so ever.

Also I think the procedural content in Farcry 2 managed to avoid being hideous, but as just mentioned, you could tell what was, and what wasn't. The sky did turn out nice though.

I played Oblivion extensively, and while it was very pretty when you got the huge 4GB texture packs - what was pretty was the landscape, the massive vistas, mountains and valleys. In Oblivion the farther you could see the prettier it was. Almost every random spot in the woods looked exactly like every other random spot in the woods, the only exception being the swampy area in the south, which all looked exactly the same once you got in it.

The Introversion City game is the first piece of procedurally generated content that I've seen that looks amazing. It looks like a legitimate city is being planned out before you. the final result is just like a real city's layout, both planned out, and chaotic. The cities in the tech videos reminded me of Paris.

I often find that while procedurally generated content allows for hugely larger worlds, handcrafted ones are almost always more rewarding, even if they are smaller. Also procedurally generated content rarely creates "stunning" visuals, simply lots of visuals.