Agree.
> which procedural generation has been, thus far, unable to provide
Disagree.
I think Dwarf Fortress (and to a lesser extent, EVE Online) has shown how to do procedural generation that does result in interesting interactions. There are four important factors in successful procedural games:
1. Granular modulation (you don't just punch a dwarf, you punch out a dwarf's left eye).
2. Diverse interactions (lava can be used to smith weapons. Or burn invaders. Or mixed with water.)
3. Persistent state as a result of the above. In a game like GTA, you can stage a one-man stand against overwhelming military force, but when you return to the site of your last stand, not a trace is left. In Dwarf Fortress, even if you lose you leave behind traces that can be revisited in future games. This is also the magic of EVE Online's alliance endgame (establishing player structures in contested space and seeing your alliance people flying there), without which I think the game loses its luster.
4. Environments small enough to build up a history. You can remember sites of memorable conflicts in Dwarf Fortress because your play space is constrained to a single tiny piece of the larger world. In Minecraft, Starbound, or No Man's Sky, your play area is so large that you never build up memories of any particular place (Starbound offsets this somewhat by having set pieces, but loses that sense of location outside of those pre-crafted zones). In EVE Online alliances settle for months or longer at a time in a particular region of space so that they develop an emotional attachment to it.
It's a cool as hell set of concepts which would never make it into a modern game imo, but that's the strength of it and what keeps it ticking
> Disagree.
We'll have to agree to disagree here. I've played hundreds of hours of Dwarf Fortress and it becomes very same-y and uninteresting.