The Aluminum Falcon said:

First of all, I wanted a different environment than Endor. Yes, I do see how this could be interpreted as being PT-ish, but by exotic, I meant somewhere not common on Earth. A New Hope has great deserts featured in it and Empire Strikes Back has an icy wasteland and a swamp. Perhaps ROTJ could have not just stuck to what looked like a typical forest. Maybe another swampland was a good idea or possibly a volcanic planet (which would have been shot on some mountains with lava/volcanoes matted in, NOT on a green screen).

You're forgetting one thing. These movies are for multi-cultural audiences. Many of those cultures saw the desert as COMMON. Others saw Hoth as common (although probably not as many). The only real exotic environments were Dagobah and bespin because they are the only two that don't actually exist.

Well... and the Death Stars but we got a second one of them in ROTJ so that was sorta lame.