And the outputs of these files are the exact same text streams you are used to. However, enhanced with a lot of niceties that make them more user friendly. For example, you get colors based on the log level, or there's a line drawn between reboots. You get the time zone corrected, and you get unconditional PID data, you can filter very very easy, the data is unfakable and so on.
So, despite what you just said, the output is *not* the exact same text, and thus not a direct replacement for it?
/me shudders to think of all the sed/awk/perl scripts you're planning on breaking.
I still vote "no" on dropping a default /var/log/messages.