5. Graphics
I will get the more trivial and personal one out of the way first. All RPG games, with the exception of The Witcher 2 on PC, have awful graphics. From the 8-bit fire of Mass Effect 3 to pixelation of Amalur and the hilarious character models of Skyrim. Technically, all role playing games look just embarrassing at times. I mean really, Bethesda makes all of that money from their various role playing franchises and that is the best engine they can churn out? It's not like these games are totally awful. Skyrim's Northern Lights and frozen mountains make it a place where I want to spend hours in, the biotic explosions in Mass Effect 3 are amazingly well done. But all of the textures in these games look just terrible compared to anything else coming out right now. Now, I know what you're thinking: "Graphics don't make a game," and they certainly don't. Battlefield 3 is one of the best games visually out now (once they remove the colour grading, of course), but it's filled with bugs, and the single player is a boring mess. Despite how much I love BF3, it still can't hold a candle to the overall experience of a game like Mass Effect or Skyrim. However, graphics can be so important to telling the stories of these games: Mass Effect has phenomenal voice acting, but the goofy facial animations are so laughable that the game goes back to feeling like a just that: a game. A graphical marvel like Uncharted 3 just blows you away and sucks you in, simultaneously. The characters just feel right. Yet somehow Mass Effect gets the same praise? No. But I still love you Shepard. Which leads nicely into my next point....