To begin, a ton of the RPG elements were created way, way, WAY back in the day when programmers couldn't create real battles and whatnot, thus they relied on non-real-time gameplay elements like walking in an overworld, randomly encountering an enemy and going into a turn-based system. Also, they lived up to their names: they were ROLE PLAYING GAMES. You had the freedom to go wherever you wanted, name your character whatever you wanted and basically you were the character.

Today, however, RPGs take all the bad stuff out and throw out the good stuff. You no longer can play your own role. Heck, a lot of the protagonists are not even silent anymore, giving the main character thoughts and characterization that otherwise the player would do him or herself (before, you practically would make your own character as you would choose choices that would support the character, IE a mean person would disagree when asked and would say rude things when given the choice). Now you're not playing the role yourself, but rather you play another's role, which sucks beyond all reason.

Secondly, a ton of the aspects of RPGs that were created due to technology limitations are STILL AROUND, much to my confusion (I think "WWRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYY" all the time today when looking at RPGs). For instance, walking around in an overworld, not being able to see enemies and BAM! you're in a battle all of a sudden was created because programmers couldn't make a more real-time system, but now that the limitations are pretty much gone, why do we still have this pitifully-old system? Furthermore, why do we still have the "Turn based battles" as well? They were created again because of the limitations, and thus were a limited version of a battle. Why do developers keep this limitation when they could do a more real-time battle?

The result is a boring system with archaic gameplay that doesn't even consist of playing a role of a character anymore. Pretty much every genre made an evolution in the past ten years (2D to 3D platforming, 2D to 3D battles, same for racing, evolution of isometric games to a more complex way of viewing things, etc.) and these all had huge gameplay changes, a lot for the better (some just flat out sucked, however). The thing that irritates me is that so far, there has been no true revolution for RPGs. Yes, they've switched from the SNES era top-down view to 3D, but that was just an aesthetic change. The basic randomized turn-based battles are still around, and it aggravates me that developers CHOOSE to have limitations in their battles and character development.

Is it just me, or are RPGs a genre stuck in the 1970s with present-day graphics?