Things that you don't want to see anymore in modern games (but are still there)

[Emperor Megas]

"Staging areas"- where you know there's going to be mass combat that seems to break the perception of a game world. I noticed it in mass Effect 3 where you move along normal looking hallways and such then boom- places with cover you can duck behind as the enemies start pouring out. Rinse, repeat. Bioshock Infinite had those areas where you could see large spaces of attack points or other helpful things Elizabeth could conjure upon so you knew it was gonna get ugly.

Formulaic...to the max.

That's a really good one. I didn't really think about it, but when I'm playing a game that does this I ALWAYS think about it.

• Entrepreneurship at the expense of the end of the world - WHY haven't we gotten past the whole thing where people who understand and agree that you're the world's ONLY hope are still SELLING you shit rather than just GIVING it to you (if not outright BEGGING YOU to take and use it), or at LEAST telling you how to acquire it (for free) somewhere else at your own peril? Now, I'm not saying that you should do away with shopfronts in games where there's a hero who's on an epic world saving quest, but for god's sake, at least make the venders skeptics, or unaware of the mission your undertaking, or of your 'messiah' status, at least. This is just lazy writing, IMO.
  
  Merchant: ONLY YOU can save the world from the Dark Lord, Tyrran'ax, and it can ONLY be done with this enchanted, one of a kind glaive, blessed by the High Priestess, Antauwass Le'in IV...which I'll SELL to you for $1,000,300 monies.
  
  HERO: Praises to you, noble merchan.... Wait. "SELL me..."? Wait, what!?
  
  
• AI Team members that can't use grenades - Ever notice team members never use grenades on games like HALO, Left4Dead, and Mass Effect? I've only recently played through the first Mass Effect, so I don't know if they've changed it in the sequels (or mapped grenades to an ACTUAL BUTTON, instead of 'back'). I read somewhere that it was too difficult to program AI grenade usage in Left4Dead, and I can see how it would piss a lot of people off if they died repeatedly at the hands of an AI team member's grenade considering how dangerous Molotov cocktails are in that game, but can't they just put it in there and give you the option to toggle it off if you don't want the feature?
  
  
  
• Limited chatter dialog - Now I'm no game designer, or even a novice programmer, however you can't convince me that it would talk more disc space or studio time than is reasonable to record and include a few HUNDRED different things for your character, your teammates, and each NPC to say when you talk to them. There's no reason that NPCs in particular (who don't have anything vital to say to you) shouldn't say something different every single time you approach them. There's also no excuse for the same old tired "lock and load", or "bag 'em and tag em" lines, or whatever generic, uninspired shit your teammates say before or during a firefight. You have the opportunity to make a game truly cinematic and immersive with diverse personalities and banter, but here in 2015 characters STILL only speak the same 3 phrases over and over again, and with only one single recording of each thing!
  
  Why only one sound byte of "Hello", when you can have: "Hello", "Hi", "Hey there", "What's up?", "How ya doing?", "How's it going?, "Heya", "How's it hanging?" "'Sup?" etc.?
  
  
• UNLIMITED inventory - A lot of people may disagree with me on this one, but a game like Silent Hill: Origins (which you can argue isn't 'modern' anymore, I know) is one of the worst examples of this. It's actually a CHORE cycling through lots and lots of inventory that there's no way in hell you should be able to store even a third of in a room, much less carry around with you.
  
  I don't mind having a large inventory stock in games, but when it's shit that you're carrying around ON you, especially in a game that's more based in realism (I know Silent Hill doesn't really qualify there, but there are other offenders), it's just plain silly. I don't like the magical item boxes from older Resident Evil games either, but carrying 20 portable televisions, a 6 foot tall intravenous drip stand, and 30 planks of wood, in addition to several guns and stores of magazines and shotgun shells, is just damn ridiculous.