WK's post is a really interesting one and raises a lot of good points. I feel that the biggest problem with the console JRPG industry at the moment is the lack of competition. It reminds me of when WWF bought out WCW. The competition fell apart and suddenly things got stale fast. Square and Enix merging probably worked out the same way to some extent.

Another thing WK touched on is "what is the difference?" for, say, Dragon Age vs. JRPGs. It's really hard for me to say as I can barely remember Dragon Age... here are things that could be different, going by memory alone, so please bare with me.

- Art direction. It is not a world full of wonder and beauty so much as a world full of stone buildings and dark woods.
- Camera angle / battle system - If I recall, the battle system is more akin to Diablo, and the loot is in a similar vein.
- Characters vs. Story - In almost all FF games, characters make the story, and they are fixed characters with their own stories that are 99% of the time set in stone, too. We are being told a story rather than writing it. In Dragon Age, I feel that while the characters have a background, it is us that develops their story from that point and it is us that controls how they turn out. I don't recall much about how tied they are to the overall storyline.
- Time spent in 'safe' areas. I felt like DA was a game that furthered the story to allow you to visit a dungeon (basically a dungeon crawler), while I feel like FFs are games where you visited the occasional dungeon in order to further the story.