DESERTOPA'S PROFILE

author=LockeZ
Take FF7 as an example. The entire middle third of FF7 - from the time you leave Midgar until when you arrive at the Great North Cave and Cloud gives Sephiroth the black materia - is technically nothing but filler, chasing Sephiroth from one place to the next when you could have just bought a plane ticket and headed straight from Midgar to wherever Sephiroth was.

Well, not really, since the protagonists didn't know ahead of time where Sephiroth was going, and Black Materia plot point hadn't been introduced yet at that point.

I think that this can be an effective way to direct the flow of journeys in general; it's not that the protagonists couldn't skip ahead, if they had all the right information, but not having it, they're forced to move ahead step by step.

With a mission like "catch and stop Sephiroth," you've got a solid overarching goal for the story, a reason that you can't skip ahead through intended stops in the narrative (because you don't know where Sephiroth is going in advance,) and a clear basis to reveal more information (stop Sephiroth from doing what?)

If your mission is something like "travel to Mount Fear to meet the Onion King and force him to give back your video collection," then you already know the endpoint and what you'll be doing when you get there, and every diversion from the direct route becomes a transparent attempt to drag out the narrative.

Long before you reach the point of actually having the Tournesol though (if you ever jump through all the hoops to get it,) you've probably filled out the license board for all your characters.

author=Zachary_Braun
The replacement of the manual by in-game tutorials was a conscious act by developers to finally excise the cost of paper manuals from the game production process, and to minimize player attrition through players who wouldn't want to look up how a game's system worked.

As game production just becomes bigger and more expensive, studios analyze and streamline production into only the most addicting aspects of the game product.

Well, the Persona series is awfully popular for something that hasn't released an installment since the PS2 generation (next game is slated for a 2015 release,) and Persona 4 had a big art book that came with each copy of the game. Atlus seems to still try and maintain that sort of relationship with their audience.

Tech stuff was the first thing that came to my mind, but I'm dubious on that one, because so many RPGs have a lost technological Golden Age that at this point it seems more original not to have one.

Possibly an underground shaft filled with metal crystals (you can do a google image search for ideas on these) which gives way to an entire metallic interior. Filled with magnetic-themed traps or puzzles if you want your game to include any, metal golems, maybe magnetic elementals...

Kind of? There's a lot more gameplay out of combat in the Suikoden games than the Fire Emblem games, and a lot of recruitable characters serve functions other than battle roles, as well as simply livening up the home base with their presence. But they're similar in broad strokes.