To be really honest, other than badly-written emo storylines (which aren't unique to Japan), the only reason I ever called Japanese games "stale" in this day and age was because so many of them lack certain basic UI and control elements common to western console games these days. Back during the PS2 era it took a while for Japanese developers to grasp how to implement a controllable 3rd person camera, much less one with an inverted Y axis. Being stuck with things like tank controls, fixed camera angles, stationary save points, and other relics of the SNES era I think are mainly at the core of what pissed off myself and others about Japanese games.
When you look at most Japanese console games this gen, they seem to have pretty much figured that shit out. With the exception of earlier games, most current gen console JRPGs have abandoned turn-based battles. Most Japanese console games I've played in the last few years have controls not all that different from most western 3rd party games. Even incredibly niche games like
Yakuza figured this stuff out with the HD leap. More importantly, so many Japanese console games did this without losing the identity in their games.
I haven't played it beyond the demo but look at
Siren Blood Curse. It's as much a Japanese survival horror game as any of its predecessors as well as all their brethren on the PS2. Yet, it's controls aren't that dissimilar from today's 3rd person shooters. That's really all I've wanted through the years -- game design that Japan is good at with controls and UI that actually feel appropriate for modern 3D console games.
On XIII:
The "linear" maps are nothing new to the series. See FFX. The fact is if you make a linear game, it is easier to make it pretty. Given how long it took them to make the game as it is, I can't imagine them handling even more areas like Gran Pulse.
It is a pretty empty association altogether. Linearity in Call of Duty =/= linearity in FFXIII. In CoD linearity has a very strong effect on the combat, whereas it doesn't matter much at all for XIII. XIII doesn't even have set pieces.
The difference is that FFX had what felt like an actual RPG world. You could travel back and forth throughout it. The game had actual NPCs you could talk to as well as towns, inns, side quests, etc. FFXIII was literally a battle corridor. The problem with the game mechanically was that its battle system, as good as it was, couldn't hold up the entire experience on its own. It was light on gameplay.
I don't even think we can call out FFXIII as some kind of future evolution path for JRPGs. Just looking at the game's postmortem reveals how fucked up its development cycle was. FFXIII is barely a fully-formed game, much less a fully-formed
Final Fantasy.
XIII-2 is probably closer to Square Enix's vision for RPGs in the future.