Not to be a party pooper but...
Your definition of rpgs is quite nonsensical cause the things that you say define rpgs are applied across all games and all games are not rpg.Helalth bars are pretty much a standard in the industry by your definition all shooters are rpgs since they all have a health bar, and most platformers by that matter as well.
Games are defined by their playing mechanic, platformers for jumping on platforms, survival horror for limited ammo, "creepy" games, shooters for well games who only involved shooting and in all of them you play a role, you play as mario in mario bros, you play as master chief in halo etc. The thing that defines an rpg is a numerical based level up system.
Ps. Mass effect only had one thing from preventing it from being archaic and it was its Action/rpg balance everything else bioware have done to death. While Mgs rebalanced and reinvented the gameplay formula albeit not the convoluted storyline. So in general one would feel the other way around after playing mgs4 mass effect might seem archaic.
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