I agree.

I'll go with your first option. Something deep. like the Heavy Rain branching. And to add something of mine, I guess it can be combined with games in episodes, like Walking Dead, or Tales of Monkey Island. This way we may see interactive (kind of) series, with varying plots and progress.

The lack of innovation and variation in gameplay features isn't solely a hardware issue though; it mostly comes down to developer ambition and focus.
That said; I hope this is the gen where they finally start pumping out some games with proper AI, AI is the one part that has evolved the least in the past ten years, making immersive worlds and levels with massive amounts of interactivity and gameplay elements is largely worthless when the environments are populated by drooling morons.

humans with proper fingers? when they pick up a bottle or a document or whatever, it should look like they are actually holding it.
Most of the time they act like they have Lego hands.

Everything is next gen now, except A.I. which is still last gen.

Branching is not really next gen, given how long it's been in RPG's. Front Mission 3, for example. Now THAT game had branching. It could be used more widely, I agree.

The names thing is certainly a nice idea!

I want to see more mmo's online. More massive online world's,with 100's of things you can do. Everything gtav online wasn't. I want a fallout type world,but online and with co-op. I want to be able to go into every single buliding and have enemies and danger around every single corner. Just my random thoughts.

Games like DayZ are something I can truly imagine being considered as "next-gen".

Indeed. TLOF comes to mind with its AI. We do need smarter AI, one that can be smart enough to call for help, use different weapons against you in a fire fight comes to mind also. No more 1 weapon enemy.

Online story co-op is something I would like to see improved. It would be nice to play every game via co-op with a friend.  God Of War with 2 player co-op throughout the entire game would be sweet.