Gaming Lounge

[puggsoy]

japanese jrpg

Japanese JRPG = Japanese Japanese Role-Playing Game

In any case, I think that all the brown/grey/bland colours are coming from trying to make stuff more like movies. If CoD, Halo, or even some of the later LoZ games were movies, chances are there would be a lot of bland colours, especially around the tense bits. It might not be intentional, but the design course just took them that way.
Too many colours wouldn't make stuff serious enough anyway. You can indeed have

a colorful world with a serious plot

but sometimes a serious plot just isn't enough. The entire experience has to feel serious, and if the world looks too light-hearted, that experience isn't delivered.

Granted, I haven't played many of these types of games, so it's not like I've studied this in depth or anything. It's just something that seemed like a possible explanation.