Dumped into character with minimum choice about who you are. You don’t get through X years without developing a personality, this quest cannot feasibly shape everything about you.
This leads to the character knowing stuff that I don’t. (Elves and humans have a different God. Crops up in a conversation but I dunno if I’m just being a dick by bringing this up or if it’s common knowledge)
Have to make ridiculous leaps in logic to continue the game choices down a certain path, no motivation is given in the conversation to help you figure out why an event occured and whether it’s a good idea. (Setting Sten free. You know you should as he’s a party member but he gives you no reason to help him)
Despite being fully grown your character will become 100x stronger/smarter/wiser in the course of a 2 week adventure. Items too heavy to weild before suddenly become lighter than air.
You also have no problem carrying around 100 items that you can’t wear/wield one of but cannot carry any more if you are already carrying 100 gemstones.
Standing and hacking away at an enemy is the best method of attack and trading sword gashes is par for the course. Gaping wounds are simply a minor inconvenience easily solved by drinking a potion/applying a bandage.
Dying is final, unless you’re a main character, in which case you simply wake up from being dead once the fighting is finished.
Walking into somebodies home, picking a locked chest in front of them and emptying the container of all their worldy possesions is not only acceptable, but positively encouraged.
Guards will watch you pick locks and loot a rooms contents in a palace without batting an eyelid. Often they’ll see you off with a cheery farewell.
Animals often carry gold and items in addition to their usual fur attire.
Despite enemies having awesome weapons or armour when attacking you, when you search them they’ll at best have a butter knife and some soiled underpants.
The economy is based on a system that is completely broken but nobody has noticed.

Bioware conventions
There will be a pre-main quest where your companion dies immediately.
You will encounter a mentor who is later killed.
You will find a warrior to offest any weaknesses in your main character, as the game is designed to be played as a warrior. No balance for other characters.
You will encounter an evil love interest who only likes you more when sacrificing little girls to demons or torturing puppies. No moral scale or motivation to be ‘evil’ for some reason.
You will encounter a good love interest who requires you to be nice to everyone and go on a ton of sidequests.
You will start quest that turns out to be more complicated than initially seems and you have to do a further quest to complete. You can never go ask someone for help who is able to give it there and then.
Although main quest is time sensitive there still plenty of time to spend days wandering the countryside and helping kittens stuck in trees.
Each of your party’s character’s motivations only extend to the couple of hours that it takes to do their side-quest.

Game Problems
Useless AI instructions.
After 10 hours of play I feel like I’ve played for 2 and watched for 8.
Forced into areas so small that enemies close you down in less than 3 seconds so can’t be a ranged character. Most enemies don’t even show up until you’re upon them/load area.
Areas are highlighted that are not important “yet”.
Auto-save is not smart enough to save in each new area you enter. No reason not to save on the fly every area change and can lead to huge frustrations when you’ve done non-quest specific tasks for a while and then are randomly killed by bandits.
The D20 mechanics it’s grown up on are archaic for modern video game RPGs. Randomly missing in a fight means the character would not have lasted this long anyway.

Things that aren’t an achievement

Almost anything that’s online/ranked. I don’t say this just because I let my Live! Gold membership slip, but because it’s too reliant on the skills of others and is subject to boosting.

Things that just require you playing loads. Gears of War Seriously achievement, where you had to get 10,000 kills for example.

Playing through a specific way/ replay to get an achievement. Mass Effect with certain characters, HL2 Defiant, Bioshock Good/Bad. This simply shows people how you played the game, not that you’re any good at it.

Anything that requires you to scour every last inch of a game. Lost Odyssey Seeds.

Things that are just luck. Virtua Fighter items.

Completing a game on easy.

Completing the game as player 2. Gears of War Dom, Guitar Hero 3 Bass.

Things that are just fucking ridiculous

Guitar Hero in general. 20 gold stars on expert, button masher, buy a guitar already, 5 star every expert song, 5 star all co-op expert etc, etc.

Anything that requires you to beat everyone else in the world. Burnout Revenge Celebrity status, DOA 4 SS ranking, PGR 3 tournament qualifier (I imagine this’ll be a bone of contention and some may say they’re the only true achievements on the Xbox).

Beating everything the game has to offer 1,000 times. Virtua fighter arcade clearances.

Things that seem ridiculous but aren’t.

Hexic. Grand Pearl poobah, there’s a system. I can’t do it though.

Things that should work but don’t (usually).

Complete a game on the hardest setting not unlocking lower difficulty achievements too. Conflict Denied Ops.

Missing something and having to play the whole game again to get it. Assassin’s Creed, Conversationalist.

Getting achievements just for completing the game unavoidably. Fight Night 3 (at least King Kong tried).

Other annoyances

Not being able to delete a game from my gamercard. Let MS keep the details but I don’t want my 0 score from a shitty demo I downloaded cluttering up my gamercard. 

What achievements should be.

You vs. the game – Take the best the programmer has to throw at you and beaten it.

Progress chart – I can put up with completed stage 4 etc.

So, this is the start of my new blogging regime. It was hasty and not fully developed, but this is my opinion on achievements and you’re free to disagree. In the future I may make a list of the best and worst achievements or develop my ideas on what achievements should be further but for now I’ve written about something that bothers me and expressed myself. I encourage all bloggers to do the same.