Most lists posted on game journalism websites (or just journalism websites in general) tend to be pretty arbitrary. This list is exceptionally gross, though. I was doing my best, going through the list, trying to find rhyme and reason for the placement of the games. I do understand that lists like this tend to fall into the purview of subjectivity, but that doesn't need to come at the cost of some degree of objective consideration.
A little elaboration: Many of us will remember the disappointment of Dragon Age II. Dragon Age: Origins was broadly successful at what it was trying to accomplish, so I think it's fair to say that it was a good game, with some niggles here and there. Dragon Age II was rightly and almost universally criticised for its poor structure, constant reuse of the same maps (for different dungeons!) and lazy encounter design. It also, mostly, escaped criticism for character progression that punished diversified builds, by way of making equipment requirements high enough that an easy-going playthrough needs to invest almost all of its stat points in the "standard" stats for the class for it to use up-to-date equipment. Dragon Age II was weak as a game, weak as a story, and had significant aesthetic weaknesses that arose from its excessive reuse of visual assets. Yet, it's above games like Dragon's Dogma, Bravely Default, Xenoblade Chronicles, and Dark Souls II.
To qualify the above, I have to talk a little about objectivity. The disclaimer here is that objectivity is not a replacement for subjectivity; they're parallel measures of value, with each having a role in different circumstances, or taking different roles under the same circumstances. One can subjectively enjoy an objectively flawed experience, or the opposite. I mention this, though, because objectivity is important in review journalism, where the role of a journalist is to advise a more general public on what is and isn't worth their money. That doesn't mean that a journalist has to remove subjectivity from their writing, but mention should also be made of objective merit where applicable. That's just credit where credit is due.
An example of objectivity in games criticism and review might be measuring the quality of a combat system. In Skyrim, combat is shallow and repetitive; the strategy that works against a bandit works against a dragon, given the right player avatar strength. Conversely, Dark Souls has a combat system with more diverse movesets, plus hitboxes that match the weapons very clearly. This results in a system where it's relatively easy to measure range and timing, but also to measure the geometric qualities of each different attack type. Where a move sweeps, stabs, descends vertically or anything else is immediately relevant. You can see that the combat in Dark Souls is designed around this diversity in player system application, with environments designed to help or hinder certain weapon types, and with enemies that imitate (often less efficient versions of) attack types available to the player. Merging combat and map design like this turns combat itself into a mode of traversal, where the way you remove threats in the environment influences the way you experience and move around said environment. In the Undead Parish, did you head immediately up the rightwards stairway from the Armour Boar courtyard in order to remain safe and observe your surroundings? The fact that most people take that course of action speaks a great deal about how tightly designed Dark Souls is.
I think it's fair to say that Dark Souls has objectively better combat than Skyrim. Does this make it an objectively better game overall? Of course not. But I'm trying to illustrate that we can make objective observations and use them with subjectivity, or on their own, to contribute to our conclusions. The list posted by the Escapist staff has the appearance of an arbitrary mishmash of opinions and brand loyalties without much consideration towards what the staff would like to support, or see game design blossom into. As much as the complete freedom of Skyrim might be an exceptional trait, for instance, it's not mutually exclusive with the development of better gameplay systems in order to contribute depth to the general play experience. That's a reason I'd place Dragon's Dogma above Skyrim, for instance -- it took a similar approach in many structural respects, but expanded upon that template with interesting systems that delivered on depth in a reasonable way. I'd argue that, despite having less content, Dragon's Dogma has more game in it, so to speak, than Skyrim -- and why, on such a list, I would consider it to be worthy of a higher spot.
