Although the RPG genre has actually been around since the late 1980s, it was during the 90s and early 2000s when it really started to take off in terms of popularity and critical acclaim. As with any genre, though, RPGs needed to adapt and modernize with the times in order to draw in new audiences; otherwise, these sorts of games could have easily become nothing more than stale iterations of one another without anything setting them apart and making them unique.