Hard disagree, at least for Elden Ring. It’s a great game to be sure, but setting a new standard? Not so much. It’s not even From Software’s best RPG. For one, its story is awful. Half of it feels recycled from older FromSoft games, and everyone & their mum is obsessed with becoming Elden Lord, even though the entirety of the Lands Between is in ruins. Not sure why anyone wants to rule it, I know I for sure don’t. [spoiler]The Radagon fight also makes zero sense. It’s stated pretty clearly that he was trying to repair the Elden Ring, which is also what we’re trying to do. Why are we fighting, exactly?[/spoiler] The gameplay is very nice, but it is just a culmination of everything Dark Souls has built. Dark Souls set the standard for the gameplay, not Elden Ring (though I do love ER’s improvements to the formula, like the Flask of Wondrous Physick, and Ashes of War). Limgrave (and to a lesser extent, Western Altus) is also one of the most boring areas in video game history. All that said, though, I would appreciate if the open world genre learned a bit from how they built their world. Most open worlds put all their provinces next to each other, but ER had a clear progression it wanted you to follow. There are shortcuts and whatnot, but the game very clearly wants you to go Limgrave>Liurnia>Caelid>Altus, and it was such a nice change of pace. None of that “freedom to the extreme” nonsense of BotW. I would argue that—[i]maybe[/i]—ER has set a new standard for open worlds that other games should try to live up to, but not so much RPGs as a whole. I think the last big RPG I played before ER was World of Final Fantasy, and I would say it’s much better. Because for as good as Elden Ring is, it can’t circumvent one simple fact; Linear RPGs>open world RPGs. Haven’t played Witcher, though, nor do I plan to.