What exactly is an RPG?

This is more of a rant than a poll, but feel free to add your thoughts. I'm certainly not the authority on how wr use certain terms, I just like to say what I mean and understand what people say to me.

Branching storylines and multiple endings and dialogue choices do not make a role-playing game. They make a choose your own adventure game. The reason they are associated with RPGs is because some of the best and most iconic (actual) RPGs incorporated these elements to excellent effect, and everyone afterward followed suit.

A role play game is one where you choose and develop and PLAY a role of your choice. Gauntlet is an RPG. Overwatch is an RPG. I mean, not really, but way more than some of what passes for one these days.

The game provides you a list of options, classes, and you cannot be great at everything. You must then choose which skills, features, mechanics you want to use. You're a wizard or a fighter. You're a hacker or a samurai. You're an engineer or a soldier.

Take for example the old Shadowrun games on SNES and Sega Genesis. No dialogue choices, no branching story, no alternate endings. Is it an RPG? Of course. It's even based on a tabletop system.

What about Oblivion or earlier TES games? You can choose how to solve certain quests, side with certain factions, but they're not Mass Effect levels of branching stories. ME is still an RPG because a Vanguard and an Infiltrator are very different, good at different things, so even when you face the same levels and enemies, you solve your problems according to your role.

Games like Disco Elysium get called RPGs because they have choices, not because your character develops based on those choices. I think thr latter is why it qualifies, and actually why it is such a revolutionary entry into the genre.

Maybe nobody else cares, or maybe I'm way off base or out of touch. Thanks for letting me vent.