Well, if he does the songwritting then technically he is. That doesn't mean he's good.
I make a difference between entertainers and artists, otherwise I can consider myself an artist every time I fart or call myself the new picasso when last weekend I painted my living room.
Anthem dev essentially said "our game has stats and gear that you level up, therefore it's an RPG" My original point was that stats alone do not make an RPG. So no Anthem dev, you are incorrect.
If you at least have the branching story C&C part in there as an essential element, I won't quibble with you too much.
anthem has a branching story. You can look here how shitty dialogues are, but still... It makes you regret fallout 4:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/342400724
I don't know why the site doesn't let me incorporate the video as a medium. Oh, well...
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anyway, my personal definition of RPG is:
1) you role-play a specific character or one you create
2) you can resolve a situation in different ways (even just via a strategical combat system, e.g. divinity OS) or take important decisions leading to different results
3) stats are important to some extent (character creation or just elemental DMG)
An RPG game needs to have all these feature. Then you can have action-RPG (TW series, if you take levels away are still RPGs but just get better), turn-based RPG, immersive sim-RPG and so on.
According to my criteria:
Fallout is an RPG series
Mass effect is an RPG series
FInal fantasy as well
Old isometric RPG, they all are of course
HZD is not an RPG (doesn't have point 2), but an action game with RPG elements (=stats), same for AC origins (I haven't played it tough)
Detroit,:nope, it's in david cage's own genre (but I agree is more RPG than HZD)
Destiny: NO WAY
CP2077: as far as I've seen, absolutely YES (hopefully an imersive sim-RPG, meaning very realistic in its RPG mechanics)