In the 90s and 00s it was almost always about the minis and tactical gameplay. DnD 3.5 was a lot more numbers heavy so it kept a lot of the story people out of the game.
Now DnD 5 the numbers have such a gentle, predictable curve with bounded accuracy and damage and stuff, you may as well ignore them because there's nothing exciting about rolling the dice anymore.
So the story is a lot heavier focus, the character journey. I never used to encounter people who got upset if their character died or groups who had the mentality that characters must always fail forward for the sake of the story.
That stuff is everywhere now.
Just the fact that the tile is "D&D map makers..." instead of "RPG map makers..." is very telling.
But now I don't even see Pathfinder out there much.
I think DnD podcasts and webseries and such were incredibly successful in cementing DnD as the only game in town. They brought in a ton of new players who have only heard of DnD and only want to play DnD.
I've however also spoken to other people, living in different places, and they remember the same time period being all about rules lawyering and "war gaming".
I've also observed a Europe/US divide where the US tends more heavily towards "war gaming" focused role playing with physical maps and moving miniatures around on a table, while Europe tends towards more story focused role playing. But I could be imagining that.