By those standards, it feels like the author blindsided themselves immensely. Not only did the genre evolve to be more, the old style was picked up by indies. RPG maker games in particular (ironically not RPGs most of the time). Simultaneously, narrative became far more important in the other genres. Bing-bing-wahoo expanded beyond a cake invitation.
All of these were true prior to 2004, and other genres evolved too.
Most of article was written in 1989, including the headline. Which includes the date it was written. It also was written by the design lead of The Secret of Monkey Island I and II. It was made public in 2004, and the author included this statement in the article:
> Some people will tell you that Adventure Games aren't really dead, they have just morphed into other forms, or that other genres have absorbed Adventure Games. If this is true, they've done a pretty bad job of it.
So I don't think it's blindsighted so much as old-man-yells-at-cloud disagreeing with you on what a Real Adventure Game is. Although in Ron Gilbert's defense, he also writes:
> As I read this some 15 years later, I'm not sure I agree with everything in here anymore. I learned a lot from Monkey Island 1 and 2, plus countless kids Adventure Games at Humongous Entertainment. At some point in the near future, I will do an annotated version of this article, talking about things that have changed, or were just plains wrong. But in the meantime, there is something interesting on TV right now.
So still not so much blindsighted as "never elaborated upon what he really thinks of the 1989 article these days".
I wouldn't say the genre evolved, it pretty much peaked back in the early 90s and hasn't seen any serious improvements since. The pie-menus of Curse of Monkey Island were about the last lasting improvement I can think of. Everything else turned out a short lived gimmick, an outright failure (e.g. controls in MI4/Grim) or just a watering down (e.g. casual hidden-object games).
And while narrative have become far more important in other genres, those style of narratives are completely different to what a point&click would offer. Action games are about action, you shoot or slash through things. You kill stuff. Narrative happens in cut-scenes without player control. It's not part of the gameplay. That's what makes point&click games special, as the there is no disconnect, the narrative is driven by the players the actions.
And while there are certainly some RPGs that cross the line, not many do. The mainstream RPG is still obsessed with stats, collecting dozens of the same item and stuff like that. In a point&click almost everything is unique, there are no faceless copy&paste NPCs, no mountains of useless items to collect. If you find an item in a point&click, it's very likely part of the plot in some form.
All of these were true prior to 2004, and other genres evolved too.