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.