'The Greatest RPG Ever Made'.

...yes, it will be - almost undoubtedly - for some people.

There is no objective way of going about this, stop looking for one.

Unless if Bethesda does something incredibly stupid and moronic that'll ruin their reputation to the point of no return, every Elder Scroll game they'll make in the future will be rememberable and hailed as a paragon of their time. Be it money or genuine creativity, Bethesda know's their brainchild inside and out, and knows what the people want. Whether if it'll be the RPG that raises the bar and sets the standards for all others, remains to be seen. I sure do hope that it'll do just that.

If Bethesda can make a game that's easy and approachable for the casual crowd, yet deep and convoluted enough for the hard-core clique, that'll cement them. No doubt about it. Why they haven't tried it yet, is the question.

the best RPG's are pencil and paper ones since games always have limits
and computers arent going to stop getting better just because the xbox and ps are getting better by the time they come out computers will have gotten much better so comparing the future consoles to future computers is a dumb thing on your part

No.

The next TES wont be the greatest RPG ever made.
You obviously have a small collection that only consists of modern games made in the last three years.
For me, the best RPGs are the old Neverwinter Nights and the old Baldurs Gate games.

The next TES will probaly win GOTY, and a slew of other awards.
To me, the next TES will be like a beautiful cake, with nice frosting, and an amazing, glossed up presentation. But when I taste the cake, the presentation will not matter, and my mouth will probaly spit back up the mush, and whats left will leave a taste so terrible my face will bear an expression of utter disgust for years to come.

Want me to pull that trigger?

Don't take "Game of the Year" too seriously. It's kind of like High School Journalism awards, where something like 40% of the schools are awarded "First Place". If you don't make at least "Second Place", it means your school is in the bottom 10-20%. With "GoTY", there are enough categories to insure that almost any half-decent selling title gets one of the awards.

"The potential is massive", just as it was before each of the other games. At least TES II got the RPG part right (despite a lot of repetitive and simplistic "procedurally generated" content), and MW didn't totally butcher the RP aspects to offer a bit more of an action/adventure side and a truly hand-crafted world. Sadly, each of the following games gave up a large amount of RP content (choices with consequences, true advancement instead of a treadmill, and a lot of character customization options) in order to boost the combat and adventure aspects.

I don't see the platforms as being the limiting factor; more like the accountants and marketing people who are out to try to sell "general purpose" video games to everyone and their grandmother, rather than designing a game for a specific market that they already have a solid hold on.

Nailed it.

As long as TES is consolified it will never fulfill its potential, full stop.