IGN - A History of RPGs @ IGN

IGN has penned a four page editorial about the history of RPGs, both Western and Japanese.
It seems to cover Zelda as well as some modern and semi-modern JRPGs, like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. Mass Effect also gets a short mention as does Ultima.

A snippet from the beginning:

It sure wasn't pretty in the beginning. The modern video-game RPG hardly resembles its ancestor, which was a poorly assembled mass of pixels attached to a hastily written fantasy adventure. The earliest RPGs took their cues from the pen-and-paper world of Dungeons & Dragons and crafted those game mechanics into rough but playable digital quests dominated by text scrawls. Most of these early titles, such as Ultima, Gateway to Apshai and Wizardry, were playable via personal computer or early consoles and adhered to a similar set of tenets.

Source: GameBanshee