People understandably love to hate Oblivion and Fallout 3, but I feel the side quest writing had heart, like groups of devs got to go wild within their own little dungeons. Their exploitable mechanics were kinda endearing.
…And I didn’t get that from Starfield? I really tried to overlook the nostalgia factor, but all the writing felt… corporate. Gameplay, animation, Bethesda jank without any of the fun. I abandoned it early and tried to see what I was missing on YouTube, but still don’t “get” what people see in that game.
If you want a big walking sandbox in that vein, I feel like No Man’s Sky would scratch the itch far better, no?
Meanwhile, BG3 and KC2 completely floored me. So did Cyberpunk 2077, though I only experienced it patched up and modded. Heck, even ME Andromeda felt more compelling to me.
I got Cyberpunk in December and KCD2 in February. At this point I’m convinced I’ve spoiled the entire RPG genre for myself for the next decade. I can’t imagine playing 2 great games back to back like that again.
Oblivion is my favorite Elder Scrolls. I actually played it again recently and thought it held up pretty well. I’m a sucker for wandering lush bucolic landscapes though.
I’m a sucker for wandering lush bucolic landscapes though.
You should play KC Deliverance 2 if you haven’t. Its forests and rural villages are freaking gorgeous, especially for how “easy” it is to run.
Yes! I’ve played a fair bit of KCD 2. Really enjoying it!
The joke of these games is that they aren’t notably more weird than titles Bethesda and Bioware were famous for turning out. Hard to get more weird than Fallout’s more esoteric vaults or Morrowind’s bizarre cults and exotic cultures.
BG3/KC:D have been, if anything, a direct successors to the old classics. They’re faithfully propagating the fundamental ideas these old titles represented in a way the new studios are unable to reproduce.
Also, honorable mention to the poor bastards who released Disco Elysium and then got their studio stripped out from underneath them by their financiers. Absolute gem of a game and you should feel free to pirate it without a twinge of guilt.
Morrowind is over 20 years old, and there hasn’t been a FO game with compelling plot lines since New Vegas. You are living in the past.
Kinda the point of the comment
They have some good main quest writing, sure, but I feel like the nostalgia glasses factor is big, especially with NV.
Removed by mod
Aside from the unacceptable violence, the story here is far more complicated than that.
They were just impossible to work with.I think PeopleMakeGames did a good YouTube video on it if you’ve not seen it.
There are lots of things to physically fight back over, but video games ain’t one of them.
I’m not talking about video games I’m talking ruining someone’s life and stealing their intellectual property, the fucking performative humiliation he put those guys through. You think a rich CEO who would fuck people over that hard is really redeemable?
Edit: But no, you’re right that he shouldn’t be murdered, he doesn’t necessarily have blood on his hands like a healthcare CEO. He should simply be torn from his home and have all of his property and assets liquidated and distributed as compensation
I am sensing a lot of anger here and given the current state of the world it just seems so misplaced. Like dude, there is really shit going on with real villains and real people siffering, maybe direct that anger there.
Why the fuck would you think it’s not? There’s a lot of goddamn villains in the world, an entire ecosystem of cruelty where people abuse those who they think are below them because of unchecked wealth and power, and people get personally fucked by individuals of that ecosystem every day. Just because there are bigger fish doesn’t mean small fish are exempt. Don’t presume that a frustration with a lesser evil means a blind eye to the greater ones
“Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all!”
Greedy CEOs, MAGA supporters, Islamists, Nazis, Tankies, all the same. If all of those people stopped existing tomorrow, then the world would undoubtably be a better place. I’m ready to die on that hill!
But is it even evil? Like there were contracts involved with terms and conditions. Its not like some guy with a handle bar mustash just swiped the IP and walked away. Someone agreed to the contract that resulted in the loss of their company/IP and if they didn’t read it or consult with legal lawyer who’s bad guy?
Yes, yes it is! On what world would stealing someone’s intellectual work and booting them out of their own company for the sole purpose to keep all of the money for yourself not be evil? Funnily enough, making people sign unfair contracts is literally the most devilish thing ever. It’s the one thing demons and devils do in pretty much every interpretation they appear in. This is why we need more people like Luigi!
What had happened to the people in ZAUM (or what was once that studio), is a tragedy, and a huge shame. I’m not even a cRPG/dnd person, but that game has singlehandedly opened my eyes to a whole new world. It’s easily in my top10 games of all time, and I wish we could get another one eventually
It’s also ironic that BG3 is continuation of Bioware’s own franchise.
Just finished Disco Elysium few days ago, watched the credits roll from start to finish to see all the great people working on it, such a great game…now I am sad for what happened to them, I didnt know that
I wish there were more new sci-fi RPGs of that quality.
I do hear CP2077 is good now and I keep meaning to play it.
TBH I’ll probably end up enjoying Starfield once I get around to trying it as well.
I’ve heard people take that approach with Starfield and still be very disappointed. If it’s space you want and are ok with creating your own story, Elite Dangerous is getting a pretty big revival
Its mostly just that I want a Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim with a sci-fi setting. A solid story, lots of side-quests, and a dynamic world that reacts to the player. I’d probably enjoy a modern metropolitan criminal setting as well for an RPG like GTA’s settings but Elder-Scrolls/3D-Fallout gameplay but you never see that at all.
Space is cool though.
I don’t think it’s a super common opinion, but I really liked Starfield’s main story. That said, it completely fails on the dynamic world front. You might be better off with Cyberpunk for now.
I don’t believe you. That game exists, it’s called Starfield, and it failed specifically because of its sci-fi setting and for no other reason.
It failed because it was boring.
It famously had people saying “once you get past the first 12 hours, it gets good” it had nothing to do with the setting. The sci-fi setting was literally what drew people to play it in the first place…
the difference is cyberpunk has good direction and writing. starfield’s got neither. the problem with cyberpunk wasn’t the core of the game, it was bugs. once they fixed most of those the actual direction and story of the game had a chance to shine through.
starfield’s problem is the exact opposite. it was praised for being less buggy than the average BGS game, which is faint praise, but the problem is that it’s badly designed from the very core. it has bad writing, terrible characters, no direction at all, and no vision. bland, boring and basic. there’s no amount of updates that can fix that. the problems aren’t technical. there’s just no talent there.
I’ve had cyberpunk since launch and the only thing that has improved is stability. The game is still a hodgepodge of half baked RPG systems, most of which aren’t even necessary to interact with. No amount of polish can change the fact that it’s a turd underneath.
I can tell you haven’t booted the game up recently because they completely redid the perk system and cyberware not too long ago.
CDPR has been atoning for the sin that was their failed launch for years. In my opinion, the game is a good game now.
That was over a year ago and I have. It’s a bandaid on a dumpster.
I found a combat mod completely changed the game for me. By making it brutally damaging instead of so bullet spongy and deleveling it, it simplifies all that crap away. Perks and guns are for play styles, and it lets one enjoy the game instead of worrying about them.
Yes! BG3 and KC2 devs made amazing games but for some reason decided to have them take place in the most generic, boring medieval/fantasy setting.
I want a pirate RPG, or sci-fi, heck even a hardcore Mario CRPG.
shut your whore mouth about faerun
I want an Eberron game
instead of an actual rpg they went with an mmo and an rts for eberron … idk why
Faerun is garbage. Aggressively bad even for a medieval fantasy settings. No game set in Faerun can be good.
literally the best crpg games have been set in faerun
No they haven’t. Because they’re set in Faerun.
It’s BECAUSE of the generic, boring medieval fantasy settings that they were successful.
You are all over this thread. We get it, you dont like medievil fantasy… clearly not a popular opinion.
Exactly.
Maybe KCD2 is for you then, it got rid of the fantasy part and has historic figures in it instead.
Take a look at Exodus.
CP2077’s story is nice but short (for an RPG these days) but the meat is in the world and side missions.
Is it one of those “play the whole main story and then focus on the side content” situations or “Save the final mission for later because its a proper ending” situations?
the latter, the main story’s final quest lets you know before you start it that’s it’s a point of no return (though you can also just reload a save from before you do it)
Doesn’t “nice but short but the meat is in the world and side missions” describe most RPGs nowadays?
Western-style ones, yeah. High-effort side content is CD Projekt’s specialty at this point.
I rarely play any new ones to be honest so I’m not sure. CP2077 just feels for me like they didn’t stretch out the main story longer than necessary and put a lot of effort into the world and what’s in it.
As I’ve grown older and busier, I now prefer shorter games. Even when I intentionally try to play games, I may get 2-3 hours a week most weeks. A 100-hour campaign takes me a year to play through.
The problem is that gamers hate anytging that isn’t generic medieval fantasy.
It’s funny and sad knowing that Bethesda once were the company making weird and ambitious RPGs.
Morrowind is one of the weirdest and most ambitious games of that era.
Morrowind was thier hail mary to stay in buisness.
Then they gave the series to Howard and his crew…
It’s like the super bowl champs giving the next decade to the Bears.
Morrowind: An oral history on Polygon is a wonderful read.
All the little stories Kirkbride tells are great. My favourite is him designing progressively weird shit to dupe Howard with. He’d be like “Hey Todd, can we put this in the game?” and after he knowingly got knocked back he’d present him something more palatable.
That’s a classic negotiation technique abusing the psychological anchoring effect.
Yeah, I’ve heard of writers on shows like the Animaniacs doing it, insisting heavily on a more outrageous joke having to go in knowing it’ll get knocked back as a Trojan horse to slip the real jokes they want in.
It’s like the super bowl champs giving the next decade to the Bears.
nowhere is safe 😫
Lol if it makes you feel better I was going to say Buffalo originally
Indeed, as the article writes
Even Skyrim—certainly a weird, ambitious, and janky RPG in its own right—refined and streamlined the formula set by Morrowind and Oblivion, rather than expanding on their eccentricities, and that trend only continued in the studio’s following games.
Skyrim wasn’t “weird” by any definition I’d use. More like bland.
We’re talking about an article that considers Baldur’s Gate 3 to be weird and ambitious. Words don’t have meanings anymore.
I find it bizarre that people think Starfield isn’t “weird and ambitious”. Starfield is absolutely weird and ambitious, that’s why people didn’t like it, it tried to do something new and that something new turned out to not be fun.
I disagree, if anything I think Starfield was Bethesda not going far enough.
They created a new setting and added a couple of new mechanics, but they cradled it in the same tired formula that they have been doing for decades.
I had hoped that since it was a new IP, this would be the moment they would take a chance and try something new. Try a new approach to quest design and world building, don’t just make the game bigger but make the experience in it more varied with more interesting interactions. Instead it felt like new coat of paint on an old house and when they got called out on it, they became defensive.
I broke my heart when they said the lesson they learned was to stick to the same formula and when they tried to do it with Shattered Space, people hated it even more.
I hate to say it but it seems like Bethesda already peaked.
Kingdom Come Deliverance wasn’t even on my radar and now I’m obsessed. The NPCs are so fucking funny
If I were in your shoes…
The hours I spent on that FUCKING DICE GAME
Interestingly, Avowed is completely missing from this discussion.
I want to play it but it seems like a $40 game
It’s been worth every penny at $70 to me, and I’ve still probably got about half of it left to go.
A very fair point, but alas… for better or worse, the bar has indeed been raised, and last month only proved that. February 2025 saw the release of a new RPG from one of the most beloved studios in the genre, Obsidian Entertainment. Avowed is modest by design, but nonetheless it’s polished, accessible, and visually impressive, with a rich story from some of the best writers in the business—and the backing of Microsoft, one of the most influential and well-resourced videogame publishers of all time.
Lol where is this from
The article we’re commenting on, after someone said Avowed was missing from this discussion, even though it wasn’t.
Ah
Avowed is fantastic IMO. It’s been handcrafted and feels like a living place as opposed to Starfield which was expansive, siloed and impersonal. As a massive Skyrim and Mass Effect fan it is easily my fave game since BG3, probably even more than it in fact.
Personally I just want another RtwP CRPG.
I loved PoE1, didn’t care much about PoE2, and will probably care less about Avowed. There’s something magical about a map full of tiles that aren’t revealed immediately compared to a world map that you can immediately tell how much has been explored.
Same thing for BG3. I love Larian (been a Kickstarter backer since the original D:OS days, been playing almost every one of their games on release day since Dragon Commander) and BG3’s a great RPG, but it doesn’t feel like a good BG game. BG2 gave an immediate sense of “I have no idea where to go so I can do whatever I want”. BG3 is always nudging you to uncover the map and clear all the quests.
Personally I just want another RtwP CRPG.
How do you feel about Torment: Tides of Numenera?
Should I buy Baldurs Gate 3, its extremely expensive still.
I will always recommend the game. But holding to a budget is more important.
Depends. How badly do you want to play the game bioware wishes it could put out?
Is it insanely good, like Factorio level polish, or was it just hyped due to recency bias?
It’s not bad but I personally couldn’t get into it, too much dnd.
70% good, 30% hype
Worth it. Absolutely, it’s got both great game play and story and more so then any other rpg of its type it feels like your character and the choices you make are actually pretty major. It let’s you be more evil then in almost any other game if you are into that.
Worth the hype IMHO.
Its a regular price these days. Tho if your not in a hurry just wait for a pricr drop (can wishlist it on deals.gg to get notifed)
It’s polished and undoubtedly one of the best games of all time.
My only gripe is that I find the pause-based combat lengthy, though not bad.
the future of RPGs
Or, hear me out, the future might be 2D pixel-art games made by one or two people in a bedroom – not by critical acclaim or player sentiment, but just by sheer volume, filling up digital storefronts.
Im almost done playing crosscode and i was floored away by how engaging and fun it is. I never thought id invest 60+ hours in it so willingly and eagerly. Honestly the best time ive had in gaming in a long time.
BG3 isnt even a deep RPG. Im really glad it’s popular, but as an rpg it doesn’t even have half the options final fantasy 7 had.
Kingdom Come is a much richer experience, imo. Even though the options are even fewer on paper.
I’ll just sit over here rocking in place and muttering Owlcat Games over and over
You’re going to have to elaborate on those first two sentences, because that’s a wild thing to say.
Youve never played the original FF 7?
Half the options of the original FF7
I’m pretty sure nobody had the option to save Aeris, side with Sephiroth, finish blowing up Shinra before having to change to disc 2, etc
I have. I don’t know which options you’re referring to. Materia selection? I guess, but there are fewer permutations of those than there are spells/feats/stats in D&D 5e, and that’s before we even get to all the stuff that makes BG3 stand out, like its emergent design. FF7 is a great game, but it is not emergent, and emergent design will nearly always be deeper than the finite stuff.
No you’re right. Oil puddles are amazing emergent designs. My bad.
There are challenge runners who’ve beaten the entire game with only salami for weapons. Oil puddles are just a small part of it. There was a part in act 3 where I was denied entry to a place by failing a speech check. I could have possibly brute forced my way in and murdered everyone, but instead I found a back door that was three stories up on a balcony, cast flight on my rogue, and had him stealth in to achieve the objective. That’s emergent design. Solutions to problems that weren’t explicitly programmed in but work because the rules are loose and can be applied intuitively. There’s a part in the game where you have to cross a bridge blocked off by some high level enemies, and there are a ton of ways to get across the bridge that I know of, several of which the developers didn’t intend for, and probably dozens more that I’ve never even seen before, because the game just lets you run loose with its systems.
That’s depth.
That is very cool, i agree.
There are other games out there that give that amount of freedom. If not more. That’s all I’m saying.It’s a very pretty game.
Can you give some examples of games that give more freedom than that? Because as the other person said, ff7 is not one of those. And I too am curious because I love those kinds of games. And while owlcat’s pathfinder games are great, they’re also not a viable answer, since you’ve mentioned them.
I don’t think FF7 is one of those games.
your comparison to FF7 isn’t really accurate as they’re two different types of RPGs
and CRPGs are known for being far more fleshed out than any jrpg, so I’m curious to hear your reasons for saying so. considering FF7 doesn’t even allow you to make your own character to roleplay.
BG3, while very fun, is a pretty shallow game. Obviously that’s not a popular opinion, but it’s unfortunately true. There are far more fleshed out CRPGs out there.
i think you possibly are confusing BG3 for another game. nobody would make a statement like that unless they either hadn’t played it or were trying to troll.
Pretty+cinematic does not mean better. You need to play more crpgs, my friend.
oh, I’d say ive played quite a few, bud. but the advice is appreciated.
enjoy your generic protagonist with a mysterious dark past. seems like a truly unique concept in RPGs! 🙏
Then i recommend playing more games with unique concepts. DnD is like the most generic concept on the planet.
I generally agree with his statement, bg3 is very simple in terms of character building and has shallow exploration/questing (particularly after act 1). But then again, that’s the case for most AAA games out there - they are made in a way that anyone can play them to the end.
You all keep throwing these big accusations around without actually giving any alternatives for those of us that actually want to play these deeper more complex games that we’ve somehow never heard of. Why is that? Give us some games to play, please!
The op did give an alternative, I can’t speak much for it however.
Baldur’s gate 3 barely has any character building after picking a class at the start. It really doesn’t feel you’re building a character so much as following a template. And worse, the classes are all very vanilla. Pathfinder wotr for example has much better character building, the mythic classes add a ton of depth and interesting interlacing.
The big problem about exploration in bg3 is that there’s just not much to do. Most dungeons are like a handful of rooms and that’s that. You go in, you talk to a few people, you do 1 combat and rarely 2 and go out. There’s no sprawling or sense of discovery. I’ll recommend Underrail for exploration.
I see. We just have different opinions on what RPGs should be and that’s okay. I prefer a deep lake to a shallow ocean, so to say. I’ll take bg3, disco Elysium or mass effect over Skyrim any day of the week.
I’ve still got 100+ hours in games like that as well… they’re just not as fun or memorable to me and I often end up bored before the end. Had to force myself to ignore a bunch of the map in order to finish Witcher 3 and kingdom come, for example.
Gothic 2 is like the sweet spot, imo. Large enough that you don’t feel confined, but not that large that you get bored doing the same stuff over and over again. And while I did say that KC:D had me bored with exploration by the end, I didn’t feel bad about skipping parts of it like I did in other games because there the size of the map is just for realism and it’s not actually filled with meaningless stuff.
As for character building, I just play path of exile for that. I play RPGs for the stories. If it can have both, great, but I’m not gonna complain about build diversity in a game that I’m not gonna play more than once or twice anyway.
BG3 is the same as any of the other games previously. A D&D game with an amazing DM. Immersive story and characters, great system at the foundation, and excellent gameplay to channel the story and system through.
I think BG3 spent most of their time saying no to dull or shallow ideas, rather than reinventing the wheel. And of course it worked incredibly.
I concur; we need more of this new breed of aggressively strange RPG’s, like earthbound/mother, planescape:torment, and morrowind.
The freedom that Morrowind gives you has never been matched by other Bethesda titles. I think the only path that’s blocked to the player is joining the Sixth House, but at least you can kill Vivec before confronting Dagoth Ur
I can’t speak for Daggerfall’s freedom as I haven’t really delved into it, but I know it has 6 different endings depending on which faction you ally with.
None of what you listed is “new”. Also, Morrowind wasn’t actually “strange” in the slightest. Plenty of fantasy RPGs had elements of sci-fi and weird bug shit (see: Wizardry and even Might and Magic) and the “you can screw up the main quest” was similarly common at the time. Planescape I’ll give you.
Which is also true here. BG3 is not “strange”, It is literally the third Baldurs Gate game and continues most of the same themes and concepts. Yeah, it is a whole lot more gay but even that is not out of the ordinary for CRPGs at this point and had been pushed by companies like Larian, Obsidian, and Owlcat. Hell, the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages deserve a LOT of props for how horny and gay they were and normalizing the idea of picking the right dialogue options for a sexy card cutscene (also see CD Projekt Red).
And KCD2 is one of the most bog standard power fantasy games out there.
Like most articles of this variety, this is just a fancy way of saying “people should make good games”
none of what you listed is new
yes that’s exactly the point. two of these are from the 90s, one is from like 2001. old enough to have good credit and cheap car insurance. im making fun of the title.
morrowind isn’t really that weird
no, but it blew a lot of people’s minds so i put it on the list.
continues lots of the same themes
citation needed. not that I dislike it, it just feels like the name is tacked on to an otherwise lovely CRPG.
Yeah, it is a whole lot more gay but even that is not out of the ordinary for CRPGs at this point and had been pushed by companies like Larian, Obsidian, and Owlcat. Hell, the Mass Effects and Dragon Ages deserve a LOT of props for how horny and gay they were and normalizing the idea of picking the right dialogue options for a sexy card cutscene (also see CD Projekt Red).
Haven’t played BG3 yet, but I’m interested to read this because I’ve noticed a lot of discussion seems to be about romancing characters, and I don’t remember that being a prominent feature in the first two. That said, I was a kid, so maybe that just went over my head at the time. Or is that something that Larian brought in from their other games?
There were no sex cards, but if memory serves you could “romance” Jaheira (while effectively standing on the still warm corpse of her husband), Aerie (I remember that being kind of fucked but it has been 20 years), Viconia, and one of the boring dudes.
The “romances” weren’t particularly well written but… they honestly aren’t much better these days. We mostly just, as a culture, have moved on from needing everything to be a storybook romance and understanding that sometimes you just need a bang. Which makes “romance” in games a hell of a lot easier.
But also, since BG2 (well, NWN), Bioware have basically made their entire thing “romance options” and so forth. Similar to how Obsidian and Owlcat decided the real culture war was Turn Based versus Real Time With Pause. And Larian realized that we could do all the environmental nonsense that was originally only an option for tabletop games with GMs who didn’t know why you were asking when it last rained.
The Thaumaturge and Clair Obscur both look pretty weird
The article totally misses the big intervening step between Skyrim/old Bioware and the failure of Starfield/Dragon Age: CDProjectRED.
While those studios largely just made “more of the same”, CDPR made Witcher 3 and then Cyberpunk 2077. Both games are way better narrative experiences and pushed RPG forward. Starfield looks very dated in comparison to both, and Dragon Age failed to capture to magic. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 are successes because they also bring strong narratives and emotional connections to the stories.
Starfield would have been huge if it had been released soon after Skyrim. But now it just looks old fashioned, and I think the “wide as an ocean, as deep as a puddle” analogy is good for Starfield. Meanwhile Witcher 3 - which is 10 years old! - has quests and storylines with choices and emotional impact. BG3 and KC:D2 are heirs to Witcher 3.
People like to write off CP2077, which is such a shame.
…And maybe this makes me a black sheep, but I bounced off Witcher 2/3? I dunno, I just didn’t like the combat and lore, and ended up watching some of the interesting quests on YouTube.
With its nuanced characters, wonderfully layered world, and incredible depth of interactions, it was natural to feel the game had set a new bar for the whole genre—but it was pointed out that declaring it the new standard was unreasonable and unsustainable given how few other developers could possibly rise to meet it.
You could make a game a third of the size of BG3, and it would still be excellent value for BG3’s asking price. And no, you shouldn’t attempt to make a competitor with BG3 on your first try. Nor should you try to make a competitor to Elden Ring on your first try; FromSoft had been making those games for the better part of 15 years, building and iterating on what came before. I do think more RPG developers should strive to follow the systems-driven approach that Larian has and be cognizant of what it is that we all like about BG3, but it can be sustainable if you don’t try to hit a home run on the first pitch.
FromSoft had been making those games for the better part of 15 years, building and iterating on what came before.
Longer, if we really want to get pedantic. King’s Field, the game and series that is now the spiritual predecessor to the Souls genre, is from 1994, so we could probably say they have been refining their own flavor of action RPG for over 30 years now.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone. When you look through the classics, they’re not “typical”. Hell, one of the most iconic games involves a plumber fighting a punk-rock turtle to save a princess, with a variety of mushrooms both helping and hindering.
If you’re even remotely interested in Warhammer 40k, the Rogue Trader CRPG is excellent
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2186680/Warhammer_40000_Rogue_Trader/
Owlcat in general, despite their buggy releases, make absolutely ambitious and exciting games that are terrifically well written. Wrath of the Righteous is my favorite CRPG out there, and Rogue Trader is close to that as well.
I love Rogue Trader so much.
I wish more of the game was like act 2. That’s where the game really shines
That game was far better then it had any right to be.
Still waiting on an imperial guard focused game though.
Rogue Trader is actually good, but people who eat up medieval fantasy slop like BG3 will probably hate it.
Less flash, more passionate people allowed to create. Shocker.
