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.
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.
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
Someone should Luigi the guy(s) that fucked them over honestly
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?
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
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.
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.
It’s like the super bowl champs giving the next decade to the Bears.
nowhere is safe 😫
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
I love Rogue Trader so much.
I wish more of the game was like act 2. That’s where the game really shines
Kingdom Come Deliverance wasn’t even on my radar and now I’m obsessed. The NPCs are so fucking funny
But BioWare games used to be the top tier gaming company standard for excellence. Bethesda used to release amazingly ambitious titles that were unmatched (albeit buggy!).
Greed outweighs the love of games.
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. I abandoned it early and tried to see what I was missing on YouTube, but didn’t get it? Heck, even ME Andromeda felt more compelling to me.
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.
I wish there were more new sci-fi RPGs of that quality.
I do hear CP2077 is good and I keep meaning to play it.
TBH I’ll probably end up enjoying Starfield once I get around to try it as well.
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?
Doesn’t “nice but short but the meat is in the world and side missions” describe most RPGs nowadays?
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.
Western-style ones, yeah. High-effort side content is CD Projekt’s specialty at this point.
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
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.
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.
The problem is that gamers hate anytging that isn’t generic medieval fantasy.
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.
It’s BECAUSE of the generic, boring medieval fantasy settings that they were successful.
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.
I concur; we need more of this new breed of aggressively strange RPG’s, like earthbound/mother, planescape:torment, and morrowind.
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”
Less flash, more passionate people allowed to create. Shocker.
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.
Interestingly, Avowed is completely missing from this discussion.
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
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?
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.
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.
Could somebody please explain fo me how either of these two aggressively cliche and generic games are in any way “ambitious, weird, and unexpected”?
List some RPGs that are better and lets discuss.
Are you serious? Do you need help understanding the definitions of ambitious, weird, and unexpected?
Do you need a run down of all generic clones of games bioware and bethesda have released in recent times?
They are literally sequels. 2 and 3. That removes any chance of them being unexpected now doesn’t it you dunce.
Ambitious, sure; if your definition of ambitious is delivering a complete game at release.
Weird? If you think these games are weird I’ll absolutely punish your eyeballs with just some stuff on steam that will leave these two games looking absolutely mainstream.
I’ll absolutely punish your eyeballs with just some stuff on steam that will leave these two games looking absolutely mainstream.
Genuinely curious since that sounds interesting. What games are these?
This would be a great reply if you didn’t call him a dunce which will likely get your comment deleted.
