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
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
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
How dare you!
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 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’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.
fucking lol.
- terrible game design
- zero game direction
- nonsensical script
- not even 2 dimensional characters
- incredibly unlikeable companions
- bad dialog
- fallout 4 style fake choices and railroading, only one way to complete most quests,
- open world" that requires fast travel, completely undercutting exploration
- immersion breaking loading screens for literally everything, even following cutscenes which aren’t used for bg loading for some reason
- spaceship fantasy that barely makes use of the spaceship, it’s just a toy you can decorate but can’t properly pilot, space combat is horrendously bad even though other games nailed it in the fucking 90s
- planet exploration fantasy that breaks planets into tiny chunks even though no man’s sky existed for years
- open world fantasy where discovery is undercut by the fact that the same assets are reused over and over. like not even texture and models randomized to have some variation, but entire buildings copied including the placement of objects inside.
- classic Bethesda style afraid to lock the player out of anything approach that means you have no choices to make, just get through everything in the order you like … be a cop and a thief and a merchant and a cultist and a garbage man why not
- vast space fantasy with a gazillion planets yet you are the center of everything
- scifi universe that doesn’t have means of long distance communication for some reason, needing you to go back and forth between planets just to relay messages
i can go on but got bored.
the fact that you claim that the only problem starfield had was it’s scifi setting when massively successful scifi games like cyberpunk, deus ex, half life, nier, mass effect etc exist just proves you know nothing about video games.
and more specifically your seem to have no idea what people want from rpgs if you even consider starfield to be one worth mentioning, let alone an exemplary one.
I’ve not gotten around to trying it yet, I’ve already got like 6-7 games on my plate ATM on various devices. I actually suspect I wont hate it but I hear its pretty meh.
Hopefully Bethesda can turn it around with DLC/updates though. I hear modding is still in its infancy too so maybe we’ll get something in that area down the road too.
Also I figure if I wait hopefully Starfield will get a VR edition (or maybe a mod) and that might be when I really want to jump in.
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)
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.
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/
Rogue Trader is actually good, but people who eat up medieval fantasy slop like BG3 will probably hate it.
Could somebody please explain fo me how either of these two aggressively cliche and generic games are in any way “ambitious, weird, and unexpected”?
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.
This would be a great reply if you didn’t call him a dunce which will likely get your comment deleted.
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?
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.
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.
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.
