Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer

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.

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.

I concur; we need more of this new breed of aggressively strange RPG's, like earthbound/mother, planescape:torment, and morrowind.

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.

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 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.

Could somebody please explain fo me how either of these two aggressively cliche and generic games are in any way "ambitious, weird, and unexpected"?

Kingdom Come Deliverance wasn't even on my radar and now I'm obsessed. The NPCs are so fucking funny

Interestingly, Avowed is completely missing from this discussion.

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.

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.

This might be a unpopular view but I think games like Elden Ring or Lies of P are a better RPGs. More action packed, less busy/boring missions. I beat BG3 and had fun for the first half of the game, the last half was a bit of a drag. I tried KCD 1 and couldn't get into it, going from one end of the map to another doing mindless tasks. It was more of a middle-age simulator. I put ~250 hours into Elden Ring + DLC and I wanted more by the end of it.

Either way, I have some hope for the future of games.

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.

I have no comprehension what this is attempting to imply as I'm not sure who makes what games...

However, I do have some valid input. Kingdom Come Deliverance is the only single player game I've played since literally Metal Gear Solid 2...

Zero interest in single player games, yet I got Kingdom Come Deliverance for free so screw it I was bored hopped on got stoned.

By like hour 14 I realized I was playing a movie. With endless paths true freedom. I almost actually played it... I think I made it 40 some hours in and 20 of those hours were unlocking combos and learning them. Killing randoms on the roads etc.

I enjoyed it thoroughly yet, in the end it was still a single player game. All I could consider the entire time playing it was .... Imagine if this map had 100 players on it. How epic of an mmoprg this game could make.

How dare you!