As in the title. For some time now, I've noticed that any discussion of bigger cRPGs released in the last couple of years(nearly a decade really) ends up with everyone proclaiming how shit they are and how they really can't match to masterpieces like KOTOR2, Alpha Protocol and Dragon Age: Origins. Somehow, people happened to forget how the whole cRPG "market" looked like after the deserved death of Troika and move of Bioware towards console games.
I want to remind you the period between 2004 and 2014 and set it against 2014-2019 - yes, I'm giving a massive handicap to the newer releases.
So between January 2004 and January 2014 if you were on the market looking for something resembling the IE games/Fallout and I'll be very liberal. I only care about isometric point of view and tactical combat(RT or TB doesn't matter) and I'll be much more agnostic in the first period. Anyway enough talking. I filter out super small games and vogelware because Vogel releases a game yearly so it really evens out no matter what you do, we don't need more clutter to make this point.
In the first period we have:
And that's about it. As you can see I've included some games that I guess some of you would include as part of a sort of cRPG renaissance(the last 3 positions released in 2013) so the real stink isn't felt there. Let's go for the 2nd period.
Now I did a lot to pad the releases in the earlier period, I hope you can see that. The latter one had games like Blackguards or Sword Coast Legends or Expeditions Vikings etc. but I've decided to be nice and not include it, had they been 2013 releases I would've counted them on previous list. What I want to say by this listing is that somehow, with heavy handicap the latter period produced much more of the kind of RPGs that Codex is generally interested in. Now obviously an argument about quality vs. quantity can be raised, but it's not like Drakensang is a high bar. What this listing isn't showing is that RPGs as a genre were certainly very alive in that period, many very era-defining games were released in that period. Ask any normie you want, he'll be able to list masterpieces such as Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, The Witcher(2?) yadda yadda. This is a period where all studios had major difficulties finding money for making anything that didn't have action combat, when everyone was proclaiming turn based combat as an artifact of a begone era etc. etc. There is a reason it's dubbed the decline and renaissance is also being postulated as coming at the end of it.
The few games that were released back then have built up some legendarily reputation while the latter titles(as well as those between the end of 2018 and today) are more likely to be derided and you have to be clinically insane. Dragon Age:Origins for instance is a game with 3 classes, where 2 of these classes play exactly the same and the game offers very limited amount of combat options, its combat system is based on cooldowns etc. etc. and yet it will get more praises for combat than Deadfire in spite of the fact that both from system, gameplay and design perspective it's just better at every single point of it. I won't go on about the claims that KOTOR had better combat than PoE2, because this is just Alzheimer tier
People pretend have somehow forgotten approximately 25 years of execs, journalists, analytics, developers etc. saying that turn based combat is dead. You can't sell turn based game. Then there comes Baldurs Gate 3, it takes 5E and implements it relatively faithfully(remember Sword Coast Legends - Hasbro execs probably thought that that was the way for videogame adaptations to go) implements a turn based combat system that maybe isn't a challenge for someone who ate his teeth at RPGs but then again very few games are. I know the kinds of people who NEVER play TB games and they've played this one and thought it's amazing. It is a proof that everything codex hivemind said since its inception was correct. What does Codex have to say about it then? You tell that yourself.
I am not great fan of Owlcat games, but aside from the fact that again, they've adapted Pathfinder PNP system relatively faitfully(apparently there's a huge stat bloat for enemies but I have no idea about Pathfinder) and to give them huge credit for something, they went for something that was always there in RPGs but was never realise and that was adding some degree of quasi-strategic overworld game. It's there because they've adapted preexisting modules that had these things in them, but that was always a direction that cRPG's could've expanded towards and that is worth mentioning already. What will they get on this forum though as of AD 2024? You've guessed it.
The problem is that this wasn't a thing just couple of years ago, outside of general Pillars of Eternity well... scepticism after it mindbroke a bunch of people in here. However, while people complained about things like armour system in Divinity:OS2 you could still see they've enjoyed it, same went for pathfinder etc. You've had people just approaching all this like reasonable. So what happened that broke codex hivemind? I cannot imagine anything than a psychic effect of the bear sex marketing stunt for BG3. It must have caused you to materialise him during sleep and as his cock entered your orifices your minds escaped the dreamland to never come back. Convince me it's not the case because I don't see anything else, other than this place turning into circlejerk where we have a procession of generations crying old good new bad except in 2010 "old" was 1998 and in 2024 it was 2008. I don't believe in the latter so I'll stay with the psychic bear sex hypothesis.
I want to remind you the period between 2004 and 2014 and set it against 2014-2019 - yes, I'm giving a massive handicap to the newer releases.
So between January 2004 and January 2014 if you were on the market looking for something resembling the IE games/Fallout and I'll be very liberal. I only care about isometric point of view and tactical combat(RT or TB doesn't matter) and I'll be much more agnostic in the first period. Anyway enough talking. I filter out super small games and vogelware because Vogel releases a game yearly so it really evens out no matter what you do, we don't need more clutter to make this point.
In the first period we have:
NWN2 with the expacs
1st Expac
2nd Expac
1st Drakensang Game
2nd Drakensang game
Dragon Age 1
Dragon Age 2
Knights of the Chalice
Shadowrun Returns
Aarklash Legacy
Expeditions:Conquistador
1st Expac
2nd Expac
1st Drakensang Game
2nd Drakensang game
Dragon Age 1
Dragon Age 2
Knights of the Chalice
Shadowrun Returns
Aarklash Legacy
Expeditions:Conquistador
And that's about it. As you can see I've included some games that I guess some of you would include as part of a sort of cRPG renaissance(the last 3 positions released in 2013) so the real stink isn't felt there. Let's go for the 2nd period.
Divinity: Original Sin
Wasteland 2
Underrail
The Age of Decadence
Pillars of Eternity
Tyranny
Divinity:OS2
Tower of Time
Torment:whaever
PoE2
Pathfinder Kangmaker
Wasteland 2
Underrail
The Age of Decadence
Pillars of Eternity
Tyranny
Divinity:OS2
Tower of Time
Torment:whaever
PoE2
Pathfinder Kangmaker
Now I did a lot to pad the releases in the earlier period, I hope you can see that. The latter one had games like Blackguards or Sword Coast Legends or Expeditions Vikings etc. but I've decided to be nice and not include it, had they been 2013 releases I would've counted them on previous list. What I want to say by this listing is that somehow, with heavy handicap the latter period produced much more of the kind of RPGs that Codex is generally interested in. Now obviously an argument about quality vs. quantity can be raised, but it's not like Drakensang is a high bar. What this listing isn't showing is that RPGs as a genre were certainly very alive in that period, many very era-defining games were released in that period. Ask any normie you want, he'll be able to list masterpieces such as Oblivion, Fallout 3, Mass Effect, The Witcher(2?) yadda yadda. This is a period where all studios had major difficulties finding money for making anything that didn't have action combat, when everyone was proclaiming turn based combat as an artifact of a begone era etc. etc. There is a reason it's dubbed the decline and renaissance is also being postulated as coming at the end of it.
The few games that were released back then have built up some legendarily reputation while the latter titles(as well as those between the end of 2018 and today) are more likely to be derided and you have to be clinically insane. Dragon Age:Origins for instance is a game with 3 classes, where 2 of these classes play exactly the same and the game offers very limited amount of combat options, its combat system is based on cooldowns etc. etc. and yet it will get more praises for combat than Deadfire in spite of the fact that both from system, gameplay and design perspective it's just better at every single point of it. I won't go on about the claims that KOTOR had better combat than PoE2, because this is just Alzheimer tier
People pretend have somehow forgotten approximately 25 years of execs, journalists, analytics, developers etc. saying that turn based combat is dead. You can't sell turn based game. Then there comes Baldurs Gate 3, it takes 5E and implements it relatively faithfully(remember Sword Coast Legends - Hasbro execs probably thought that that was the way for videogame adaptations to go) implements a turn based combat system that maybe isn't a challenge for someone who ate his teeth at RPGs but then again very few games are. I know the kinds of people who NEVER play TB games and they've played this one and thought it's amazing. It is a proof that everything codex hivemind said since its inception was correct. What does Codex have to say about it then? You tell that yourself.
I am not great fan of Owlcat games, but aside from the fact that again, they've adapted Pathfinder PNP system relatively faitfully(apparently there's a huge stat bloat for enemies but I have no idea about Pathfinder) and to give them huge credit for something, they went for something that was always there in RPGs but was never realise and that was adding some degree of quasi-strategic overworld game. It's there because they've adapted preexisting modules that had these things in them, but that was always a direction that cRPG's could've expanded towards and that is worth mentioning already. What will they get on this forum though as of AD 2024? You've guessed it.
First of all, you are a disgusting, crazy leftists by the standard of 1200 AD Europe. I am a reactionary by the standards of 10000 BC when Sons of Tur fought Sons of Ari on the frostbound steppes of Hyperborea. We are not the same, there has been a lot of decline between me and you. On little bit more serious note this forum has shifted rightwards politically over the years - I've shifted too, far more than the average - and it's likely that it annoys me just like it annoys most of you(and trust me - more than most of you). Secondly as I've said in another thread this is sadly something you will have to live with because:
Now that being said a lot of the classics started having some subversive elements in them as soon as anything resembling full time writer showed up in them. Majority of devs were always liberal, you can almost bet they were atheists too. I think my fav example of this is Arcanum(terrible game btw), which, although it has some edgy content(Isle of Despair), frames industrialisation through the lens of at the very least a social democrat with orcs and half orcs being a racial allegory and so on. Unless you want to go mad or stop playing games and only come here to complain(in which case you're a bitch and should do something else with your life), then there really isn't any way around it than to just ignore writing all together and focus on the aspect where by all means the genre had recovered that is gameplay which is by all means the better out of the two.
The problem is that this wasn't a thing just couple of years ago, outside of general Pillars of Eternity well... scepticism after it mindbroke a bunch of people in here. However, while people complained about things like armour system in Divinity:OS2 you could still see they've enjoyed it, same went for pathfinder etc. You've had people just approaching all this like reasonable. So what happened that broke codex hivemind? I cannot imagine anything than a psychic effect of the bear sex marketing stunt for BG3. It must have caused you to materialise him during sleep and as his cock entered your orifices your minds escaped the dreamland to never come back. Convince me it's not the case because I don't see anything else, other than this place turning into circlejerk where we have a procession of generations crying old good new bad except in 2010 "old" was 1998 and in 2024 it was 2008. I don't believe in the latter so I'll stay with the psychic bear sex hypothesis.
