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Spurned RPGs That are Masterpieces Today

Shitposter
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May 1, 2024
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all those kickstarters rpgs we're bad and overrated on reception (rpg renaissance el oh el). I was put off by wasteland 2 so didn't try wasteland 3 until last weekend. Its much more polished and took a more serious tone with more meaningful customization, it may be the only good game inxile ever made (could just be front loaded though). idk why people are gaslighting themselves about the 'rpg renaissance' or lumping w2 and w3 together - PoE2 bombed hard because people bought poe, pretended to like it, then stayed away from poe2 because of the first game
I agree with huskuck.

May only be anecdotal evidence but PoE2 and W3 is statistically better performing in term of player retention.
 

Harthwain

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To be clear, I am also talking about full 3D games, not the early 3D games that used sprites, because those usually have limited architectural complexity (Doom's engine famously can't do spaces that go above or below other spaces, and the Build engine could only do them with a lot of trickery).
I don't know how it was received in its time or how it is seen now, but I remember how amazed I was when I played Evil Islands. I need to go back to it sometime and see how it fares today.

Gabriel Knight 3 isn't a good example for early full 3D games that did it right, because it's still a point & click adventure with a 2D logic. Nothing is gained from it being 3D.

Games like Quake, Thief, Tomb Raider are games that benefit from being fully 3D by actually involving all three dimensions in the gameplay.
Gabriel Knight 3 was an example of a game in the series that went into 3D and it came out worse for it (despite some technological achievements). The same thing can be said for Simon the Sorcerer.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
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Gabriel Knight 3 was an example of a game in the series that went into 3D and it came out worse for it (despite some technological achievements).
And Gabriel Knight 2 is an example of a game that suffered horribly for becoming FMV-focused. :negative: Leaving one worthwhile entry in the series.
 

Lemming42

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I guess I'm only thinking about genre fans, who are the only ones who care enough to reminisce about what was or wasn't a masterpiece anyway.

Obviously in the big picture they're pretty obscure. But for somebody writing a history of RPGs in the post-Baldur's Gate 3 era, Wasteland 2 and 3 could stand out as full-featured isometric RPGs that were post-apocalyptic rather than fantasy.
I wonder how much the Kickstarter stuff will even be remembered - if we were to get a really good run of cRPGs for the rest of the 2020s (there's no immediate reason to expect this will happen, but just hypothetically), I can honestly see people a few decades from now just considering the 2010s to be a bit of a barren patch with a few noteworthy games that don't really coalesce into an "era" in the way that we all thought the Kickstarter stuff might back in 2014 or so. Adding to that of course is that no big-name RPGs that I can immediately think of have really come off the back of the Kickstarter era; so it might not even be remembered as laying the groundwork for any subsequent notable stuff. The only highly successful game I can think of to share many traits with those games is BG3, and I think it's fair to say that it owes basically nothing to the middling success of titles like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, PoE, etc - only the D:OS games, but even they're basically a footnote in BG3's fame.

Also WL2 and WL3, while I liked them, feel very conservative in that they almost deliberately refrained from doing anything original or rocking the boat in any way; cRPGs made to a predictable formula that offer the player exactly what they expect and nothing more. Solid games for their day but probably not ones for the history books and not ones that people twenty years from now will have any reason to replay, unless things are really shit by then.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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I wonder how much the Kickstarter stuff will even be remembered - if we were to get a really good run of cRPGs for the rest of the 2020s (there's no immediate reason to expect this will happen, but just hypothetically), I can honestly see people a few decades from now just considering the 2010s to be a bit of a barren patch with a few noteworthy games that don't really coalesce into an "era" in the way that we all thought the Kickstarter stuff might back in 2014 or so.
For RPGs specifically, critics of the "Kickstarter era" willfully forget just how barren the preceding "wasteland era" was from about 2004-2011, during which the best computer RPG release was either The Witcher (2007) or Fallout: New Vegas (2010). The following period of hemi-semi-demi-Renaissance was far better for CRPGs, even if things were not as great as they used to be, and more recently we've had a resurgence of Tactical RPGs / squad-based tactics games with RPG elements. Many worthwhile games were released, most of them without funding from Kickstarter:
  • Rogue-Like
    • Unexplored (2017)
  • "Turn-based Blobbers" a.k.a. Wizardry-likes
    • Paper Sorcerer (2013)
    • Stranger of Sword City (2016)
    • Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar (2017)
    • Operencia (2019)
  • "Real-time Blobbers" a.k.a. DM-likes
    • Legend of Grimrock (2012)
    • Legend of Grimrock II (2014)
  • Tactical RPGs
    • Wasteland 3 (2020)
    • Dungeon of Naheulbeuk (2020)
    • Solasta (2021) with new campaigns in 2022 and 2023
    • Jagged Alliance 3 (2023)
  • JRPG
    • NieR: Automata (2017)
  • Choice & Consequences
    • Age of Decadence (2015)
    • Underrail (2015)
    • The Warlock of Firetop Mountain (2016)
    • Wildermyth (2021)
    • Age of Incandescence (2023)
  • Open-World RPGs
    • The Witcher III (2015)
    • Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018)
    • Conan Exiles (2018, MMORPG that can be played as a single-player CRPG)
    • Outward (2019)
  • Action RPGs
    • Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen (2012/2013/2016)
    • Dark Souls (2011 but 2012 on computers)
    • Salt & Sanctuary (2016)
    • Elden Ring (2022, also Open World)
    • Salt & Sacrifice (2022)
    • Dragon's Dogma II (2024)
  • Tactics games with RPG elements
    • Transistor (2014)
    • XCom 2 (2016)
    • Dungeon Rats (2016)
    • Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children (2020)
    • Urtuk (2021)
    • King Arthur: Knight's Tale (2022)
  • Metroidvania with RPG elements
    • Hollow Knight (2017)
    • Bloodstained (2019)
  • Action with RPG elements
    • Dragon's Crown (2013)
    • Yakuza 0 (2015)
    • Ghost of Tsushima (2020)
  • Other
    • Kenshi (2018)
 

Beans00

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For RPGs specifically, critics of the "Kickstarter era" willfully forget just how barren the preceding "wasteland era" was from about 2004-2011, during which the best computer RPG release was either The Witcher (2007) or Fallout: New Vegas (2010).

This 10000%.

Lots of the kickstarter renaissance rpg's have been pretty mid tier. Some have been good, some have been disappointing. That said I think a lot of people are forgetting 05-2012/13 when, outside of Jeff Vogel. Maybe 2 dozen crpg's came out, and if you were LUCKY 5 of them were acceptable quality to you. Unless you're a glue sniffer like fluent that liked everything.

Crappy obsidian games (minus kotor 2/fnv)
Crappy bioware games
The end of Bethesda as a creative company(even if I didn't like morrowind, oblivion/F3 and skyrim are pure slop)
The witcher 1/2
Gothic 3 and the risen games.

What else was there? The eschalon games? Ultra slavjank like metalheart and no time for dragons?

Hellgate london? Space siege?
 

Lemming42

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For RPGs specifically, critics of the "Kickstarter era" willfully forget just how barren the preceding "wasteland era" was from about 2004-2011, during which the best computer RPG release was either The Witcher (2007) or Fallout: New Vegas (2010). The following period of hemi-semi-demi-Renaissance was far better for CRPGs, even if things were not as great as they used to be, and more recently we've had a resurgence of Tactical RPGs / squad-based tactics games with RPG elements. Many worthwhile games were released, most of them without funding from Kickstarter:
I agree that things are obviously better now than they were in the mid-2000s by a long shot, but I also think it's fair to surmise in retrospect that the "renaissance" that was being talked about circa 2014 never really materialised. There wasn't a wave of high quality cRPGs in the mid-2010s in the way that people hoped, they didn't really re-enter the mainstream in any meaningful way, and many of the big-name games that were emblematic of the era (WL2, PoE, Shadowrun, Tides of Numanuma, Pathfinder) were underwhelming at best and disappointing at worst.

There's plenty of good RPGs around but, as your list shows, quite a lot of them are very niche indie games that even fans of the genre might not have heard of (Operencia, Age of Incandescence, and Unexplored are all completely new to me). Extremely dedicated fans of the genre might go back and pick them out years from now but in terms of a historical narrative for future generations, I don't know if that's going to cut it.

I mean, we think "90s FPS" and immediately go to Doom, Quake, Build games, Half-Life - that's far from the full picture, it leaves out a lot of the best games and more niche titles of the era, but it's a tangible group of big influential games that were well-received at the time and have stood up nicely. When people in the future think "2010s RPGs" are they really gonna think "oh yeah, 2016 was a classic year, Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Stranger of Sword City"? That's not a slight against those games, I just don't know if they have the sort of influential staying power that can make them representatives of a decade. I've enjoyed plenty of RPGs over the last decade but I really don't know how many will be remembered into the future in the way that the likes of Fallout and Diablo and Planescape are today.
 

ropetight

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I guess I'm only thinking about genre fans, who are the only ones who care enough to reminisce about what was or wasn't a masterpiece anyway.

Obviously in the big picture they're pretty obscure. But for somebody writing a history of RPGs in the post-Baldur's Gate 3 era, Wasteland 2 and 3 could stand out as full-featured isometric RPGs that were post-apocalyptic rather than fantasy.
I wonder how much the Kickstarter stuff will even be remembered - if we were to get a really good run of cRPGs for the rest of the 2020s (there's no immediate reason to expect this will happen, but just hypothetically), I can honestly see people a few decades from now just considering the 2010s to be a bit of a barren patch with a few noteworthy games that don't really coalesce into an "era" in the way that we all thought the Kickstarter stuff might back in 2014 or so. Adding to that of course is that no big-name RPGs that I can immediately think of have really come off the back of the Kickstarter era; so it might not even be remembered as laying the groundwork for any subsequent notable stuff. The only highly successful game I can think of to share many traits with those games is BG3, and I think it's fair to say that it owes basically nothing to the middling success of titles like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, PoE, etc - only the D:OS games, but even they're basically a footnote in BG3's fame.

Also WL2 and WL3, while I liked them, feel very conservative in that they almost deliberately refrained from doing anything original or rocking the boat in any way; cRPGs made to a predictable formula that offer the player exactly what they expect and nothing more. Solid games for their day but probably not ones for the history books and not ones that people twenty years from now will have any reason to replay, unless things are really shit by then.
We were so hungry for the semi-decent RPG that I played couple hundred of hours of W2 and its "Director's Cut" in different playthroughs.
Game was rough (dreadfull Unity Store assets they used), but do you remember games similar to W2 in the 2000's drought era?

The Fall: Last Days of Gaia never never delivered on it's promises, went through development hell, buggy as fuck with bunch of patches, and never got proper English release (fan translation was so-so).
I played a lot of that game, still remember title industrial song.
Since game was crashing all the time, I heard it a lot.
 

Nifft Batuff

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Nov 14, 2018
Messages
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With very few exceptions, I will replace the western games of the first decade of the '00s with those of the second decade any time.
 

MjKorz

Educated
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Jul 11, 2022
Messages
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I wonder how much the Kickstarter stuff will even be remembered - if we were to get a really good run of cRPGs for the rest of the 2020s (there's no immediate reason to expect this will happen, but just hypothetically), I can honestly see people a few decades from now just considering the 2010s to be a bit of a barren patch with a few noteworthy games that don't really coalesce into an "era" in the way that we all thought the Kickstarter stuff might back in 2014 or so. Adding to that of course is that no big-name RPGs that I can immediately think of have really come off the back of the Kickstarter era; so it might not even be remembered as laying the groundwork for any subsequent notable stuff. The only highly successful game I can think of to share many traits with those games is BG3, and I think it's fair to say that it owes basically nothing to the middling success of titles like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, PoE, etc - only the D:OS games, but even they're basically a footnote in BG3's fame.

Also WL2 and WL3, while I liked them, feel very conservative in that they almost deliberately refrained from doing anything original or rocking the boat in any way; cRPGs made to a predictable formula that offer the player exactly what they expect and nothing more. Solid games for their day but probably not ones for the history books and not ones that people twenty years from now will have any reason to replay, unless things are really shit by then.
The kickstarter RPG craze period will always be remembered fondly by connoisseurs of the genre, because it produced Shadowrun Dragonfall, Hong Kong, Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny (regardless of whether it was actually kickstarted). PoE sold decently well for its time - half a million in roughly half a year. People who compare PoE sales at the time to modern RPG sales forget about the videogame market growth and especially the growth and popularization of PC gaming thanks to Steam.
 

huskarls

Scholar
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Aug 7, 2016
Messages
154
Your playing fast and loose with the truth to counter kickstarter rpg renaissance games not being good by enlarging it into 'kickstarter era' including non-kickstarter games then continuing this era you invented to current time. This histography is not based in any material changes - we call it bronze age because they used bronze. There was a turn of the century change in video games from 2D games into 3D engines, but yours is arbitrary grouping and divorced from the reality people here thought they could fund their own crpgs without being beholden to developers and consoles, and were wrong.

also 2004 to 2012 wasn't an rpg wasteland, it was defined by big budget AAA rpgs from bioware and bethesda that the codex was mad about because these were consolized rpgs as companies tried to make 'cross console' rpgs rather than computer rpgs and console rpgs. You listed the witcher series too when it was defined from jumping from computer only to consoles. I liked F:NV too but it was an fallout 3 mod designed for the xbox, not a CRPG
For RPGs specifically, critics of the "Kickstarter era" willfully forget just how barren the preceding "wasteland era" was from about 2004-2011, during which the best computer RPG release was either The Witcher (2007) or Fallout: New Vegas (2010).
 

Chippy

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Messages
6,241
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
How about ME3? After buying and putting down Dragon Age 2 after a few hours I just couldn't be bothered with ME3. I notice I still can't get it on GOG, and they're likely to go down the legendary edition if they do. I just don't see how ME can be called a legendary edition without Miranda's ass shots in it.
 
Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
Messages
19,495
How about ME3?
Some segments were ok since they were properly set up in prior games and ME3 only had to provide the conclusion (thinking mainly of the Krogans and the Qunari-Geth conflict), others were meh, ending is still crap with the whole star child nonsense and the synthesis ending in particular. Personal ratings might vary, but the game is in no way a masterpiece.
 
Last edited:

Fargus

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Mosqueow
I guess I'm only thinking about genre fans, who are the only ones who care enough to reminisce about what was or wasn't a masterpiece anyway.

Obviously in the big picture they're pretty obscure. But for somebody writing a history of RPGs in the post-Baldur's Gate 3 era, Wasteland 2 and 3 could stand out as full-featured isometric RPGs that were post-apocalyptic rather than fantasy.
I wonder how much the Kickstarter stuff will even be remembered - if we were to get a really good run of cRPGs for the rest of the 2020s (there's no immediate reason to expect this will happen, but just hypothetically), I can honestly see people a few decades from now just considering the 2010s to be a bit of a barren patch with a few noteworthy games that don't really coalesce into an "era" in the way that we all thought the Kickstarter stuff might back in 2014 or so. Adding to that of course is that no big-name RPGs that I can immediately think of have really come off the back of the Kickstarter era; so it might not even be remembered as laying the groundwork for any subsequent notable stuff. The only highly successful game I can think of to share many traits with those games is BG3, and I think it's fair to say that it owes basically nothing to the middling success of titles like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun, PoE, etc - only the D:OS games, but even they're basically a footnote in BG3's fame.

Also WL2 and WL3, while I liked them, feel very conservative in that they almost deliberately refrained from doing anything original or rocking the boat in any way; cRPGs made to a predictable formula that offer the player exactly what they expect and nothing more. Solid games for their day but probably not ones for the history books and not ones that people twenty years from now will have any reason to replay, unless things are really shit by then.
We were so hungry for the semi-decent RPG that I played couple hundred of hours of W2 and its "Director's Cut" in different playthroughs.
Game was rough (dreadfull Unity Store assets they used), but do you remember games similar to W2 in the 2000's drought era?

The Fall: Last Days of Gaia never never delivered on it's promises, went through development hell, buggy as fuck with bunch of patches, and never got proper English release (fan translation was so-so).
I played a lot of that game, still remember title industrial song.
Since game was crashing all the time, I heard it a lot.


The song from Darkseed was dope but i also liked some of the original game music.


Maybe the game didnt deliver but it was certainly memorable.
 
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all those kickstarters rpgs we're bad and overrated on reception (rpg renaissance el oh el). I was put off by wasteland 2 so didn't try wasteland 3 until last weekend. Its much more polished and took a more serious tone with more meaningful customization, it may be the only good game inxile ever made (could just be front loaded though). idk why people are gaslighting themselves about the 'rpg renaissance' or lumping w2 and w3 together - PoE2 bombed hard because people bought poe, pretended to like it, then stayed away from poe2 because of the first game

Not all. There were some bright spots. More than not, I'd say. Examina (Sui Generis) while still plodding along in perpetual development, is a worthy dungeon crawler. Divinity: Original Sin was fun. Overstayed it's welcome by the end, but a genuinely fun game. Divinity Original Sin 2 was also kickstarted and it's what earned Larian the Baldur's Gate IP. Pathfinder: Kingmaker, while having some faults, was a definitively great RPG. Hard West was enjoyable and Serpents in Staglands was also decent, even if something of a particular taste. Satellite Reign, while not amazing, was definitely worth the purchase and I got plenty of fun out of it. SKALD finally made it to the finish line recently, and that game was a treat.

Many people enjoyed the Shadowrun games, even if I personally found them mediocre. The Expeditions and Banner Saga games were all well received. I didn't play them, so I cannot comment. Grim Dawn and Kingdom Come: Deliverance both had excellent reception. Darkest Dungeon was well received, even if not perfectly. Same with Wasteland 2. There is also Knights of the Chalice 2, which has about as much RPG credibility as is possible to have here on the RPG Codex. Black Geyser was something of a let down, but many people say it was a worthy attempt a recreating the experience of Baldur's Gate 1. While Kickstarter era wasn't a golden age, like 1996-2002, it was certainly a silver one. Let's not be edgelords and disparage it simply because PoE wasn't the third coming of Baldur's Gate and TToN wasn't the second coming of PS:T.
 

Raghar

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Risen 2 is another. Funny as fuck, great vibe, pirating yarrr!!

Gameplay is wank, but if you play guns it's serviceable enough to get by.
Brainwashing governor by magic was fun. And without guns it was decent challenge.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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When people in the future think "2010s RPGs" are they really gonna think "oh yeah, 2016 was a classic year, Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Stranger of Sword City"? That's not a slight against those games, I just don't know if they have the sort of influential staying power that can make them representatives of a decade. I've enjoyed plenty of RPGs over the last decade but I really don't know how many will be remembered into the future in the way that the likes of Fallout and Diablo and Planescape are today.
The more general CRPG audience, as opposed to prestigious Codexers, will remember a subset of the higher-budget, higher-profile releases, just as occurred for any earlier era of CRPG history. Skyrim, The Witcher III, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3 and a few more, with perhaps one or two low-budget games sneaking in. Incidentally, most of the Codex's top favorites were also among the higher-budget, higher-profile releases of their time. Sadly, there had been a startling drop in the typical quality of releases in this category occurring already in the 2000s, and it's never recovered, with the consequence that monocled RPG aficionados have instead focused on sifting through lower-budget, lower-profile releases to find worthwhile games.
 

Beans00

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Something is clear, no one except some of the shills on this forum will remember or care about Obsidian post FNV.
 
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I mean, we think "90s FPS" and immediately go to Doom, Quake, Build games, Half-Life - that's far from the full picture, it leaves out a lot of the best games and more niche titles of the era, but it's a tangible group of big influential games that were well-received at the time and have stood up nicely. When people in the future think "2010s RPGs" are they really gonna think "oh yeah, 2016 was a classic year, Warlock of Firetop Mountain and Stranger of Sword City"? That's not a slight against those games, I just don't know if they have the sort of influential staying power that can make them representatives of a decade. I've enjoyed plenty of RPGs over the last decade but I really don't know how many will be remembered into the future in the way that the likes of Fallout and Diablo and Planescape are today.

90s FPS is a very iconic trend/era and the reality is that most genres does not have iconic eras every few years. Reality is quite complex, there come out great games, great games that are niche, bad games that are popular and a slew of decent/mediocre tittles that are going to be forgotten in a few years. What we should do is to find the hidden pearls and make sure that many more people will hear about them.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Many people enjoyed the Shadowrun games, even if I personally found them mediocre. The Expeditions and Banner Saga games were all well received. I didn't play them, so I cannot comment. Grim Dawn and Kingdom Come: Deliverance both had excellent reception. Darkest Dungeon was well received, even if not perfectly. Same with Wasteland 2. There is also Knights of the Chalice 2, which has about as much RPG credibility as is possible to have here on the RPG Codex. Black Geyser was something of a let down, but many people say it was a worthy attempt a recreating the experience of Baldur's Gate 1. While Kickstarter era wasn't a golden age, like 1996-2002, it was certainly a silver one. Let's not be edgelords and disparage it simply because PoE wasn't the third coming of Baldur's Gate and TToN wasn't the second coming of PS:T.
The real lesson from the Kickstarter era is that smaller indie teams and newbies trying to recapture the wonder of games they enjoyed when they were kids do a better job than washed-up old developers who had lost their touch.

Of the big name devs that returned to try and recapture their former glory, only Fargo's Wasteland 2 and 3 were good.
His attempt at a new Torment was a complete wreck.
Pillars of Eternity was fucking boring and showed none of the people involved knew what made the BG games classics.
Underworld Ascendant was one of the biggest disasters in game development history, despite being made by some of the biggest geniuses of 90s game design.
Not a Kickstarter game, but when Tim Cain and Leonard Boyarsky joined Obsidian to make The Outer Worlds, promising another New Vegas, we just got mediocre slop instead, cementing Obsidian's image as a mediocre company that can only do mediocre clones of what has been done better before (including their own older games!)
And let's not forget the developer that kickstarted the Kickstarter renaissance: Tim Schafer, who had a huge breakout success and made KS viable for game developers by promising a return of the good old graphic adventure - only to end up delivering something lame and disappointing that pleased no-one.
On the adventure game front, Ron Gilbert ended up making something that actually delivered with Thimbleweed Park, but it had a dreadfully meta ending that ruined the story, and then he went on to make the new Monkey Island game which is one of the worst adventure games to come out in recent years, just utter trash.

Turns out, most of the old devs who didn't produce anything of value during the decline years, then returned in the Kickstarter era to promise a return to their old pre-decline form, ended up disappointing. Either they had just lost their touch, or they were too influenced by the trends of the decline years to go back to design principles from before then.

Meanwhile newcomers have been revitalizing pretty much all the genres. RPG, adventure, FPS... indies rule these spaces now. Are their games as good as the classics? No, of course not. But they make an attempt. A genuine attempt. Some even try to experiment in interesting ways, which the old guys are reluctant to do.
What did indies and newcomers give us in the RPG space?
ATOM, Underrail, Age of Decadence, Disco Elysium, Knights of the Chalice, Solasta, and plenty more I'm too lazy to list now (maybe Zed Duke of Banville can do the job for me, he's good at making lists).
 

Lemming42

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It's been talked about before on this forum but maybe the takeaway is that 90s game devs often succeeded in spite of themselves thanks to technical limitations. I think we were talking about it in the Tomb Raider thread, but Toby Gard's vision for the game was far worse than what we actually got; the realities of PS1 technology reigned in his worst ideas and most misguided ambitions and forced him to create something far more refined and understated. He wanted cinematic storytelling and grand spectacle, but he was forced to have minimalistic non-intrusive storytelling and small, claustrophobic levels, which made the game a success.

I think it's the case with Tim Cain as well, Fallout suceeded in large part because the relatively limited scale of what he was able to do and the pressures of time-sensitive development meant that his dream of having a GURPS (or GURPS-inspired) cRPG had to be distilled down into the purest form possible without any pointless chaff.
 

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