Incline What would have to happen for a 2nd cRPG Renaissance?

[Bruma Hobo]

I don't recall SSI, Sir-Tech or Bethesda rushing to make Diablo clones. Almost all Diablo clones were made by developers that weren't making cRPGs at the time. So it's pure speculation to say we missed out on a bunch of great cRPGs because developers chose to make Diablo clones instead. They weren't making cRPGs before so why would they suddenly start?

I was talking about RPGs like Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, it's crazy how even D&D adaptations depended so much on the ARPG market to survive, don't you think? It was so bad that today many can't even conceive of the notion of a D&D CRPG without an isometric perspective and lots of mobs dropping loot like crazy. In a similar vein, this is how well established series like Might and Magic shifted towards a "fantasy doom-clone" feel for their latter games: their old market was suddenly not enough.

even the combatfag games you mention are just top-down tacticool titles with little to no RPG elements.

Calling Battle Brothers an RPG but not Temple of Elemental Evil, Jagged Alliance 2 and Silent Storm makes no sense.

I haven't actually played Battle Brothers, I mentioned it because it's a small indie game that sold exceedingly well, has a strong cult following, and unlike many 20 year old CRPGs it doesn't seem to make compromises to appeal to bigger markets.

narrative-driven games constantly holding players hands through explicit journal entries and self-contained side-quests, and segregating mechanics from the plot (and thus creating the false combatfaggotry/storyfaggotry dichotomy)

You mean like Betrayal at Krondor?

Well, I'm glad someone else agrees with me.

 

[V_K]

I don't recall SSI, Sir-Tech or Bethesda rushing to make Diablo clones.

SSI went out of business two years before Diablo's release, so they have a good excuse.

 

[thelegend]

Witcher 2 VR

 

[Cross]

I don't recall SSI, Sir-Tech or Bethesda rushing to make Diablo clones.

SSI went out of business two years before Diablo's release, so they have a good excuse.

They released Warlords Battlecry in 2000 and it's an RPG (well, RPG/RTS hybrid). Note the SSI logo in the bottom left corner.

 

[JarlFrank]

isometric perspective

Why do you single that out as if it's a bad thing?

How is ToEE worse than the Gold Box games?
In fact, the Gold Box games' combat is isometric itself, only its exploration is blobber-like.
Knights of the Chalice has primitive graphics but they count as isometric (just like Ultima VII, or Darklands, or Dark Sun), and it's one of the truest D&D combat simulators out there. KotC2 is an even better D&D combat simulator, the best implementation of 3.5 rules in a computer game ever, and its top-down perspective is functionally the same as ToEE's isometric one.

Isometric and top-down perspectives are much closer to the pen and paper experience than anything else, if you play with miniatures. In my D&D group, we have a whiteboard which we put on the table and little magnetic pips we use for our characters in battle. Our DM draws the walls of the dungeon onto the whiteboard and then we place our little pips onto it, while the DM uses a bunch of different-colored dice to represent the enemies. It plays out pretty much exactly like ToEE (except on a square grid instead of gridless).

Since D&D started out as a wargame, tactical top-down battles is the truest pen and paper experience you can get.

 

[Fowyr]

I don't recall SSI, Sir-Tech or Bethesda rushing to make Diablo clones

Entomorph: Plague of the Darkfall was proto-Diablo.

EDIT: Don't forget Al-Qadim: Genie's Curse as well with its one character and arcade combat.

 

[KateMicucci]

Isos and blobbers are made now only by old men with nostalgia. There aren't any kids growing up now who are going to be nostalgic for PoE, Kingmaker, Grimrock, Wasteland 3, etc. Those subgenres are zombies at this point and they will soon disappear.

CRPGs will have to start doing something different for there to be a renaissance (and most of the codex isn't going to like whatever it is).

I have two guess on what the next big waves of successful CRPGs will be:

1. Skyrim clones. There is huge untapped demand for another Skyrim which Bethesda has foolishly ignored for over ten years. What I mean is action RPGs, open world, lots of unconnected dungeons and ignorable main story.
2. Semi-roguelike dungeon crawlers. We will see lots of games like Darkest Dungeon or Enter the Gungeon, but bigger and with more RPG elements. There will be examples with both action gameplay and tactical gameplay.

 

[Gaznak]

Nothing good will ever happen in computer gaming industry anymore.

First, because it has become industry.
Second, because it has less and less computer in it with every passing year.
Third, fuck the Internet.

The age of computer games is gone. Well, almost. We can only sit and enjoy the last rays of sunset of this magnificent era. Then there will be only darkness.

 

[V_K]

Isos and blobbers are made now only by old men with nostalgia. There aren't any kids growing up now who are going to be nostalgic for PoE, Kingmaker, Grimrock, Wasteland 3, etc. Those subgenres are zombies at this point and they will soon disappear.

It's not impossible. I started gaming in the iso era but came to appreciate blobbers and top-down games later in life.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I don't recall SSI, Sir-Tech or Bethesda rushing to make Diablo clones.

SSI went out of business two years before Diablo's release, so they have a good excuse.

They released Warlords Battlecry in 2000 and it's an RPG (well, RPG/RTS hybrid). Note the SSI logo in the bottom left corner.

SSI was acquired by Mindscape in 1994 and was subsequently sold a few more times before being retired as a brand by Ubisoft. Although it isn't strictly accurate to say that SSI went out of business in 1994, this was the end of its existence as an independent company.