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Have the best CRPGs already been made?

Have the best CRPGs already been made?


  • Total voters
    173
  • Poll closed .

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,228
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Bethesda seems to practice artificial scarcity - they could make (and license) a LOT more games than they do. I wonder if it's a calculated strategy or if they're just kind of lazy?
 
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ilitarist

Learned
Illiterate Village Idiot
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Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
Infinitron , I guess they correctly guessed what happens when you produce a big AAA clone of your previous game yearly the way Assassins Creed or Call of Duty were produced for a while. Even though quality didn't drop that much people became tired of those games. And it's not like those games were all the same or copypasted: especially with Assassins Creed they've spend a lot of effort on producing huge worlds with a lot of historical architecture and high quality music and graphics. I think around release of Skyrim Bethesda has correctly guessed that this stuff wouldn't work.

Strange how with their abundance of time they still produce technically questionable games with a lot of problems in terms of writing (among other things) but we don't have any examples of anything done on the same scale. Their closest competition would probably not be other RPGs but rather something like GTA5 and this game is much simpler gameplay-wise. By the way, GTA5 devs practice the same scarcity. Makes you think.
 

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2016
Messages
3,640
Location
Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
I'm confused we aren't getting new Skyrim DLCs/standalone expansions to this day.

Why make your own expansions when the base game seems to sell fine. Even better, get other people to make content, sell it, and take a cut. Does anyone know how well the Creation Club is working out for them?

There's also the designer fatgiue element. The market has shown you can make basically unlimited SMB 3 clones and people will buy them, but Nintendo doesn't. Why? Because Miyamoto has made those games already. He's sick of it. He wants to do new stuff.

I'm guessing Bethesda has enough of a warchest they can do as they please. That Zenimax isn't trying to wring every last drop of blood from the stone speaks well for them.
 

huskarls

Scholar
Joined
Aug 7, 2016
Messages
108
The majority of the 'best' games are mostly rated on being novel and fresh, even sales are higher with original RPGs over their polished sequels. There are several elderscroll, infinity engine, fallout, xcom games but most people usually rate their first one higher and do mental gymnastics on why others are inferior besides them simply being over the setting or gameplay
 
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut
The majority of the 'best' games are mostly rated on being novel and fresh, even sales are higher with original RPGs over their polished sequels.
I can't think of an RPG off the top of my head where the sequel was superior but sold worse.
 

huskarls

Scholar
Joined
Aug 7, 2016
Messages
108
The majority of the 'best' games are mostly rated on being novel and fresh, even sales are higher with original RPGs over their polished sequels.
I can't think of an RPG off the top of my head where the sequel was superior but sold worse.

BG2, fallout 2 (according to some), fallout 3 VS fallout NV as said, wizardry 8, gothic 3 (I think)

You also have diminishing returns like with DA:O/DA:I, NWN/NWN2, and DOS/DOS2 where the company is seeing similar sales despite using more money. Though ME3, Skyrim, Fallout 4, and Witcher 3 all sold much more than previous installments regardless of their quality, but in any entertainment industry the marvels and the call of duties never ending sequel sale inclines aren't as common as they are prominent. I'm sure the nu-incliners are going to see the costs to buy their customers for POE3, DOS3, and wasteland 3 as too steep
 

ilitarist

Learned
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Oct 17, 2016
Messages
857
You also have diminishing returns like with DA:O/DA:I, NWN/NWN2, and DOS/DOS2 where the company is seeing similar sales despite using more money.

"Dragon Age: Inquisition had most successful launch in Bioware history", says the internet. Perhaps it wasn't as profitable in terms of spend $100 get back $500 but no one can expect any series to be stable and reliable surprise bestseller, it's never as suprising second time.

And yes, NWN2 is better game and it surprisingly sold worse.
 

Elwro

Arcane
Joined
Dec 29, 2002
Messages
11,746
Location
Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
We will never again experience the wonderment of youth, so I voted yes.
This.

Also, in my opinion we will only see games close to the quality of the old gems if 1) publishers start thinking that their target group should consist of people who can appreciate good writing, therefore hiring developers who have good writers among them; and 2) the studios are properly managed so that we don't end up with bad games with a ridiculous amount of text (like Numenera). Now, these days devs can be publishers, too, but see 2). Chances for this happening seem to be infinitesimal, so...

Still, go Iron Tower Studio!
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Fallout New Vegas

Fallout New Vegas can't really be considered a straight sequel to either Fallout 2 or 3; initial consumer perception as a quickly-released spinoff no doubt hurt sales and dampened momentum.
 

frajaq

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Oct 5, 2017
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Brazil
PoE 2 Deadfire comes today

And Disco Elysium and Cyberpunk 2077 are in the horizon, so definitely no
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Feb 13, 2013
Messages
5,274
It seems Steam community is as dumb as dogshit (I noticed this in BG:EE and NWN:EE forums).
 

ZagorTeNej

Arcane
Joined
Dec 10, 2012
Messages
1,980
Not just CRPGs, I think pretty much every genre peaked years ago (few exceptions aside). Even when it comes to a simple genre like a 3d person shooter no game has even approached the slick gameplay of Max Payne 2 for example.

Nostalgia/wonderement of youth argument is grossly overused to mask the shortcomings and incompetence of the modern gaming industry. Occasionally a good game emerges amongts the sea of indie trash and multiplatform popamoles but it's a very rare sight when it does whereas in the past almost every year had a dozen of great titles.
 
Joined
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Who has known all the evil before us,
Or the tyrannous secrets of time?
Though we match not the dead men that bore us
At a song, at a kiss, at a crime —
Though the heathen outface and outlive us,
And our lives and our longings are twain —
Ah, forgive us our virtues, forgive us,
Our Lady of Pain.
 

HeatEXTEND

Prophet
Patron
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Feb 12, 2017
Messages
3,928
Location
Nedderlent
4723.jpg


Developer_-_Stygian_Software_-_logo.png


The future is looking hopefull as far as I'm concerned.
 

Serus

Arcane
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Jul 16, 2005
Messages
6,680
Location
Small but great planet of Potatohole
Games including computer role playing games are part of culture. The culture in the West is undergoing a major crisis. As long as it remains true - there is a very little chance for better crpg being made than those already made. (very little chance doesn't mean it cannot happen at all, even in late phases of a civilization good things can be created, just less likely). What needs to happen first is a cultural incline of the whole civilization. No computing power can make up for that.

For the record. I voted "maybe".
 

Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
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Nov 24, 2017
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Location
Free City of Warsaw
Honestly, how can anyone say that the best RPGs have already been made, if just in the last few months we got Grimoire, Elex, Divinity Original Sin 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Pillars of Eternity 2 and several entertaining indies?

There are many quality titles to choose from.
 

Iznaliu

Arbiter
Joined
Apr 28, 2016
Messages
3,686
Honestly, how can anyone say that the best RPGs have already been made, if just in the last few months we got Grimoire, Elex, Divinity Original Sin 2, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Pillars of Eternity 2 and several entertaining indies?

There are many quality titles to choose from.

Codex opinion on that title isn't that positive, and none of the others are exactly universally acclaimed (even Grimoire has a reasonable hatedom).
 

wyes gull

Savant
Joined
Apr 20, 2017
Messages
424
I remember playing Fallout 2 and chatting with a friend to whom I'd loaned the game and who was equally fascinated with it about what a game in its fashion would be like in the future. Obviously it would be entirely 3D but that was a given, going by the way games were trending. The rest? More places, bigger places. More NPCs, NPCs with more to say. More quests, more quest branches. More companions. Companions who didn't like each other. More reactivity. MORE FUCKING BIG GUNS. Most of all, more exclusive content. Because that's what fueled most of our conversations about the game. That I'd completely missed Sulik unlike him, who'd got him and missed Cassidy instead. That his PC was bashing heads in left and right and mine was shafted by the lack of big guns in the midgame (because fuck fighting a mutant to nab his minigun). That he had a party of 5 with a fucking dog and I was getting overwhelmed with only Vic the coward, no guns and only Cassidy carrying his weight. We'd carry on at length and rarely happen upon a part in the game where we both had done exactly the same thing.

10 years later, we almost got exactly what we'd wanted. Almost.
:prosper:
Get fucked, Bethesda.
20 years on, I'm still waiting for a better game. Not quite the optimist, then.
 
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