Elder Scrolls Predict worst RPG of 2023

[Frozen]

A no-brainer.

 

[Fedora Master]

Bg3

 

[rusty_shackleford]

colon shit

 

[Wunderbar]

One of the suits from Embracer have said earlier that it is not impossible VTMB2 would be out in 2023

 

[King Crispy]

Realms of Arkania 3D 2

 

[Vic]

starfield will never ever be the worst rpg, all bethesda titles sell in the millions with retards slurping that shit up like a cold slurpee on a hot day.

starfield will be the goty, just like cyberpunk, but at least Bethesda won't produce a broken pile of garbage unlike CDPR

 

[mediocrepoet]

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

As with Brian Fargo in 2020 with Wasteland 3, so will Todd Howard regain the hearts and minds of the Codex in 2023 with Starfield, future Codex Game of the Year:

 

[d1r]

A no-brainer.

Are you implying, knowing Bethesda, that Starfield still will be a RPG?

 

[luj1]

Starfield isnt an RPG

Baldurs Gate is one, despite everything

Colony Ship is one

VtMB 2 won't release in 2023, if ever

 

[Van-d-all]

Starfield is a strong contender indeed, but I think Avowed is going to give it a run for its money when it comes to dumbed down action popamole marketed as RPGs. But then again, categorizing by marketing even Forspoken is advertised as such, and that thing is easily the very tip of 2023 shitheap.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

colon shit will be worshiped for a few years solely because "omg!!! a codex game!!!!" before everyone rightfully acknowledges how garbage it is just like aod(wow, a teleporting simulator!)

 

[SpaceWizardz]

VTMB2, if that doesn't release then Dragon Age 4.
If neither are 2023 THEN it goes to midfield

 

[just]

dont know what they're releasing but probably something from obsidian

 

[Nortar]

It's always the one you waited the most.

 

[Baron Dupek]

STALKER 2
somehow first game was called "RPG" by some people, but these days everything must have RPG mechanics or it won't be engaging enough
old is bland
Also new engine making moddings impossible, good job PePsiman, you had one job

that or Dagon Age 4
but it would still end as Codex GotY because of course it's gonna happen

 

[†††]

Redaxium III

 

[NecroLord]

Faggot Age: Dreadwolf.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Faggot Age: Dreadwolf.

Is that going to be an RPG or a gay sex VN?

 

[good fucking shit happen]

As with Brian Fargo in 2020 with Wasteland 3, so will Todd Howard regain the hearts and minds of the Codex in 2023 with Starfield, future Codex Game of the Year:

Nigga get that fake ass white bitch Moses outta here. Moses was Black.

 

[Stokowski]

Elex 3.

















Oh, who am I kidding? It'll be BG3.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Moses was Black.

Reported for cultural appropriation and for erasing the histories of indigenous peoples.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Judas

 

[Falksi]

Starfield? Meh.

Baldur's Gate 3 looks fucking dire for sure, but I think there'll be enough decent choices made in it's development (turn based, dialogue structure etc.) to avoid that tag, which instead I reckon will go to Dragon Age: Dread Wolf.

Even though Sven and co are clearly dumb as fuck, they are at least trying to capture part of the spirit of the earlier games. Sure it'll be done awfully, full of woke bollocks, and a waste of time, but I think we'll get enough residue of the originals to at least stop it being THE worst.

Dread Wolf however is Nu Bioware steaming full ahead with their beyond retarded, woke-gorging, bile-fest. That series has already found an unrivalled momentum in self-destructive shitness, whilst also embodying literally every vile trope of modern society at the same time, which is quite some feat. I fully expect the next entry to unfathomably find even more ways at stretching the boundaries of gaming decency to new lows which could never have even been dreamed of before.

 

[SomeGuyWithAnOpinion]

Even though Sven and co are clearly dumb as fuck, they are at least trying to capture part of the spirit of the earlier games. Sure it'll be done awfully, full of woke bollocks, and a waste of time, but I think we'll get enough residue of the originals to at least stop it being THE worst.

Controversial Opinion time. I know this is going to get me shit on by some of the more diehard members here, but they are wrong on this issue so I don't really care about their opinions.

Baldurs Gate and Planescape Torment are the two worst Infinity Engine games. BG was the popular one and since then every CRPG has followed the "Baldurs Gate style", which was always awful (one protagonist, small interconnected areas on an overworld map littered with lots of random unrelated side quests, filler locations between the real ones such as forests etc littered with arbitrarily placed and easy enemies, and a somewhat serious theme with comedic moments). Instead of focusing on dungeon crawling (which AD&D was literally built around and is the strength of it's design) they instead tried to shoehorn in a half-assed RPG using dialog choices and "good writing" (of which there is almost none in the original BG, every character is either totally virtuous and perfectly good or they are pure evil because....being evil is fun I guess??), and it leaves a hollow and unfulfilling experience where almost none of the mechanics really gel with what you're supposed to be doing. The storytelling will grind to a halt and suddenly hit you with "combat time" while you're wandering the wilderness because 3 random wolves attacked, but even the actual storytelling itself is also so completely devoid of mechanics and interaction (because AD&D has virtually no mechanics for handling conversations) and so everything becomes a largely meaningless dialogue tree where all the options boil down to "I will do your quest", "I will not do your quest", "I'm an asshole" and "tell me about the local area". Everything else is just worldbuilding. I would describe Baldur's Gate as smoke and mirrors, but that's being too harsh - smoke and mirrors implies deception, and I think they were trying to make the best game they could, they just chose the wrong framework and their work suffered horribly as a result.

The AD&D Model was just never a good fit for a game that's supposed to be story-driven or quest-driven. It's an excellent fit for an overarching dungeon-crawl type game since almost all of the progression is based on getting more powerful, rather than fulfilling story experiences. In fact, most RPGs suffer from this problem (it's not just endemic to BG). Most RPGs try to follow the D&D model to some extent (stats, abilities, etc) and in almost all cases create a complex character system that is almost completely irrelevant to the story or the actual experience of the writing, which is supposed to be the focus. When they do make it affect the writing, it usually ends up either being an RNG mess (Fallout 3 speech) or a completely overpowered mess (F:NV speech) because you can't realistically apply numbers-based mechanics (checks, etc) to narrative branches. It's like trying to "calculate" morality. The system doesn't work that way! I don't think it's anyone's fault that RPGs are designed like this. I think someone just decided one day that the D&D model was a good fit for a story-driven game and we all just went with it without thinking.

Until RPGs move away from the dungeon-crawling model set by D&D and foolishly adopted by Baldurs Gate, we will forever be stuck with simplistic, largely gameplay-unaffected dialog trees for quests, a handful of wonky "out of combat" stats that are either completely useless or so overpowered they are must-picks, and a strange disconnect between "gameplay mode" (the combat part of the game, stat rolls, spells, abilities etc) and "story mode" (the rest of the game, story branches, speech checks etc).

PS:T is even worse than Baldurs Gate in this regard. It has so little gameplay, and what it does have is so extremely underwhelming, that the game basically gets in the way of itself and most of the actual gameplay is much better skipped than actually played. You literally can't even die, the combat and stats systems literally only exist to give you something to do in the sparse and unimportant "combat" sections and are the exact opposite of what the game is about. The rest of the game doesn't add any new mechanics so it's just dialogue trees. What gameplay is there is bad, and the main focus - the writing - has almost no actual gameplay attached to it. It has the full AD&D stats system, and completely squanders it. PS:T would have been a far better game if they focused on their goal of writing an interesting character story and made it purely an interactive story-driven game with some actual mechanics around player choices and consequences for their decisions. Instead we get a very crappy D&D campaign with a pretty good novel attached to it. Personally I could never finish PS:T because as much as I enjoy the writing the gameplay is so horrendously bad it borders on unplayable.

Garbage in, garbage out. BG3 is going to be shit specifically because they are trying to "capture" the original, which was never that good to begin with. It doesn't matter that they are using D&D 5e rather than a weird mutant version of AD&D 2e. What matters is that they are trying to shoehorn combat-focused and adventuring mechanics onto a "story driven" role playing game. It sucked in the original and it's going to suck even more in the new version.

AD&D was not a good fit for Baldur's Gate, but it WAS a good fit for Icewind Dale, which is why IWD is the best Infinity Engine game by a significant margin. If you don't believe me, go play it through to the end with an open mind and you will see how much better the mechanics work because they are utilised in a quite good dungeon crawler rather than a somewhat-average RPG. People like to complain about "muh lack of story choices" but they have missed the point entirely. Icewind Dale is not a game about branching story choices (not to mention, BG has a severe lack of player agency when it comes to dialog choices as well). It's a combat-focused RPG with an emphasis on adventuring using the ruleset from AD&D, which works extremely well for that sort of thing because that's what it was designed for. It's also oozing with atmosphere and environmental storytelling, but because environmental storytelling isn't a dialog tree, most people discount it out of hand and consider the game "boring" because they aren't making largely meaningless choices in mostly-binary dialogue trees like the rest of the IE games. Play it, it's really good, trust me! IWD does have it's fair share of issues too - such as missing out on good items because of RNG item placements - but most of it's issues are technical in nature and a lot of them can be fixed by Tweaks Anthology (which also, coincidentally, fixes the exact issue I brought up). It's also a bit long for what it is and the gameplay tends to sag a bit in the middle (the Severed Hand location, specifically, really drags on and is terribly balanced for characters at that point in the game).

(In before people chirp in with "it's not about the gameplay, it's about the story!". No. That's an extremely badly-thought-out and very stupid thing to say. Gameplay is the cornerstone of games. It's a core part of game design. It's literally what separates them from the rest of media. If you need to justify awful gameplay by slapping a "but it has a good story" over the top of it, you're defending a book, not a game. The Fighting Fantasy novels did the interactive story thing FAR better and are a much better fit for the medium. Stop making the discussion around gaming worse with your awful and wrong opinions. If gameplay doesn't matter then we are no longer talking about games, we are talking about something else.)