2023 isn't a blueprint for the future of RPGs, but it could be an omen

2023 brought us the ultimate gaming dilemma: cuddling or spaceship?

At its core, this could be the fundamental difference between Baldur's Gate 3 And Starfield, the two highly anticipated role-playing games released this year. The former, made by a studio paying off a more than twenty-year-old franchise, and the latter, building on Bethesda's reputation for ever-expanding worlds that have been in the making for just as long, each offered a different way of thinking about what an RPG is in the modern era.

For those of us who have tinkered with the genre over the past twenty years, 2023 felt like a bit of deja vu. The Black Island Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn has spent the years since its release in 2000 at the top of many 'best role-playing games of all time' lists, often alongside its fellow traveler Planescape: Torment. BG2 gave you a tightly controlled story as the Bhaalspawn, a child of the god of murder, and asked you to navigate a complex story in a semi-open world to discover and determine your fate. Bethesda's games, which have achieved world-dominating popularity since Bethesda's massive release The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind in 2002 did something similar while expanding the scope of possible action: a 3D world combined with radical character customization through skills and spells allowed players to truly be immersed in a freeform fantasy.

The Bethesda brand somehow managed to become bigger and more personal, culminating in the fantasy shout-'em-up The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and the equally compelling inheritance law Fallout 4. Bethesda's games had a tight core story, but wrapped limitless gameplay around it, creating a situation where you could start one of the games and never learn about your status as a Chosen One. Build whoever you want to be, live in a world and turn it into your playground.

However, Baldur's Gate largely languished until Larian's recent sequel (outside of the immersive Siege of Dragonspear, developed by Beamdog). The late 1980s to early 2000s saw a wide variety of RPGs on both PC and space. Franchises such as Ultima, Might and Magic and Wizardry were profitable and consistent mainstays throughout the decade alongside many, many other titles. As Matt Barton maps out in detail Dungeons and desktops, there was variety and widespread popularity in the computer RPG (CRPG) genre during that period. Barton refers until the late 1990s and early 2000s as the platinum era of CRPGs, counting these games, the Diablo franchise, and the early Fallout games as a highlight in the development of the genre. After that point, the video game market expanded and fragmented, and the rise of the Japanese RPG on consoles, often seen as a threat and treated as such by the American games industry, put pressure on the CRPG market. Looking back, you can feel it in the game design of that time: Baldur's Gate 2 has romantic options just because Black Isle tried to compete with Final Fantasy.

That enormous economic pressure, combined with the increased competitiveness in the RPG space from MMOs and Diablo-likes, reduced the CRPG to a single player in a genre that was secondary to the then (and now) dominant first-person shooter .

Image: Beamdog

In brief, Baldur's Gate 2 was left as a unique adventure for quite some time, with very little building on its legacy. As Bioware formed and transformed, it tripled down on the cinematic role-playing games of the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises, delving deeper into science fiction and traditional high fantasy, and moving away from the grand political machinery and nightmarishly large scale of the world . BG2. This particular brand of RPGs lay fallow until the recent 'resurgence' of CRPGs with franchises like Pillars of Eternity.

On the other hand, the Bethesda RPG became one of the standard pillars of what an RPG “is” within the broader video game field. It's controllable with a controller, set in an open world that can be explored from top to bottom, and invites a deep connection with its world. You can become the greatest wizard who ever lived and the sneakiest thief. You can complete each quest and build a wealth of apocalyptic weapons and cheese wheels. No time limits, no compromises. Like the BG2 mode of RPG turned into the Mass Effect industrial model, many of us wondered if we would ever be able to read an absolute shitload of text ever again in an RPG.

The strangeness of the Baldur's Gate 3 And Starfield The double whammy of 2023 was further amplified by the proximity of their releases. Their predecessors are, in retrospect, signs of a change in tastes alongside new priorities for publishers and console-based developers. Morrowind landed on the original Xbox, while the Baldur's Gate franchise had to be done Diablo– identify themselves with it Dark Alliance to get a piece of that same console generation. To this end, it sacrificed its Dungeons & Dragons nuclear engine on the altar of simplicity. In the early 2000s, for all its weirdness, Morrowind was timely and fundamental – which Bethesda further proved The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivionit's Euro fantasy revision from Cyrodiil that wrapped itself around the player with a unique leveling system and adaptive difficulty.

Image: Bethesda Game Studios/Bethesda Softworks via Polygon

Baldur's Gate 2 is written in the firmament because of its rarity – its peanut from Dungeons & Dragons The gameplay is surrounded by a thick chocolate layer of excellent fantasy stories, creating the ideal gaming M&M. On the other hand, Morrowind is the Lay's potato chips, with its economic juggernaut Bethesda telling us we can't eat just one. People are still buying new ports from Skyrimfinally.

My big question, here at the end of 2023, is whether we still want these flavors the same way. You're reading this in the wake of The Game Awards, Geoff Keighley's annual ode to advertising and celebrity, where Baldur's Gate 3 was crowned Game of the Year. Starfield arrived with only one nomination (Best RPG) and went home with nothing.

We could describe that as an aging formula. Bethesda defined our modern era of RPGs with a very specific formula: create a character, exist in a world, forget your real life. Starfield takes that into space and then blows it up to epic proportions, giving you the ability to haunt the galaxy at your leisure; to basically do any kind of messing or killing you want. It's highly unguided, and that's meant to be a selling point.

In contrast, Larian's innervation of the Baldur's Gate brand takes on the breadth of Dungeons & Dragons' fifth edition and crams it into a very narrow story path and world. You are a specific person, with a specific tadpole in your head, who meets specific people in extremely specific (sometimes cursed) places. You will be led to Baldur's Gate, a city steeped in overwhelming lore and history not about you, and yet your fate brings you into conflict with it and for it. And of course the cuddling – BG2 looked at Final fantasy 7 and tried to grab some of the will-they-won't-they market share, and Baldur's Gate 3 looked at the history of RPGs and said, “Hold my beer.” It's a post-Bioware, post-Witcher investment, and it goes without saying that players will be as entranced by the depth of character relationships as they are by the breadth of an open world.

Image: Larian Studios

I'm not holding these games against each other to say one is better than the other, or to fall into franchise warrior nonsense. I think it's worth thinking about whether this is an indicator of the flavors and aromas to come – more chocolate treats like this, less salty snacks like that. From the perspective of MorrowindI don't think it was easy to see the future of gaming – IGN's review at the time was so attached to it Baldur's Gate 2 that it is mentioned in the first sentence for Bethesda's RPG, but that was quickly stated Morrowind could 'drag' you into another universe.

Of Baldur's Gate 3's enormous success, Starfield's apparent hiccup at the starting line, and a huge macroeconomic crisis that could produce more risk-averse products in the coming years, this could be possible Baldur's Gate 3 becomes a stand-in for player desires: deeper character connections, crafted stories treated as the primary appeal rather than an obligation, and less investment in the ever-promoted player freedom. The game's explosion in popularity seems to indicate that players felt underserved in these arenas.

Baldur's Gate 3, like Larian's efforts before it, is too weird and ambitious to be replicated by just any team. It works in part because of the strange moves it makes that no one else would, and I have little fear that the praise it garners will lead to expectations for the same depth and breadth it offers. However, a lot like it Disco Elysium for theits popularity demonstrates a desire and a need among the player base, and those people will look for new maneuvers in the same space – a sensation that the Bethesda formula and its imitators simply cannot, due to design ethics, replicate.

The past is not a blueprint for what comes next, and what happened twenty years ago is not a preview of our future. Instead, it's a chance to reflect on changing values ​​as players and developers, both of whom get to choose what they see in the games of the future. Cuddle or space, chocolate or chips.