GOTY 2021 Shortlisting the long list - Most Anticipated
 

Like previous year I present you the long list of most anticipated games from our database. The goal is to get the right games in the top 30, because that is the number we'll use for the short list to vote on.
Our editors had a first go already.

The list is ordered by h-index, which could be seen as an indication of how often the game was discussed in our forums. Next to that there are also the comments and posts given for further sorting.

ID	Title	News Posts	Comments	Ratio	h-index
1	Baldur’s Gate 3	73	2671	36.1	30
2	ELEX II	16	569	33.5	14
3	Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness	46	862	18.3	13
4	Vampire - The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2	35	503	14	13
5	System Shock (Remake)	73	487	6.6	13
6	Expeditions: Rome	23	257	10.7	11
7	Elden Ring	17	313	17.4	10
8	The Waylanders	51	276	5.3	9
9	Starfield	8	251	27.9	8
10	S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2	13	144	10.3	8
11	Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms	20	174	8.3	8
12	Urban Strife	11	129	10.8	7
13	Broken Roads	16	120	7.1	7
14	Gothic Remake	7	218	27.2	6
15	Weird West	12	92	7.1	6
16	King Arthur: Knight's Tale	12	72	5.5	6
17	Sacred Fire	13	59	4.2	6
18	Hogwarts Legacy	5	56	9.3	5
19	Monomyth	11	86	7.2	5
20	Lost Eidolons	15	108	6.8	5
21	Project Haven	9	59	5.9	5
22	Wartales	17	64	3.6	5
23	Arcadian Atlas	14	41	2.7	5
24	Avowed	4	161	32.2	4
25	Dying Light 2	6	63	9	4
26	Archaelund	5	41	6.8	4
27	Steelrising	4	33	6.6	4
28	SKALD: Against the Black Priory	7	42	5.2	4
29	Cyber Knights: Flashpoint	13	54	3.9	4
30	Dark Envoy	9	36	3.6	4
31	Marvel's Midnight Suns	3	72	18	3
32	Zoria: Age of Shattering	4	51	10.2	3
33	StarCrawlers Chimera	3	41	10.2	3
34	GRAVEN	3	32	8	3
35	Atomic Heart	4	32	6.4	3
36	Skullstone	4	29	5.8	3
37	Empire of Ember	6	34	4.9	3
38	Forspoken	4	24	4.8	3
39	Within the Cosmos	4	22	4.4	3
40	The Way of Wrath	8	24	2.7	3
41	Prisonscape	12	33	2.5	3
42	Pixel Noir	16	31	1.8	3
43	Age of Grit	18	27	1.4	3
44	The Blades of Netheril	2	30	10	2
45	Wizardry: The Five Ordeals	2	27	9	2
46	Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor	2	21	7	2
47	The Invincible	2	12	4	2
48	Thymesia	4	16	3.2	2
49	Last Epoch	5	18	3	2
50	Reverie Knights Tactics	3	11	2.8	2
51	Together in Battle	2	8	2.7	2
52	The Hand of Merlin	5	10	1.7	2
53	Scarlet Republics	3	6	1.5	2
54	Divinia Chronicles: Relics of Gan-Ti	7	10	1.2	2
55	Star Trek: Resurgence	1	13	6.5	1
56	Rollers of the Realm: Reunion	1	12	6	1
57	Minimal Affect	1	11	5.5	1
58	Shieldwall Chronicles: Realm of Madness	1	10	5	1
59	Vampire: The Masquerade - Swansong	1	10	5	1
60	Stormrite	2	13	4.3	1
61	Achilles: Legends Untold	1	8	4	1
62	The Legend of Heroes: Trails from Zero	1	8	4	1
63	Vendir: Plague of Lies	1	8	4	1
64	Asterigos	1	7	3.5	1
65	Chained Echoes	1	7	3.5	1
66	Aye Captain!	1	6	3	1
67	Zodiac Legion	2	8	2.7	1
68	DISGAEA RPG	1	5	2.5	1
69	Star Ocean: The Divine Force	1	5	2.5	1
70	Telepath Tactics Liberated	1	5	2.5	1
71	Babylon's Fall	2	6	2	1
72	Peripeteia	2	6	2	1
73	Chrono Ark	1	4	2	1
74	MONARK	1	4	2	1
75	Soulborn	1	4	2	1
76	Trail of Ayash	1	4	2	1
77	VED	1	4	2	1
78	Gatewalkers	2	5	1.7	1
79	Mother of All Secrets	1	3	1.5	1
80	Nautilus Epoch	1	3	1.5	1
81	Vestaria Saga Gaiden: The Sacred Sword of Silvanister	1	3	1.5	1
82	Code of the Savage	2	3	1	1
83	Live by the Sword: Tactics	2	3	1	1
84	Curse of Eternity	1	2	1	1
85	Manafinder	1	2	1	1
86	Salt and Sacrifice	1	2	1	1
87	Shores Unknown	5	5	0.8	1
88	Spire of Sorcery	4	4	0.8	1
89	Rising Mist	2	2	0.7	1
90	Shadow of the Road	2	2	0.7	1
91	Dolmen	3	2	0.5	1
92	Sea of Stars	3	2	0.5	1
93	Grim Tranquility	1	1	0.5	1
94	MidKnight Story	1	1	0.5	1
95	Nobody Saves the World	1	1	0.5	1
96	Fate of WINDSHIFT	2	1	0.3	1
97	Luckless Seven	2	1	0.3	1
98	Stray Blade	2	1	0.3	1
99	Cloud Exiles	0	0	0	0
100	Coridden	1	0	0	0
101	Dark Dragonkin	1	0	0	0
102	Farathan	1	0	0	0
103	Granblue Fantasy: Relink	1	0	0	0
104	Infernax	1	0	0	0
105	Mists of Noyah	3	0	0	0
106	Souldiers	1	0	0	0

Let us know what games should be in the top 30 instead of what we have now.

As mentioned in the other thread, Knights of the Chalice 2 should be on this list rather than the GOTY list as it hasn't released yet and is still in kickstarter.

These are mine (although Expeditions Rome will have released by the time the poll goes live I believe):

Baldur’s Gate 3
ELEX II
Expeditions: Rome
Broken Roads
Gothic Remake

Sorry, what did you want us to do? Give you our top 5?

Mine would be:
Elden Ring
Starfield
Dying Light 2
Stalker 2
Tainted Grail (not on this list)

No, this is just the filtering stage.

Just point out anything that should or shouldn't be there (wrong genre or platform or wrong placement or missing games etc etc) to get a shortlist of 30 games that we vote on later. So also if you see something you like or think you saw other people liking but it's above 30 then point it out.

Wasn't Tainted Grail on your GOTY list (best RPG of 2021)? If so, it shouldn't be in most anticipated list as well (since we are talking about which game we look forward to most in 2022)

I would agree about Knights of the Chalice two belonging on the other list, since it's not actually released as of yet.

Add
I feel like Colony Ship (RPG) should be on the top 30. Not sure why it's not on the list at all. Last I heard they're targeting a late 2022 release.

The Iron Oath- while Steam page says TBD recent comments from them have said they're targeting 2022.

Honorable Mentions
Probably too niche to get many votes but things I'm personally interested in: Prometheus Wept, Death Trash, Space Wreck, & Call of Sarengar

Remove
Isn't Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 basically vaporware at this point? Paradox said it isn't canceled but we don't even know for sure who is working on it and there's no release date. Perhaps HBS has taken the reigns, but given the troubled status I'm not sure how many members are highly anticipating it right now.

Waylanders may have been discussed a lot but how much of it was positive? I probably bashed it in every thread because the developers are so shady.

Questionable:

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 & System Shock. Are these actually RPGs? They sound more like action adventure / shooter games with light RPG elements, unless the new ones are going to be very different from the originals? I know fans of these games would probably grumble if they're excluded but if they're included there's probably other upcoming Action Adventure games with RPG elements that should arguably be included as well. Might as well include Monster Hunter because many people call that an RPG for some reason.

I second adding Colony Ship RPG.

From what I understand, Myrthos asks for deltas, not our top 5 - that will be for the vote itself. I may be wrong though.

I agree with Colony Ship too, but did they intend to release it in 2022? If they had a timetable, I lost track of it.

I was expecting Atomic Heart to be higher since there was some enthusiasm about it, but there are already a number of good titles up there. Let's just see if others think the same.

To add to other comments,

• About S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 & System Shock (Remake), they may not be "pure RPG" if such a notion exists, but I'm afraid that if we go down that route we'll eject many other titles and start arguing for weeks. ;) RPG is a very volatile definition, we should probably trust our list at this point.
• I was wondering about Expeditions: Rome too the other day, but it's a list for 2021.

That is the current plan. The timetable's on the steam page, with "Nov 2022 - Endgame (chapter 4)" Of course it could get pushed to 2023 but the same thing could be said for BG3 and probably many of the other games on this list which are not even in EA and in many cases have no announced release date.

There's apparently two different Tainted Grail games: Conquest, which released last year and Fall of Avalon which may release this year.

Ah ok, that makes sense.

I reckon we will see BG3 in most anticipated list 3 years in a row ;)

BTW, I was a little surprised this TMORPG called Book of Travels was never covered here - it was even nominated as one of the PCGamer contributor's GOTY pick:

https://www.pcgamer.com/book-of-trav…s-theyre-tiny/

It will definitely be in my most anticipated list ;)

Different game. The game that's out and that I've played is a card based roguelite. The game that I'm referring to here is an upcoming RPG.

…and I see now that Dave already answered this. Thanks, Dave.

I'm another that believes Colony Ship should be on this list.

It is very unlikely that Colony Ship releases in 2022. Their target date is the very end of the year and if you think they're going to make that first target date you must not follow many games in development, much less Age of Decadence.

So not this list. Maybe most anticipated for 2023, though.

Sure, but what about all of the games on this list that don't even have a precise target date? Looking at their Steam pages, many of these are currently vague "TBD" or "hopefully" 2022 releases. Lost Eidolons lists Q3 2022 and that's only for their Early Access release.

Then there's others with specific dates, but very late in the year:
Starfield has gives a release date of Nov. 11. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 lists Dec. 8th.

It doesn't say most anticipated in 2022 though. Or did I miss something?

It doesn't say 2022, but it's an annual thing and Elder Scrolls VI is nowhere to be found, so yeah, I'd say you probably missed something.

stalker, atomic heart and dying light - out, a few rpg elements doesnt make them rpgs, even the recent call of duty games have the same "rpg" elements

Yeah but given BG3 was voted most anticipated in 2021, I think its only fair games like Colony Ship to be included in the list for 2022.

These anticipated lists should be taken with a grain of salt. The idea is to have a list of games that will or have a chance of being released in 2022. This actual list is made up of games that have an estimated release date of 2022 in our database. Games that are not on this list are either released before 2022, or are still labeled as TBA in our database.
Obviously this doesn't mean much, setting an estimated release date is just guesswork most of the time.

Good to hear!
And agreed, it's the same argument to me as "is it an RPG", we shouldn't start splitting hairs. Games announced for 2022 may very well be postponed, it happens all the time.

EDIT: just saw Myrthos' post saying about the same

That's a good point. We probably shouldn't be too excited by anticipation for games like the next Dragon Age or ES which are just concepts at this stage. But if that's close enough and anticipated enough, it makes sense to have it. As long as it's fair and doesn't remain on the list for years at the expense of other games, maybe.

Duly noted. :) It's not even in our list.

We're always happy to hear about suggestions for the news coverage, otherwise we just shoot and see if anyone seems interested.

If I see several posts on a game without any reaction, I tend to remove them from my coverage list. But to add new games is something else, I'm surely missing some of them so nobody should hesitate to post, PM or use the 'contact us'.

So then I suggest you go through all of the release dates and remove any from Nov/Dec 2022 since they are likely to be delayed by a month or two. Wouldn't you say ?

As others have already pointed out, many other games on the list may not release in 2022 (either due to longer EA than anticipated or late release dates).

I'd suggest you maybe you look at it a bit more about what people are actually anticipating most rather than prescribe an exact timeframe which no one else seems to.

Edit: Myrthos put it better than I have - didn't see there were more posts.

The projected release date (for now) for Colony Ship is 2022 and people are looking forward to it, so it belongs on the list. I agree. I was remembering how long it took AoD to come out and was overly snarky. I still don't think we'll see its release in 2022, but like others have said, that probably applies to half the list.

My bad.

Here are the pending full release games in which I currently have an interest: BG3, Black Geyser, Wartales, Colony Ship, The Iron Oath, Broken Roads, Dark Envoy, Star Field, and Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms.

Sorry, I reread my reply. It was quite snarky too. :(

To make it easier to Myrthos, what you mean is: Colony Ship, Iron Oath should be in the top 30 (the others are already there).

Well do with as you will. I only stated what my interests are.

I think the goal in making a short list is to list any games you anticipate and might consider buying, assuming they are released and good as you hoped they might be. I put Druidstone on my list one year and it turned out to be a very different game than I hoped it would be, so I didn't end up buying it. My point being anticipation may come to nothing.

This is my list
Baldur's Gate 3
Elex 2
Black Geyeser
Vampire TMB2 (Yeah, I know probably won't be released, but I hope it will be).
Starfield
Urban Strife
Broken Roads
Wierd West
Hogwarts Legacy
War Tales
Wizardry: The 5 Ordeals
Legend of Heroes: Trail From Zero
Spire of Sorcery
Queen's Wish 2
Marvel's Midnight Suns
Last Epoch
Lost Eidolons
Avowed

The Top 30 Most Anticipated Games presented by Myrthos in OP is a strong list, but outside it (and currently below the top 30), I'd include:

• Within The Cosmos
• Shieldwall Chronicles: Realm of Madness
• Reverie Knights Tactics
• Shores Unknown

And if I had to swap some of the Top 30 out in order to make room for the ones above (because I don't know if the final list must have only 30 entries), then I'd pick:

• Elden Ring
• Sacred Fire
• SKALD: Against the Black Priory
• Weird West

It's only a matter of taste, of course.

There are quite a few games I'd eject before Weird West.



@Myrthos Actually, I'm not sure where all this is heading. I first understood from the OP that we had to give the deltas ("what games should be in the top 30 instead of what we have now."), but which criteria will be used to determine what goes out and what goes in? Do you have the info you need with what was posted?

It's doesn't need to be something precise of course, we're just doing adjustments.

That is correct. You can say what should be in the top 30 in your opinion and what should not be there.
That probably leads to conflicting interests of people, but in the end I'll just make a list where the top 20 is about agreed upon by everyone and the last 10 are more of a compromise.
Just saying game X and Y should be in, is only partially helpful, because it doesn't say which games they should replace.
Like past years, I just create a new top 30 list here and ask: "How about this list?". If there are still objections, I'll try again, until the compromise is somewhat accepted.

The sorting of the lists is currently based on popularity, which is reflected by the number of news posts and comments of a game. If a game is not so good and people will state how bad it is in every news post of the game, it will be very popular, but will not have a chance of being voted on much. That would probably be a candidate to remove from the list. Just like a game which you think is very RPG-lite.

Like I said the Top 30 list, as it currently is, it's a very good one. It wasn't easy for me to pick 4 games to be taken out of it. It is no coincidence that Weird West occupies the 4th place among the games I'd remove from the list. It wasn't an easy decision, believe me, I struggled to find the 4th title.

In fact the only one I'd choose without batting an eye was Elden Ring because I don't appreciate Souls-like games too much.

Let's make it a 31-gamed shortlist! ;)

I'd remove

King Arthur: A Knight's Tale
Sacred Fire
and Monomyth


In favour of Marvel's Midnight Suns, Queen's Wish 2, and Last Epoch.

Adding to the chorus that Colony Ship should be on the list. It's still officially targeted at 2022, although VD has said it may slip to 2023. Pretty much the same situation as BG3, and BG3 will be on the list I assume.

Also, Queen's Wish 2 should be on the list. I doubt it has much chance of ending up in the top 3, but there's no doubt that there's more people on this site interested in it than many of the games that are in that first-draft top 30.

Archaelund can be removed from the top 30. No chance it will be released in 2022, latest word from the developer is that it may be out in early access in mid-to-late 2022. The developer is a regular on the Codex, and the word over there in multiple places, like releases stickies and recent news posts is that it will be out no earlier than 2024. One source: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/…n-2022.140009/

Nothing to add except BG3 wont be released next year. Try again in 2023-24 hopefully.:p

The following is the proposal for the short list (34 games):

ID	Title	News Posts	Comments	Ratio	h-index
1	Baldur's Gate 3	73	2671	36,1	30
2	ELEX II	16	569	33,5	14
3	Colony Ship - A Post-Earth Role Playing Game	66	614	9,2	14
4	Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness	46	862	18,3	13
5	Knights of the Chalice II	28	490	16,9	13
6	System Shock (Remake)	73	487	6,6	13
7	Expeditions: Rome	23	257	10,7	11
8	Elden Ring	17	313	17,4	10
9	The Waylanders	51	276	5,3	9
10	Starfield	8	251	27,9	8
11	S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2	13	144	10,3	8
12	Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms	20	174	8,3	8
13	Urban Strife	11	129	10,8	7
14	Broken Roads	16	120	7,1	7
15	Gothic Remake	7	218	27,2	6
16	Weird West	12	92	7,1	6
17	King Arthur: Knight's Tale	12	72	5,5	6
18	Sacred Fire	13	59	4,2	6
19	Hogwarts Legacy	5	56	9,3	5
20	Dying Light 2	9	73	7,3	5
21	Monomyth	11	86	7,2	5
22	Lost Eidolons	15	108	6,8	5
23	Project Haven	9	59	5,9	5
24	Wartales	17	64	3,6	5
24	The Iron Oath	21	70	3,2	5
25	Arcadian Atlas	14	41	2,7	5
26	Avowed	4	161	32,2	4
28	Steelrising	4	33	6,6	4
29	SKALD: Against the Black Priory	7	42	5,2	4
30	Cyber Knights: Flashpoint	13	54	3,9	4
31	Dark Envoy	9	36	3,6	4
32	Marvel's Midnight Suns	3	72	18	3
33	Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor	2	21	7	2
34	Last Epoch	5	18	3	2

Looks pretty good. Expeditions: Rome should be removed, though, already being out and all.