General News - The History of RPGs

Myrthos

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Richard Cobbett has made a comprehensive overview of the history of RPGs, breaking it down into a number of sections. Here is the part on Baldur's Gate:

Baldur’s Gate beckoned players in with beautiful graphics, a heavy focus on story, and some of the genre’s most beloved characters. It looked fantastic, thanks to the Infinity Engine’s method of displaying worlds. Huge rendered maps with overlaid sprites allowed for exquisite detail without the predictability of tiles. It wasn’t just D&D reborn, but a new start for the genre. RPGs were finally cool again.

Replayed now, it’s the complexity that jumps out. Baldur’s Gate was based on AD&D Second Edition, and it doesn’t hide the fact. It wants you to know its dice rolls. It wants you to know terms like THAC0 (“To Hit Armour Class Zero,” aka, the likeliness of a hit landing). It often pushes you to areas you’re not ready for. Roll a mage and wander to the first real fight in the game—an ambush at the Friendly Arms Inn—and watch as a single hit lands like an anvil to the face.

It was still an RPG of its time, rooted, for all its attempts to welcome new players, in the designs of the past. It was BioWare’s first RPG, and the company hadn’t even formed with a plan to make them. The founders had intended to start a medical software company, before deciding games would be more fun. Previous releases were mech game Shattered Steel and comedy shooter MDK 2. Even Interplay, the publisher, had only moderate hopes for Baldur’s Gate. Two million copies later, BioWare was the new cool kid in town.
More information.
 
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Funny that Bloodlines bombed yet modern RPG aren't even half as good. Clearly demonstrates how low expectations have sunk.
 
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Funny that Bloodlines bombed yet modern RPG aren't even half as good. Clearly demonstrates how low expectations have sunk.

Sucks to repeat myself, but this is how the state of things are.

Hardcore cRPGs are getting more and more harder to sell, because:
1. the nostalgia appeal that fueled the "hardcore rpg revival" Kickstarter projects (WL2, PoE, D:OS) is most certainly waning,
2. indies flooded the market with cheap offers, essentially cannibalizing the business,
3. very hard to please older people, "nothing is ever good enough".

My solution is simple:
Move over, play contemporary RPGs, have fun.
… and when the urge gets too high for some classic gaming, be sure to replay Baldur's Gate. It was a fine game then, it will be a fine game 100 years later. ;)

On Topic: so that's why it is so important to create historical records of these excellent games.
 
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Let me add a few thoughts,

- Hardcore RPG were never easy to sell,
- I agree that KS is dead,
- I find (only) indies worth playing right now,
- It's not hard to please people if you're guided by values of incline.


The real vis major here is a cultural and educational decline which catalyzed an erosion of standard. Movies and shows are dumbing down too.
 
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What a bunch of bullshit explanations. I think it's the best time since the end of the 90s to make hardcore RPGs. The point is, hardcore RPGs aren't going to be made by AAA companies (and probably not even "AA" companies like Obsidian), they'll be done by indies, because those games are and always were NICHE. They won't sell millions (probably they won't sell very much at all) and would have to be made by small and dedicated teams.
 
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Funny that Bloodlines bombed yet modern RPG aren't even half as good. Clearly demonstrates how low expectations have sunk.
Bloodlines bombed because it came out in pretty horrible shape. And yet, even after fans have worked on it for a decade plus, Witcher 3 still beats it.
 
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