The Entire History of RPGs

Role-playing games are one of the most influential game genres, they include many of the most beloved and acclaimed games ever created, and there aren't many other genres that have been around for as long and been talked about as much, and yet, I don't think so. most people understand this genre very well many people don't know where it comes from how it is really defined how it changed what caused those changes where the subs emerged when the genre had problems and when it prospered what were the most important series and what happened to them , which games influenced other games and more.

The

history

of RPGs is complicated, it spans around 50 years and a lot can happen in 50 years, so this video will aim to cover those years, from the humblest beginnings to the problems of today and in the I hope that the RPG genre can make a little more sense. There is a lot that can be learned from the

history

of RPGs and its lessons still seem relevant today - after all, this is one of the few genres that simply did not evolve further and further from its origins, but instead often has tried to evolve towards its starting point.

RPG history is still important to RPGs, it is still shaping the present and will continue to play a role in its future, so let's talk about the history starting with the origins and the most common definitions. The definition of a role-playing game is a game in which you play a role, but while it is simple and concise, it has one small problem: no one agrees on what exactly role-playing means in the context of video games. What do you mean someone is probably thinking right? now role playing is obvious, it means a game where you play a role, so I guess a game like Surgeon Simulator, a game about badly playing the role of a surgeon, or Euro Truck Simulator, a game about playing the role of a truck driver, probably also bad, except These are not role-playing games, so maybe it's about playing the role of a defined character like in Uncharted, where you play the role of treasure hunter Nathan Drake or Pac-Man, where you play the role of Mr Pac Man, but they are not role-playing games either. maybe the roleplaying game has to involve you creating your own character like in The Sims or Street Fighter 6, okay, so maybe the roleplaying game needs a character, but you also need to be able to make decisions about them that have consequences, like in the choices that matter in the game genre. like Life is Strange or Tell Tales The Walking Dead, which are about choices that supposedly matter and yet aren't roleplaying games, so if none of these games count, what exactly does it mean to play a role?

Well, not much because technically almost every game involves playing some kind of role, whether you're a cruel, invisible God or a deranged theme park designer or the generic action hero L, as one of the most famous role-players in the game. world that once wrote all the worlds on a stage and all the men and women are just players so in many ways we all play a role all the time and if you don't agree talk to Shakespeare and good luck he's dead, but if playing a role means so little and applies to so many things, then clearly a better definition is needed. so let's go back to where the term began because defining what a role-playing game is is not that complex but it does require context in 1972 Atari created pong and with it the commercial gaming industry was born, but in 1974 a very different game was created that was Arguably the much more influential Dungeons and Dragons was created by Gary GX and Dave Arners and was not a video game, but it had a massive impact on the games inspired by the miniature wargames that both GX and Arners were into. avid DnD players.

D was the first successful role-playing game of its kind and distinguished itself from previous wargames by focusing on players creating and playing individual characters rather than controlling

entire

armies. One player then took on the role of the dungeon master to act as a sort of storyteller referee while working alongside other players in a form of collaborative storytelling, this is something similar to what might be seen in other more traditional forms of dungeon gaming. role and yet where DND differed from these was in its use of rules and stat-based systems that were governed by dice. roll like in miniature wargaming, so basically D and D took the more abstract concept of creating your own character and playing a role and combined it with the less abstract rules and statistics of wargaming to create one of the first role-playing games or true role-playing games.

Of this type, many more would follow in D and D's footsteps, including later and quite different additions to IND itself, but Dungeons and Dragons has always remained the most popular tabletop role-playing game and its impact on video games was immediate with examples of games that inspired. In less than a year since their release and perhaps unsurprisingly, these games took D&D's focus on creating a character that players would play the role of, as well as using rules, statistics and dice roles. to rule the game and create the technological computer RPG genre. The limitations and differences between the two mediums meant that the way computer role-playing games did it wasn't exactly the same as its inspirations, but there was still a clear intention to replicate its experience and maintain that defining core aspect of combining a focus on the player characters. with rules and stat-based gameplay and this is the part that has held true across all time periods and across all the very varied sub jamras to give us the most accurate definition of an RPG as the term is actually used, So role-playing games are games that focus on the player characters through features such as character creation, dialogue options, narrative choice and consequences and other types of player character expression, and combine this with statistical rules. and gameplay, such as experience points and leveling up character skills and stats, loot progression, and combat involving statistical calculations like hit chance or variations in damage numbers, there are still at least some gray areas to match this definition because while all RPGs focus on player characters, they can do so in different ways, some characters are even predefined and RPGs can also feature multiplayer characters while still counting as a game.

G role as long as the game maintains a smaller, more personal scale, such as that seen in tabletop role-playing games. Additionally, it is not always clear what exactly is meant by stat-based gaming, as many action RPGs have emerged over time that place less emphasis on them. They focus on numbers and decision-making, while non-RPGs have increasingly incorporated statistical elements to include features such as increased player retention and money-consuming microtransactions. I want to give players a greater sense of pride and achievement, with the best way to understand the differences in gameplay between RPGs and non-RPGs being to look back at the context in which the genre emerged in the years 70s and 80s.

Arcades dominated the industry and when consoles arrived, they were designed and marketed as arcades, but for home video games of this era they were therefore heavily based on pay-per-view monetization. arcade game, meaning they were challenging, replayable, included features such as high scores, and most important of all, were intended to be purely skill-based such as numbers, ambiguity and randomness in game systems, Therefore, they would be considered bad and probably unfair, and instead, skill in these games was derived from mechanical execution, something that was exclusively under the control of the players, while early mainframe and personal computer games had a completely different set of technical limitations, being generally vastly inferior to the most powerful arcade machines and also lacking any quarter-hungry monetization, meaning they were often radically different to their arcade rivals.

Many of the most famous computer games of this era were text-based adventure games like Colossal Cave Adventure or Zorc, which focused on using text descriptions and player input to create vast simulations of virtual worlds for you to play. players explore and adventure in these games, the mechanical execution barely appears and instead the challenge came from having to solve puzzles and explore virtual spaces, things that tested your brain instead of your fingers and, in the first few role-playing games, which were largely inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, but also other computer games of the same era. It was through the use of rules and number systems that made this decision-based game possible.

Finally, there's one final piece of the RPG puzzle that helps explain where this shamra came from and why it has had such enduring appeal, and it's something I first saw alluded to in Matt Barton's book Dungeons and Desktops. and Shane Stacks, which is the role JRR played in the rise of the RPG genre, not only by influencing Dungeons and Dragons, but also by directly influencing many creators of computer role-playing games, something that can be seen in many of early role-playing game titles like orank Mario and even in a calbath, which is a reference to sil marilan, still the influence of the token can go even further than this because as fantastic an author as could have been there, there was something in so speaking was even better than writing.

The construction of the world. Middle-earth is distinguished from so many other sophisticated creations by its depth, its attention to detail, and its sense of mythology and history, and Middle-earth left a lasting impression on many of Talking's readers clearly as did many of the early RPG developers, so when these early RPG creators came to create their games, they may have been playing more than just the role of game developers, they could also have been emulating one of their biggest inspirations when building worlds this idea. of a virtual world that can be explored, adventured in, and believed in has been an important and perhaps underrated part of the RPG genre since its inception, which is why role-playing video games are games that were inspired by and descended from Dungeons and Dragons. as well as other tabletop role-playing games, and they are games that combine a focus on player characters with statistical game systems and maybe just maybe, when all goes well and for the right player at the right time, they are games about building worlds for players to venture into and get lost within which is a nice feeling I hear you say, but what was the first RPG, that's always the important question.

The right story, like YouTube comment sections, is really just about who was first anyway, apparently no one knows that's the answer. Sorry if it's a bit anticlimactic, but the explanation for why no one knows is quite interesting. Dungeons and Dragons was released in 1974, but this was still 3 years before the arrival of the first successful personal computers, meaning this was before the computer gaming industry existed, but even though computers They didn't exist. By then, they hadn't reached people's homes, they had already reached many college campuses in the form of impressively thick mainframe computers like the PDP 10, so when DND became popular among nerdy students, some of those same students nerds adopted it. themselves to try to digitize their rules and gameplay these games were not commercial projects they did not make money they were usually open source and sometimes collaborative and highly iterative in their development they did not care much about copyright and were often not very well preserved, since playing D and D was not exactly what these exorbitantly expensive mainframe computers were bought for, so using them in this way was often restricted or outright prohibited by University staff, even if early developers were limited in these.

In some ways, there were good reasons why someone might want to computerize Dungeons and Dragons even though the tabletop version already existed, for example a computer RPG can be played by a single person rather than requiring an

entire

party, they can also simplify much of the rule checking. and calculations to speed up gameplay while significantly lowering the barrier to entry. It's also worth remembering that 1974's Dungeons and Dragons was very different from D and later years and was generally much more basic and open-ended, meaning there was plenty of room for alternatives. The interpretations of it and, therefore, theemergence of computer role-playing games make sense and many followed some of the better known ones, such as Rusty rfo pedit 5 and Wisen Hunt and Woods DND D or lowercase D not to be confused with D and D of similar name, all capitalized by Daniel Lawrence. others from later years would include uet Moria Avatar orank and many more, many of which have no doubt been lost to time.

These games tended to be largely text-based. The graphics they featured were typically first-person with dungeons displayed in rudimentary 3D and featured a variety of options. of RPG elements often inspired or copied from Dungeons and Dragons, such as character creation, character statistics, leveling up, acquiring New Gear monsters to fight, which become progressively stronger as the game progresses, and an emphasis in dungeons, which are what made up most of these games. The feature of some of these early role-playing games was multiplayer. Dungeons and Dragons itself was a multiplayer game and the mainframe computers were already connected to university networks, which meant that having multiple players in a single game world wasn't too difficult.

That's where Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle came from. would create the first multi-user dungeon in 1978, which was called multi-user dungeon and created a bjra of multi-user dungeons or Ms, as they were supposed to become known, role-playing game systems combined with a text-based adventure in persistent worlds in which multiple users could join together simultaneously giving rise to a new highly social experience that would later inspire the creation of the MMO genre, although that is getting a little ahead of us, regardless of the fact that this was not the only branch that emerged from the early role-playing games of Mainframe like in 19 80 Michael toy. and Glenn Wickman would create one of the most famous Mainframe computer games ever created.

Rogue featured turn-based gameplay with a top-down perspective in a grid-based world represented entirely by asy characters, but its most famous feature was its combination of a completely procedural system. unique generated world for each game, along with the death of Perade, the two things that would help define the rogu genre and inspire so many future games, even in the early '80s, mainframes were no longer the only computers to be accessed. role-playing game developers had access, as in 1977, PCS had its first major commercial breakthrough with the arrival of three new machines, the Apple 2, the Commodore mascot and the trs8, these first personal computers were not cheap, the Apple 2 launched at just under $1,300 and that's before inflation, these PCS weren't as powerful either as they weren't designed around the needs of gaming and had more technological limitations than mainframes and arcade systems.

Still, PCS brought a huge advantage, which is that they not only allowed their owners to play games, but also allowed a whole new audience to play. making them, this greatly expanded the pool of potential game developers and it was from this pool that some of the most legendary RPG series were soon merged, of course this amateur origin means that, once again, no one knows which It was the first role-playing game developed for the personal computer. but we can identify some of the first commercially successful PC role-playing games, such as 1979's Temple of Apshai, from automated simulations by developers who started the Dungeon Quest series and would receive numerous sequels in the years that followed.

It also sold 30,000 copies by June 1982, making it a smash hit that was new ground for the RPG genre. Temple of Apshai begins with a now routine character creation system before switching to a top-down graphical representation. From dungeons, players will spend the game adventuring through Apshai still reveals a key difference between mainframe and PC RPGs. which are memory limitations, mainframe computers are famous for giving rise to the text-based adventure genre, and the role-playing games that followed also featured large amounts of text to communicate their complicated worlds and systems to players, but personal computers did not. They had nowhere near the memory needed for that much text and these memory limitations played a major role in shaping PC RPGs for many years, meaning that early RPGs often placed less emphasis on story. than tabletop role-playing games and later computer role-playing games simply because there wasn't enough memory available to include much story. without making other major sacrifices, it also meant that a lot of important information needed to play these games was placed in instruction manuals, including tutorials, explanations of the game systems, details about the game's setting and plot, and, in fact, the manual of Apshai Temple even includes detailed descriptions.

From every possible room the player enters the game, all 233 detailing smells, sounds, skeletons, stonework, and more. Temple of Apshai was not one of the games I played in preparation for this video, but from this manual I can at least tell you what Temple of Apshai smelled like and the answer is vanilla for some reason seriously, the smell of vanilla It's described 56 times in this manual, which makes me wonder if the reward for reaching the end of a temple is a giant cake or something, another major RPG from this era. It came from a young man named Richard Garot who began developing games after entering high school on the school's pdp1 Mainframe.

He was 14 years old at the time. This happened to be the same year that Dungeons and Dragons was released and the same year that Garot first read. The Lord of the Rings and so he embarked on his own quest to make a computer version of Dungeons and Dragons which he titled capital DND D not to be confused with any of the other capital DND D's. Garot would make numerous DnD D versions that he counted, but it wouldn't be until DND D 28 that he made the big breakthrough of it. At this point, it was 1979 and Gat was in his senior year, where he also worked at the Computerland retail store, giving him access to an Apple 2 and the basic programming language Garot finally convinced his father to buy an Apple Two for his house. in which Gat rewrote D and D28 into basic and was given a new title as the end result. a calbath world of doom garot sold a calf at the computer store he worked at.

For $20 it came in a Ziploc bag with photocopied instructions and a cover illustration drawn by his mother, but a copy would soon arrive at the computer company California Pacific, which contacted Garot to ask to publish the game for a general public. wider where it was sold. over 30,000 copies, this made the still-teenage Garot cost around $150,000, which isn't bad for a school side project. A Calf was a first-person Dungeon Crawler that had a simple dungeon entry, kill a specific monster, return to the quest giver, repeat 10 times, structure the dungeons themselves. They were procedurally generated giving each a different layout, but the game itself was simple as long as you didn't get lost, most impressive was the inclusion of a top-down Overworld, something unusual for the time that would soon be greatly expanded in Garet's next game, Ultima. released 2 years later and would be much more than a high school project for teenagers, it's worth keeping in mind here what was happening in the rest of the gaming industry in this period. 1981 was the year arcade classics like Gallagher Donkey Kong and M Pac-Man came out. were released and by all accounts these were great games, but they weren't worlds.

Ultima, on the other hand, represented a vast, expansive map that players could traverse and complete with multiple different towns and dungeons, creating a sense of freedom and adventure that simply hadn't been seen before. In arcade or console games of this era, graphics had also seen a major improvement since the emergence of a new tile-based system that was brilliantly detailed and much more immersive, but also required little memory thanks to heavy reuse. of repeated mosaics. It's still simple though, as it usually involves simply walking towards enemies repeatedly until they die, as hidden calculations determine how much damage you do and take.

Character creation has also been expanded, but still only features four races and four classes with six stats that players can now distribute their points to. loosely, the story revolved around stopping the evil mundane wizard who wields the stone of immortality and is still a bit of a jerk; More details are provided in the impressive manual, other features are also fairly typical of what you might expect from an early RPG. Enemies grant XP, allowing players to level up. Gold can be spent to buy better items in towns and most of the game still involves moving through large procedurally generated dungeons in the hopes of not getting lost.

A feeding system also seen on a calf adds to the simulation side of the experience and Ultima becomes strangely sci-fi towards the end with the inclusion of spaceships and time travel, but the importance of Ultima really lies in the sum of its parts, much of what Ultima did had already been done by other RPGs. but Ultima did it bigger and better to create one of the most believable and immersive worlds ever seen in a video game up to that point. In doing so, it launched one of the most influential RPG series of all time, but Ultima did not. being the only series that started that year Wizardry is the yin to Ultima's Yang is what I would say if I thought most people actually knew what ying and yang meant, so maybe it's best to think about these games This way if Ultima is about colorful worlds.

So Wizardry is about dark dungeons, if Ultima is about virtue and heroism then Wizardry is about surviving and winning, and if Ultima is about epic adventures then Wizardry is about sweaty dungeon rigs where every step feels like If it could be the last. Both series are important. influential and both would evolve in the future, sometimes even seeming to draw inspiration from each other, but even from the beginning there was something that set these games apart and something that never went away, released in 1981 by developer Cerek, the first Wizardry Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was created by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead, both students at Cornell University, who were heavily inspired by early Mainframe role-playing games, particularly in 1977, and sought to translate these experiences to the less powerful Apple 2. , unlike Ultima Wizardry, which lacked an Overworld, its graphics used a now.

Familiar first-person perspective with 3D wireframe Dungeons and its story was basic, focused on entering a dungeon to defeat a wizard and recover a powerful amulet and was once again told almost entirely through the manual, but Wizardry made up for all of this with the increased depth of its dungeon. When crawling in Wizardry, players created a party of six characters instead of just one and its dungeons were designed to ensure players needed a balanced party that included multiple different abilities, while character creation offered a bit more complexity. with features like advanced classes and rosters. a bit more tactical, as each party member could choose between different options each turn, along with an impressive number of spells and dungeons, they were a bit more deadly, featuring lots of traps, one-hit KO attacks, and a mazike that required players to create hand-drawn maps to successfully navigate.

Most RPGs of this era were technically Dungeon Crawlers and dungeon crawling dominated the design of early RPGs, but few games embodied the spirit of dungeon crawling like Wizardry did. I've always felt that there's a reason the genre came to be called dungeon crawls instead of something more upbeat like dungeon adventures and it's because these games want to force players to get on their knees and crawl through the dirt to succeed, The fun is in overcoming the challenge that the dungeon presents and the high difficulty ensures great replayability even if the rest of the game seems simple and with the open world of Ultima and Wizard's Dungeons 1981 became the year in which the RPG genre truly it was established.

Personal computers may have been weak, the developers were often young and inexperienced, and these games still lacked key features seen in their board games. Inspirations, but none of these were enough to slow down the genre. Ultima 1 soon outsold the already successful calf, while Wizardry, Mad Overlord's proven grounds, had moresuccessful even selling 200,000 copies in its first 3 years, a huge feat in such a small market and this was Only the beginning of the 80s would be a time of rapid growth and experimentation. It was a time when development teams were small and PC games were still learning how to be commercial, meaning that RPG developers enjoyed a lot of creative freedom as they could make their mark on a genre in which that the rules were still being written and not just by Wizardry and Ultima, other RPGs like Daniel Lawrence's 1982 Telengard were expanded versions of the early Mainframe RP GS, in this case capital DND D and this is the same capital DND D than before.

This time around, Telengard is a top-down dungeon crawler with procedurally generated dungeons, but its gameplay would take place in real time, giving it a rudimentary hacken slash style of combat. 1982 would also see Jeff McCord's Sword of Fargale, which also focused on top-down procedurally generated dungeon crawling. this time with a basic fog of war and auto-mapping system similar to Rogue and Dungeons of Dagar, which provided the first attempt at a real-time first-person Dungeon Crawler, but as the number of successful commercial RPGs increased, they would still be Ultima and Wizardry. but it made the clearest mark there and it didn't take long for both games to receive sequels.

Ultimate 2 The Revenge of Being Enchantress was released a year after its predecessor and featured improved graphics and the new ability to talk to NPCs that those NPCs didn't have. I always have a lot to say, but they gave the player several clues and showed a clear attempt to make the game world feel more lived-in and to create an experience that was more than just dungeons. Ultimate 2 would also introduce a greater emphasis on time travel with portals now appearing randomly in the Overworld that could take players to different versions of that world and that world was now a fantasy version of Earth with different time periods. time spanning from the mythological era and millions of years before Christ to the present. as well as a futuristic post-apocalypse and space travel also returned and players could now travel to different planets in the solar system.

Some people criticized Ultimate 2 for being buggy and possibly rushed, but one thing that couldn't be criticized was a lack. of ambition, as it offered a surprisingly creative adventure for a genre that was otherwise still firmly in the hands of D and D Ultima 3 Exodus would be even more impressive if it were released in 1983 and this time published by D's own company. Garet Origin Systems. The third Ultima entry brought multiple new additions: the first was that players now controlled a party of four characters instead of just one, a change that Gat admitted he took direct inspiration from Wizardry to accompany this.

He also reviewed the combat that was now taking place on a separate top-down combat screen that activated. Through random encounter counters, this made combat much more tactical than before, as players now needed to focus on multiple competencies and manage aspects such as positioning. Ultima 3 also made key changes to dungeons, which now featured fixed layouts instead of being randomly generated and using solid 3D color graphics. Instead of the previous wireframe approach, the story eventually no longer incorporated science fiction elements and was no longer set on an alternate Earth, but became increasingly focused on talking to and acquiring information from various NPCs, as the player must seeking the help of a mysterious Time Lord to stop the evil being known as Exodus Ultima 3 was an instant critical and commercial success and would become one of the most influential role-playing games of its time, while Ultima sought to innovate, Wizardry sought to refine Wizardry 2.

The Diamond Knight would also be released in 1982, a year after its predecessor, and looked very similar to that predecessor due to being made with the exact same engine. The story went back to basic and revolved around the acquisition of another magical artifact and the dungeons were once again brutal and again seemed to want nothing more than to take players to their Doom, but Wizardry 2 included a major new feature which was the ability to import your party of characters from the previous game to continue. its story and trailer Wizardry 3 Legacy of Lierman was released a year after Wizardry 2 and again offered more of the same, although this time, although the characters could still be imported, the party you played as was actually the descendants of the characters previous ones and restarted at the level. one, so Wizardry wasn't taking many bold new steps, but it did enough to maintain its popularity. 1984 would be a quiet year for the RPG genre, perhaps as a blow and effect from the great video game Crash of, mainly focused on consoles but still very impactful. 1983, but things would not remain quiet for long, as 1985 would see several major releases kicking off what is often referred to as the golden age of computer role-playing games and once again, a name familiar would be that of Avatar's Forefront mission Ultima 4 released in late 1985 and brought the most significant change to the series yet, where the previous Ultima games and almost all computer role-playing games focused on exploring dungeons.

Ultima 4 feels like it's about a story first and foremost, and where the previous games' stories were about defeating monsters and other evil entities, Ultima Fours was more about being a virtuous person. In fact, Ultima 4 is one of the few RPGs that didn't have any sort of Big Bad or Ultimate Evil for players to defeat. Instead, the story focused on understanding and acquiring the eight virtues of these. Players then increased or decreased in-game actions where things like giving money to the poor could enhance one's sacrifice, while fleeing from a battle also lowered your value instead of looking up your character's stats and selecting a class at the beginning of the game.

Instead, Ultima 4 had players answer a series of moral dilemmas which were then used to assign players their starting class and stats. This genuinely innovative focus on morality and reactivity was a result of feedback from previous games in the series where some disgruntled parents had complained that these games rewarded players for immoral actions such as theft and murder. This was also the time of the Dungeons and Dragons Satanic Panic, so Garot decided to respond to this criticism by showing that a video game could be a force for good and teach important ethical principles. lessons, but Garot did not want to do this at the expense of the story, so the story focused on this quest for virtue, where the player character was to be a direct representation of himself, who was transported from our world to the games. world in the opening scene and where an increasing emphasis was placed on talking to NPCs, as well as defined companion characters, each of whom embodied one of the virtues, the result was a game that puts the morality system to shame of many subsequent role-playing games in Ultima 4.

Being virtuous was much more than a simple choice between being good or evil and the game even went so far as to create riddles and dilemmas to test the morality of the players, such as asking them to murder a group of children who are later revealed to be Ultima Disguised Monsters. 4 was a huge success and remains an important step for the genre, but the second half of the 80s was when role-playing games began to become much more than Wizardry and Ultima 1985 also brought the release of BS tales tales of the Unknown by developer interaction and then Esteemed PC publisher Electronic Arts, bar taale, took inspiration from Wizardry and Dungeons and Dragons to create what might seem like just another first-person Dungeon Crawler.

The story is also pretty basic, with a fairly routine premise of defeating an evil wizard to save the city. Scara Bray's story still offered impressive graphics with abundant use of color along with an easy-to-use interface and solid sound design to create a much better realized world than other Dungeon Crawlers of the era and its more tone. happy and jovial too. helped him stand out among his darker peers with no fun allowed. It also had great success selling over 400,000 copies in the late '80s, making it one of the few RPGs to match Ultima and Wizardry in terms of sales; taale bar would receive sequels in 1986 and 88, which offered similar but greatly expanded experiences and established BS taale as another important RPG series to watch out for, and BST queue was not alone. 1986 would see the debut of New World Computing's Might and Magic series with the first book, The Secret of the Inner Sanctum coded almost single-handedly by John Van Kaham over several years.

MIT Magic was another party-based first-person Dungeon Crawler, except Might and Magic excelled by making the dungeon the entire world and making that world massive in scale with a huge variety of diverse locations could and Magics, Forests, deserts, and mountains made exploration more exciting by moving the dungeon-building formula away from the now routine dungeon crawling. It was also less punishing than many previous Dungeon Crawlers, making it a more accessible RPG than most others, and so on. MIT magic 1 did not have sales as strong as BS taale, it still sold over 100,000 copies by the end of the decade and many sequels would soon follow.

Most RPGs of this era were turn-based and this preference made many sense, as early PCS struggled with the speed and memory requirements needed to create real-time persistent worlds as the decade progressed. ; However, newer PCS meant that these technical limitations began to become less severe, which would soon lead to a new type of real-time dungeon crawler such as fto games dungeon master released in late 1987. The pseudo 3D graphics and the Dungeon Master's real-time combat surprised many people and secured strong C's and a lot of praise. Movement within the dungeon was still grid-based, but enemies would now wander around the game world independently and after combat was initiated.

Players would decide the actions of the four party members in real time, ensuring quick decision-making. This is what Dungeon Master is best known for, but this wasn't the only way he influenced the genre. He also used a decidedly not-very-Dungeons and Dragons style. advancement system where instead of experience points and skill levels UPS were upgraded directly using them and featured objects that could be manipulated directly in first person and was the first game to use a paper doll type interface, the same iconic interface used In many future RPG character screens, Dungeon Master would receive multiple sequels, though none had as much of an impact as the first game, but it's still easy to see Dungeon Master's impressive legacy in many of the future titles he helped inspire.

The success of a certain Japanese console game would too. help inspire a new generation of action RPGs, with one of the best examples being 1988's Law Times from source systems featuring a top-down perspective similar to The Legend of Zelda along with more action combat. mechanics and only very limited RPG systems. a good example of how early some role-playing games began to move away from their roots and how certain games began to draw more inspiration from other games than from any tabletop role-playing game, and this departure from the dominance of Dungeons and Dragons was not only seen in the game.

Other RPGs are distinguished by new settings, as in Interplays, the 1988 post-apocalyptic RPG Wasteland, although it was not necessarily the first post-apocalyptic CRPG. Wasteland was undoubtedly one of the most influential and its bleak depiction of a futuristic America ruined by a third world. The war and subsequent nuclear Holocaust are memorable and distinctive. Wasteland featured a large open world similar to that scene in the definitive games with menu-based combat and encounters and a party of up to seven characters, but still, the strong writing and rich details of its no-m fantasy setting medieval that ensured Wasteland was remembered as an RPG classic for many years.

Several science fiction and space-inspired role-playing games were also advancing, the most impressive being 1986's Starlight of binary systems. Starlight featured space exploration, trading, combat, planetary landing, and more, all set in a stunning procedurally generated galaxy that featured 800 different planets for players to choose from.travel, but it was the combination of RPG systems with a space simulation setting that really made Starflight Excel allow players to form a party of six characters with high-impact abilities. while creating a strong sense of progression contained within an impressive and immersive simulation of a believable Galaxy starflight, it would receive a sequel in 1989 and inspire many more games in the future, finally, the late 80s is also when we can first see other non-role-playing games.

Genres are beginning to incorporate obvious RPG elements to create new, more hybrid versions of the genre, as was the case with 1989's Quest for Glory, so you want to be a hero created by Sierra Online, the same company behind a whole series of iconic graphic adventure games from Quest for. Glory combined Sierra's much-loved puzzle-solving adventure game with standard RPG elements like classes, character stats, and combat, this might make Glory's quest sound like it's less deep than other pure RPGs, but despite Due to the relative simplicity of these systems, it still featured several immersive elements not generally seen in Bamra such as the passage of time complete with a day and night cycle, as well as the need to eat and sleep to prevent the character from getting tired.

The Search for Glory also placed a heavy emphasis on story, often lampooning many geometric tropes in the process. and its new formula was a clear success, selling 130,000 copies in its first year and receiving four more sequels, so as role-playing games incorporated things like real-time combat, inspiration from console games, a greater range of settings and new hybrid approaches to game design, bjra eventually moved away from its Dungeons and Dragons roots to become something distinctive and diverse that existed completely independently of the board game that had once created it or at least that could have happened in an Alternate Universe where Dungeons and Dragons publisher TSR decided to stay away from the games.

That's not our universe, however, as for all the ways the computer role-playing game genre flourished and evolved during its golden age, the biggest success story of the B era would once again be linked to the game that started it all. Strategic Simulation Inc or SSI was founded. in 1979 and initially established itself by creating a series of wargame adaptations in 1984, they would branch out into the RPG genre with the heavily Ultima-inspired Quron, which would be followed by even more successful and impressive titles such as fantasay in 1985 and ' s Crown in 1986, these games cemented ssi's reputation as a talented crpg developer, but unlike many other RPG developers of that time, SSI was also a fairly large company that published several games a year and many of them they were successful, so when TSR decided who it should be awarded to.

The much coveted license to make official Dungeons and Dragons advanced video games, SSI, was perhaps the most logical option, after all, no developer had as much experience adapting existing rulesets as they did and, although there were other developers who could create a great new RPG a year, SSI. was someone who could do multiples, which is exactly what they did, Pool of Radiance released in 1988 and would be the first of 14 gold box RPGs all built on the same engine that were released over the next 5 years. The term gold box derives from the color of the boxes in which these games were sold, but it also became a marker of prestige both for these games, which were official DND products in the midst of the Sea of ​​imitations, and for the quality of the games. of role-playing games that were within and became some of the most beloved and successful of the era and this multi-series hit the ground running from its first entry, there are three things that P of Radiance excels at and the first has already been mentioned. for being an official DND role-playing game.

P of Radiance was able to adapt the already tried and tested AD&D ruleset that many players would already be familiar with, as well as draw from the rich, highly detailed setting of the forgotten realm that promised a vast believable world that extended far beyond From what was seen in this game, the second strong point of this game was its turn-based tactical combat that took place on a separate top-down battle screen and expanded on what was seen in SSI's previous Wizards Crown. These battles offered players many options and provided some of the most strategic and deep encounters seen in the game.

Radiant's final strength was in its world design, which was once again rendered with 3D graphics and explored in first-person and yet , was more logically consistent in its construction and offered a sense of clear narrative progression as players work to reclaim and rebuild the fallen city of Flan, so for RPG fans, Pool of Radiance was the real deal. business and offered a complete package and its sales reflect that. This, with over 260,000 copies sold in North America alone, sequels soon followed, some of which would be developed by different studios and others which would spawn different series, but the net result would be a raising of the bar for the CRPG genre.

Role-playing games began in the 1980s as untested and incomplete attempts to use new computer technology to replicate the new experience of tabletop role-playing games and this was carried out by ambitious students, teenagers and hobbyists at the end. of the decades; However, role-playing games were one of the most popular game genres and represented big business along the way as the genre strayed from its D and D routes in new and exciting ways only to return to those same routes. to find increasing success and the decade would end with this so-called Golden Age still going strong and yet.

Despite all the many achievements described in this section, this is still not the full story because across the Pacific RPGs were forging their own path and it was one that would end up taking them in quite a different direction; It's easy to take the global nature of modern gaming for granted, but things weren't always so interconnected and in the 1980s the barriers presented by different geographic regions and languages ​​were significant, it wasn't until the Nintendo Entertainment System that this began to take shape. change and this would also be the system that established j

rpgs

as a distinct and impressive form. force to be taken into account, and yet some Japanese RPGs were being created even before Nintendo's famicom was released on the distant frontier of the first Japanese home computers, much like their Western counterparts identify the first game of Japanese RPG is no easy task and detailed information on the early games can be difficult to find in general, despite this the influence of both Ultima and Wizardry can still be seen quite clearly, as in the dungeon crawler. de Ko from 1983, which featured an Overworld and dungeon design reminiscent of Ultima 1 along with some monster designs quite inspired by DNDD or 1984. is Black Onyx, a Wizardry-inspired game created by Dutch-American Hank Rogers after moved to Japan and sold over 150,000 copies, making it the first role-playing game in Japan to achieve major commercial success. 1984 would also see a trio of influential action role-playing games.

Namco's the Tower of dredge Nihon Falcon's Dragon Slayer and Tian eso's hidl the Tower of dredge was originally an arcade game and this is reflected in its design, but developer Masanobu Edo's inspiration still came from purchasing a copy of Dungeons and Dragons at a business trip to America. It's worth noting that, like Wizardry and Ultima, Dungeons and Dragons wouldn't be officially released in Japan until several years later, and yet, like Ultima, it was still influencing Japanese developers and those developers, in turn , would influence others, which is the case with Dragon Slayer and Hy Alide, as they were clearly inspired by Towers of Draga, even so, the real breakthrough for Japanese role-playing games would come after the launch of the immensely successful famicom of Nintendo.

It was on the NES that Shagaru Mamoto would create Legends of Zelda in 1986, drawing on the Hydal and Dragon Slayer action RPG formula while also seemingly being influenced by the open world of Ultima, The Legend of Zelda. Zelda would lack most of the statistical gameplay elements generally necessary to qualify a game as an RPG, but its sequel, Link's Adventure would not and included an XP and leveling system that shows that despite the different direction the Zelda series would take, RPGs were still a clear part of its origin, this origin could also explain why you spend so much time on these games. within several dungeons and yet, as important as The Legend of Zelda was, it would be another game released that year that would follow up Define j

rpgs

yug Horry first discovered Wizardry on a trip to America in 1983, which led him to take up the decision to make a game. that combined elements of Wizardry and Ultima to create an RPG experience that Japanese audiences could enjoy, so Horry and his team at Enix took the Overworld and cities of Ultima and the menu-based combat of Wizardry to create something new one that would ensure the game worked.

To appeal to Japanese gamers, the team then looked to the popular manga series shown and looked for inspiration in the visual style which led them to work with Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, and the result was Dragon Quest, a game which sold millions of copies and inspired countless Dragon Quest games. The future success of Dragon Quest had a lot to do with its accessibility; By comparison, Western RPGs were dense and unforgiving and the games sometimes even assumed a certain familiarity with the tabletop RPGs that inspired them, while Dragon Quest had a broader appeal and was better suited to newcomers to the game. world.

The RPG genre, of which there were many among the Japanese and console audiences in 1987, Dragon Quest would be followed by several other long-running jrpg series, including Digital Devil Story, Mami Tensei Fantasy Star and Final Fantasy, these games would be based which Dragon Quest began while often drawing more inspiration from Wizardry and Ultima, which at the time were receiving their own Japanese releases on the NES, while Western RPGs would continue to draw inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop RPGs throughout. many years, this was not the In the case of Japan, D and D would never reach the same level of popularity and Japanese RPG developers seem to look to other popular jrpgs as their main source of inspiration.

This explains why jrpgs initially seemed a bit more experimental in their environments and visual styles. Dragon Quest is based on the Mami Tensei manga with urban and school settings, the Mother series is an idiosyncratic take on modern America, and Super Mario RPG is Mario in a role-playing game. As jrpgs evolved further, they had little reason to stick to the ideas and principles you see on the table. Role-playing games perhaps best illustrated by Final Fantasy's Inception Herob Sakaguchi series were driven by his desire to tell stories, so when a new generation of consoles allowed for more memory and therefore more text, The fourth Final Fantasy entry eliminated any form of character creation for the first time and instead forced all players to take on the role of Cesil, a Dark Knight-turned-Paladin with a defined personality and a pre-written story.

This is a clear step away from a key part of tabletop role-playing games, and yet this change was widely celebrated and became one. Of the most praised parts of this game, Final Fantasy 6 and 7 would take this focus on story even further with a greater emphasis on cinematic storytelling, sometimes at the expense of gameplay and again this would garner critical and commercial success and like Final Fantasy. became more and more about the story, it also became more and more linear and eventually eliminated the Overworld entirely until Final Fantasy 13 was almost literally a straight line and not everyone was happy with that, but Final Fantasy was free to develop in this direction because I never tried to remain faithful to Dungeons and Dragons and it was this Freedom that shaped the series for better or worse.

This same Freedom was applied to the entire jrpg genre, leading to more action RPGs and more anime visuals and less dialogue or narrative choices and a completely different set of tropes and characteristics that would give it its own completely distinct identity from western rpgs and why jrpgs shouldn't have evolved to be different, being similar would mean trying to beat western rpgs at their own game, but it was by being different. that Dragon Quest was able to sell millions of copies, a feat thatNo Western RPG managed until the late '90s, by which time JRPGs were breaking even more records, but the full history of Japanese RPGs will have to wait for another day and that could be a long wait because it currently doesn't.

It's a video I plan to make, but I still think it's important to understand where JRPGs come from, how they share important DNA with Western RPGs, and yet why they ended up so different. Oh, and also Japan loves sorcery like Japan. loves Wizardry and would keep the series and the entire subbra alive long after they both died in the West, but as romantic as that story may be, it's still a story for another day because we have a long way to go and the '90s are finally here. calling the '90s would begin with RPGs in full swing, but as the decade progressed it would become a time of trouble, failure, and ultimately reinvention.

Yes, Troubled Water was on the horizon, but that didn't stop this decade from producing many of the most beloved RPGs. of all time and in the early years at least the most popular series were still going strong. Ultima received a fifth entry in 1988 that continued directly from the fourth game, even allowing players to import their character, and yet took the narrative in a drastically different direction in Ultima. 4 players worked hard to embody the eight virtues and yet in Ultima 5 the players returned to see that those same virtues had been twisted into a totalitarian set of rules that were used to oppress the population and the player joined the resistance to overthrow them. twist than what was seen in the last game and continued Ultima's bold march toward more philosophical and ethical narrative themes in other ways.

Ultima 5 was a similar, albeit greatly expanded, version of the last game; However, Ultima 6 of 199, the fake perk completely overhauled the engine by updating the graphics while introducing an entirely new physics simulation that expanded the interactivity of the world and even allowed for features like modeled moving elements. The world also had a more open design with an even greater emphasis on exploration. Ultima 6 would also continue the series with a greater focus on the story while asking all new moral questions of a player, this time focused on racism and xenophobia, which drastically recontextualized elements of the previous games, complicated stories and explorations of the morality, is standard fare for today's RPGs, but that wasn't always the case and Ultima 4 to Six marked a massive step for the genre into territory rarely seen in any video game at this time, and yet Ultima 7, the black door which was released in 1992, went even further and improved the graphics once again, increasing the interactivity of the world once again, redesigning the interface to be much more immersive and unobtrusive, and being the first game main in changing the gameplay to real time, this in many ways reduced the tactical complexity of combat and other changes also had their drawbacks, but the net result of these changes was one of the most immersive, open, detailed and genuinely sandbox worlds ever seen. in one game and Ultima 7 did all this without making sacrifices to the story, which was once again deeply complex and featured much more developed supporting characters.

In fact, Ultima 7 was such a big step that its developers made a second part. a year later, to reuse the same engine and give players even more high-quality RPGs to sink their teeth into, while Ultima climbed higher and higher, its venerable rival Wizardry also finally getting back on track after of stumbling in the L half of the game. The fourth Wizard entry of the '80s was released in 1987, four years after the third game, and still used the same now obviously dated engine, while making big changes to the gameplay. Most fans consider Wizardry 4's credit negative, it was at least original as it placed the players in the role. from the evil wizard Verner, who was the villain of the first game with a party system that now focused on summoning other monsters that players couldn't directly control, unfortunately, while this was creative, it wasn't as popular and the difficulty was even more brutal than usual.

He rejected many people. Ctek would follow this up with Wizardry 5 in 1988, which was a more conventional entry but still failed to significantly advance the series at a time when new rivals like BST taale and Might and Magic seemed to be beating Wizardry at its own game. , but by 1990 Wizardry was ready to strike back with their sixth cosmic forge entry. Wizardry 6 would eventually use a new engine with new graphics to kick off a new trilogy and while much of its proven dungeon crawling formula remained Wizardry 6 seemed intent on making everything better and if it couldn't pull it off, it would at least make sure to that everything was bigger, more races, more classes, more skills, more enemies, more puzzles, more story for the first time and a much bigger world, all guaranteed.

Wizardry 6 would be seen as a worrying successor and two years later would receive a sequel to its own Wizardry 7 Crusaders of a dark svant took the bigger and better philosophy even further to create a game of somewhat ridiculous size and complexity that featured numerous quests. subs, multiple factions complete with an innovative diplomacy system, and a surprisingly detailed story that now focused on Wizard's new fantasy-sci-fi hybrid setting, so basically the crer King dungeon had returned and had arguably evolved into become more than just a Dungeon Crawler at this point. and as for Wizard's other rivals, the BS story would see no major new releases, but did receive a construction set in 1991, but allowed players to create their own dungeon cooler with its engine and even allowed creators to share and distribute your creations freely to make others.

The interaction between commercial game developers would continue to release promising new RPGs; However, like the 1990 and 1992 Lord of the Rings adaptations, New World Computing's MIT Magic series, on the other hand, would receive four new entries between 1991 and 1994 that would improve the graphics, update the interface, and introduce key features. such as mouse support and auto-mapping to ensure that Wizardry still had fierce competition, as for Goldbox developer SSI they would continue to release adaptations of D and D, including the publication of 1991's Neverwinter Nights, a multiplayer online role-playing game that was one of the most important precursors to the MMO Eye genre. of the Beholder from developer Westridge Studios also in 1991, which was a hugely popular real-time dungeon crawler that refined many of the elements seen in the previous dungeon master and received multiple sequels Forgotten Realms unlimited Adventures, a creation kit focused in the Goldbox engine that released in 1993. and several other adaptations that would move away from the high fantasy of the Forgotten Realms toward other, less explored DND settings, the most impressive of which was Dark Sun Shattered Lands and its sequel, Wake of the Ravager. , which were developed by SSI and took place in the brutal post. -The apocalyptic desert world setting of Dark Sun and released in 1993 and 1994, the Dark Sun games moved away from the now Goldbox engine to a more fluid top-down perspective with turn-based combat and Dark Sun stands out not only for its intriguing . and an underused environment, but also for being a decisive step away from the dungeons of the Gold Boox era.

Instead, these games placed a greater emphasis on role-playing and are some of the first RPGs outside of Ultima to feature regular dialogue options that actually allow players to role-play their character. Other interesting developments were also taking place elsewhere, as a landmark title would be released in 1992 that influenced much more than just RPG and as if the series didn't have enough achievements, it would once again come from Ultima, although it is not the first spin -off of the Blue Sky Productions Ultima Underworld series, Stigan Abyss was arguably the most important and this is a series that also contains one of the most influential MMOs ever created, at first glance Ultimate Underworld may seem like just another dungeon crawler game in first person, following the success of Dungeon Master five years earlier, but as soon as you look a little closer, it becomes obvious that this game is something more.

In fact, Ultimate Underworld's achievements are so numerous that it's difficult to include them all. The most important was that it was the first game to offer full 360° movement in a 3D environment. Previous games similar to this were grid based and even later games like Wolfenstein 3D. and Doom still didn't allow players to look up and down. It also featured immersive real-time combat where attacks were determined by specific mouse inputs. It was one of the first games to combine a first-person perspective with such a highly interactive and detailed environment. can swim in flowing water, which sounds more impressive and championed the idea of ​​emergent gameplay and non-linear solutions to problems, whether puzzle quests or simply exploration, as a result of these features its developer referred to the game as the first dungeon simulation, a term that reflected how much more impressive the Ultimate Underworld dungeon was to other Dungeon Crawlers and how much emphasis was placed on immersion.

An even more commonly used term today for such a game would be an immersive Sim of which Ultimate Underworld is widely recognized as the First, and much like its achievements, the games that would draw inspiration from Ultimate Underworld are also numerous; its developer would later be renamed Looking Glass Studio, where they would create other immersive Sims, including System Shock and Thief. He was also a direct influence on the creation of This seminal software Shooters Wolfenstein 3 D and Doom would influence many later immersive Sims such as DSX and Bioshock and would soon influence many future RPGs, including a direct sequel a year later as well as a new series from a developer called Bethesda the Elder Scrolls Arena. released in 1994 and combined the first-person underworld dungeon crawling of Ultima with much of the city design and overall quest and guild structure of the somewhat lesser-known role-playing game Legends of Valor.

The result was a game that took immersive underworld dungeon design beyond dungeons. with additional features such as a day and night cycle that NPCs reacted to, as well as dynamic weather. Arena was also huge thanks to the use of procedural generation that was used to populate its world with a large number of cities and dungeons to create a vast and realistic feel. of scale rarely seen in games Bethesda would follow Arena with Elder Scrolls until Dagul in 1996, which expanded on many of the ideas seen in the first game to great effect. Dagul also relied on procedural generation to create an almost incomprehensibly large game world, but also emphasized the sandbox nature of this world as his approach to gameplay, which is perhaps best exemplified in the manual that tells players to follow their own spirit and tell their own story in their own way, as well as encouraging players to avoid loading saves and instead try playing. your mistakes to see what could happen, like getting sent and escaping from jail or hiring lyen froppy.

This focus on player freedom made Dagger stand out in a genre that had recently popularized side quests and was still heavily focused on a single main quest line structure. where the player always has a clear, general and defined objective, and although much of Dagger Fall still plays out as a dungeon crawler with a fast travel system used to move and a desert that was largely empty and lifeless, which made him lacking reasons to explore it. It's still a big step forward for open world game design with a huge world that has rarely been matched in size in the early 90s.

Immersion was probably the aspect of RPGs that saw the biggest improvements thanks to innovations. in design and improvements in technology, but storytelling would also flourish as the memory limitations that were once so restrictive have become a thing of the past, while more detailed graphics and new features like Voice acting offered an improved presentation, for example, Westwood's follow-up to 1993's Eye of the Beholder, Lands of Lore, The Throne of Chaos, featured detailed pixel art with impressive cutscenes and even celebrity voices acting as that guy who dies. at the beginning of Oblivion, the time has come and I have no choice.

I must destroy her now, who apparently was also in some Star Trek where one of the best stories of the era came from.Betrayal of Kondor, which was developed by Dynamics and released in 1993. Betrayal of Kondor was based on the Rift War fantasy book series by Raymond E Feist, with the author helping with its development and the game itself filled with rich characters and evocative Kondor Pros presented in turns. open-world combat and exploration, as well as many of the RPG systems players might expect, but there's a sense that these features always exist to serve the narrative in this game and not the other way around, and that narrative is heavily detailed and full of unexpected twists and turns even if the title rather reveals one of the main ones, other developers were also launching promising new series in these years.

Minecraft would launch a popular series of four games largely inspired by Ultima, known as the magic candle. German software studio Fon would release amberstar and Amber Moon, another German developer, Attic Entertainment, would release the Realms of Arcania games based on the Dark Eye tabletop role-playing game. French studio Silmer started the isar series and so on, at the beginning of a decade the RPG genre seemed to be flourishing like never before. Series were continuing strong, even those that had previously stumbled, many new developers were making a name for themselves promising even more popular RPG series in the future, and game design was continually evolving, giving players even more options in builds. and play structures and, even so, in space.

In just a few years, all of this would change. The three biggest names in the industry would produce massive flops. All of the most respected series would disappoint fans or simply go out of business. Numerous once-promising developers would go bankrupt or abandon development. viewers and critics would stop seeing RPGs as the future of gaming and see them as a relic of the past, and by the time they got back on track, RPGs would have completely changed with different series and different developers. leading the way into a whole new era of role-playing. -play video games, so I guess the real question is what exactly happened and why this question doesn't have a simple answer While RPGs were experiencing the end of their Golden Age, gaming was changing deep down, two of the most notable developments of this period.

The arrival of 3D and CD ROMs led to a rapid evolution in graphics that RPG developers seemed to have difficulty keeping up with and gave rise to multiple new and popular genres with first-person shooters and strategy games. in real time that emerged in this period. to take a not insignificant share of the PC market, and as graphics and gaming evolved, any game with an older design received criticism for looking dated. This is similar to how 2D pixel games dominated the 16-bit era and then quickly disappeared during the next generation of consoles, when 3D was the new thing and 2D seemed dated in comparison, and as games evolved at the time. , game development was also becoming more expensive with larger teams and longer development cycles, meaning the cost of failures eventually skyrocketed.

The gaming industry itself was growing during this period, the biggest growth would come in the console sector as many former PC developers suddenly wanted to prioritize creating games that could appear in both markets, so, In general, technological advances led to role-playing games going out of fashion at the time. At the same time, the cost of failure was becoming more significant and the PC market was becoming less attractive, causing what could have been a natural, cyclical decline in an ever-changing industry to become a fool's errand. spectacular. Of the grace of a genre that people were quick to declare Still, if you are more of a fan of the theory of the great man of History, you should also consider that perhaps the great players simply got it wrong;

No name had more PR in the RPG industry than SSI Origin and Interaction Systems, and yet in this period, all three made serious mistakes, delivered poor games, and alienated their core fans. SSI continued to publish adaptations of Dungeons and Dragons in new campaign settings, including the space fantasy spell Jammer Pirates of Realm space, two Raven Loft games titled str's possession, and stoneprofit the arabs Ian Knights. inspired aladim the curse of the genie and why did anyone ever think this name was a good idea menzo banan these games generally received worse reviews than previous adaptations with bugs often mentioned among the reasons and their different settings also seemed to receive less interest by consumers after SSI revoked this TSR for the Dungeons and Dragons license and after several attempts at original RPGs still failed to work commercially, SSI turned its attention back to what made them popular, in Firstly, War Games adaptations, meanwhile after splitting from SSI, TSR opened up the D andd license which led to numerous new adaptations, many of which were in other genres and many of which were poorly received.

However, one of the most infamous games was an RPG and would come from another respected developer descended from Under Mountain. was released by Interplay in January 1998 after missing its Christmas release date and is described by Barton and his staff as possibly the worst CRPG ever produced by a major developer. The Smell of the Undermountain was intended to be D&D's breakthrough 3D RPG. But after a long development cycle with numerous delays and removed features, the end result was lampooned for being visually dated, but bought and often completely broken, many of the problems supposedly arose from the decision to use the 3D descent engine that had been created for the technically impressive.

Descent, first-person shooter from 1995; However, the decision to switch to this engine was made by corporate leadership and resulted in intense code rewrites to make this FPS engine work for an RPG. Descent to the under Mountain would be far from the only bad dndd RPG. in the post-SSI era, but still stands out as marking a clear low point for interaction, there are still interactions. The problems related to role-playing games began several years before this. A disappointing sequel to Dungeon Master that not only failed to innovate like the first game, but also failed to sustain. with newer competition beginning in 1993, this would be followed by the cancellation of the third and final Lord of the Rings RPG, leaving the trilogy unfinished before the long-awaited Stone Keep released in 1995 to weak sales and mixed reviews. .

Stonekeep was the first. Real-time dungeon crawler with pre-rendered environments and live-action cinematics making it technically advanced, but also used grid-based motion with a fixed camera more than 3 years after Ultima Underworld rendered a system like Antiquated Stone Keep also began to develop. in 1990 with an estimated budget of $50,000 in the end its development took 5 years and the cost increased to 5 million which is 100 times the estimate for anyone bad at math of course since most people who see it You probably already know that interactions between bad RPGs would be Lastly, but there was a time when it seemed that the biggest failure of the big three would surely be the source systems, since in 1994 they not only released a bad RPG , but they released a bad Ultima Ultima 8.

Pagan continued the story of the Avatar, but would introduce a number of changes to the game's gameplay that were aimed at trying to attract new players. These included switching to an isometric perspective, further simplifying the combat action introduced in Seven and removing features such as Companions and adding a greater focus on platforming elements which were criticized for their poor controls that involved pressing both mouse buttons to jump, as well as As for not fitting well into an RPG series, even worse than this, however, there were a lot of bugs and Richard Garot himself would later say that he thought the game needed three more months to finish Ultima had been the precursor. of the computer role-playing game genre for 14 years, but now, for the first time, it seemed to be moving in the wrong direction and the next and final entry would be even worse Ultima. 9 Ascension was released in 1999 after a long and painful development and when fans finally got their hands on it, they found little of the series they once knew and loved.

Ultima 9 was criticized by critics, particularly for bugs and other technical issues, and was further criticized by fans. for being a betrayal of the series that changed key details of the plot and barely resembled previous games despite Garot's own promise that the series would return to its roots after 8 Ultima 9. The development of Ultima 9 shows the struggles that RPG developers faced in this era when trying to make the transition to Full 3D at a time when 3D technology was still evolving rapidly, work on Ultima 9 needed to be redone regularly to prevent it from becoming obsolete before the game would have been released and these revisions caused development to drag on endlessly and caused inconsistencies in the final plot despite the long development Ultima 9 sold poorly and received no follow-up, making it arguably the most important series in the history of RPGs would come out with barely a whimper, of course, the origin would also release Ultima Online in 1997, which was one of the first and most important MMOs ever created, but I already talked about the history of MMOs in its own video, so we won't cover that here although it's worth acknowledging that, as with jrpgs, the history of the MMO is firmly rooted in its computer role-playing game Origins and it doesn't seem like a coincidence that Ultima is a series that was pioneering both for the genre that would lead to the establishment of this new form of massive online RPG experience and, as for Ultima's oldest rival, Wizardry, fans would have to wait 9 years for a new Mainline entry, but Sir Tech released Nemesis the Wizardry Adventure, a more adventure-focused spin. which was presumably intended to attract new fans and failed to make much of an impact, while New World Computing would take a long break from RPGs to release its new Heroes of Might and Magic series of strategy games before returning with a well received and still quite traditional game. new magic from MIT completely in 3D in 1998, this was soon followed by three more sequels, each of which was progressively worse.

Sierra Online also had issues with the transition to 3D, which can be demonstrated by the problematic development of both Quest for Glory 5 and King's Quest Mask of Eternity. In 1998, one by one, the leaders of the role-playing game industry fell, but you know what they say, one man's loss may be another man's gain. Fresh meat. Blizzard Entertainment was founded in 1991 and would make its breakthrough with the first real-time strategy hit, Warcraft Orcs. And the humans, the idea of ​​making an RPG came from David Brevik, who was then head of the Condor studio and wanted to create a modern version of the roguelike genre which, according to Brevik, has too many barriers to entry for modern players, so who envisioned a game that would be an RPG focused on the thrills of procedural generation and dungeon crawling, but its role-playing systems would be simple, its combat would be fast-paced, and the barriers to entry would be minimal.

Brevik had trouble finding a publisher to support this. idea because many saw that the RPG genre was dead at the time, but it eventually found a match with Blizzard whose only requirements were that the game had action, combat, and included multiplayer, and thus Diablo was born and took the world by storm with its early release. 1997 Diablo introduced an isometric perspective and heavily mouse-centric controls to create a new generation of role-playing games and was one that would be immensely popular with sales reaching 2 million in 1998, a figure no other Western role-playing game had ever achieved. approached before for many.

It was like the remedy for all the genre's problems, it was modern, where other games were quickly dated, others were slow and simple, others were complex, but while Diablo downplayed certain parts of the RPG genre, this also meant that it could give a The starring role of what was left, that is, the progression, the frequent level of loot UPS and the increasingly tougher enemies, made Diablo's dungeon crawlingaddictive and rewarding and also had great replayability thanks to its use of procedural generation, as well as the exciting addition of multiplayer and fantastic presentation that helped create an atmospheric world and a gripping story, so Diablo went to the once an unprecedented success and the birth of a new RPG theme focused on fast-paced action and constant progression rather than narrative choice or complicated character systems;

Over time, Diablo would receive expansions, sequels, and many imitations. s which would include Laran Studio's debut role-playing game, Divine Divinity, as well as Dungeon Siege, Holy Torchlight Titan Quest, Path of Exile and more, and the theme is still going strong today and still shows many similarities to the game. that started it, the only problem with the genre. Its name is an action role-playing game that can mean many different things, but the game that descends from Diablo clearly has a lot in common and represents its own unique branch of role-playing history, but Diablo wouldn't be the only series of role-playing games that emerged from this troubled era.

At Interplay, most of the studio's focus was on its ambitious and promising adaptation of D&D, Descent into Undermountain, but at Undermountain Shadow, a smaller team led by Tim Kane was working on its own newly conceived role-playing game. Originally a successor to 1988's Interplays Wasteland and based around the generic ruleset of the universal role-playing game system, 1997's Fallout was a triumphant return to the idea of ​​role-playing games as a medium for storytelling. Fallout is perhaps most famous for its radioactive post-apocalyptic setting, but there have been interesting settings before, even those irradiated by infrared. Where it completely raised the bar for the genre was in its strong writing, its attention to detail, its oppressive tone, its logically cohesive world, and its commitment to giving players a choice in how they resolve quests, which is best exemplified in the final boss of the game. who can be dissuaded from Confrontation as long as you can convince him of the folly of his plan and thus the aftermath helped bring the role-playing game back into the role-playing genre and in doing so continued the gaming legacy like Ultima and Dark Sun while helping to recover an important part of the tabletop experience that sometimes seemed forgotten in a genre so focused on combat and dungeons.

Fallout was also a commercial success, and while it wouldn't sell as many copies as Diablo, it proved that the genre didn't need to embrace action to survive. Fallout 2 would be released a year later, continuing the story and expanding the setting while continuing to impress audiences. fans and critics, being the biggest RPG that Interplay published in the '90s would come from a different developer, BioWare. were a new Canadian studio made up of a small group of recent medical graduates who had a passion for tabletop role-playing games and wanted to create their own. The group soon impressed with a prototype demo of their project that led the interaction to suggest they use dungeons. and Dragons to create an official adaptation and three years later, Boulders Gate would be released in late 1998.

Boulders Gate was an immediate commercial and critical success and would bring D and D to a new generation of gamers, one of the biggest differences between this and previous adaptations. was the use of an isometric perspective with a new party-based real-time combat system, this was reminiscent of the combat scene in some previous RPGs such as 1992's Darklands and controlled very similarly to the recently popular RTS shre, giving it Balis Gate a modern look and feel. While the action is real-time, players still had the option to pause combat when they wanted to think about their options and issue individual commands, allowing for a high level of tactical depth and leading to the name Real Time with Paw still below This real-time appearance Boulders gate. was still running on the dice rolls and turn-based rules of D and D, providing the action, authenticity, and comprehensibility for those who wish to understand it, while allowing players to ignore much of the ruleset and just fly away. the game to do all things.

Background calculations for them whether they preferred this combat system proved popular, but Boulders Gate was more than just a modernization of DnD: it was, by RPG standards, the complete package with detailed character customization and combat. based on groups to provide depth to a large, expansive world for players to explore coming to life with new high-quality pre-rendered backgrounds and a strong focus on story characters and player choice to satisfy players' desire to play. role playing games. Many RPGs could improve individual aspects, but few did so many things as well and by standards. In 1998, this made Boulders Gate truly impressive, which its Sals reflected in fact, it would eventually pass the 2 million mark and come close to matching the mighty Diablo, and if Fallout proved that RPGs could still survive, Boulders Gate would prove that they can still thrive, this would be the first in a series of D andd games built with Boulders Gate's Infinity engine.

The next would be developed by a division of Interplay Black Is Studios and released in 1999. Plcape Torment would not sell as many copies as some of the other RPGs of this era, but its reputation became just as legendary by taking place in the much more strange D&D campaign setting, Torment would retain many of the features of Boulders gate while also focusing much more on narrative. If players took on the role of a nameless being, an immortal with no memories of their past and the game cleverly plays with Amnesia and immortality by incorporating them into the game while forcing players to seek their own answers and question everything they are told.

They say, as a result, Planescape Torment is less about combat encounters and less about leveling up. Learn more about how to have the opportunity to explore this strange world and its exciting narrative, as well as its various philosophical implications. Simply put, many RPGs have raised the bar for storytelling throughout the history of the genre, but Plcape Torment is one of those rare games that has never truly been surpassed in this area, 1999 would also see several other games. successful role-playing games, such as Looking Glass Studios System Shock 2, which built on the immersive qualities of the previous Ultimate Underworld while combining role-playing systems, survival horror and masterful storytelling, or Jagged Alliance 2, an RPG more focused on strategy and combat. ctek game about controlling a group of mercenaries during a fictional insurgency, although the RPG genre may have ended the decade strong, it was undeniable that it had changed a lot in the process, the period between the mid-80s and early 90s What is often referred to as the Golden Age of Computer Role-Playing Games is accurately called, but not because it was when the best role-playing games of all time were created, but rather it was a Golden Age. because it was a time when role-playing games were genuinely dominant, they were one of the biggest genres in the world.

The computer game market Old series were still continuing and new strong developers emerged. Innovations came quickly and the dominance of computer role-playing games seemed like it would last forever, but it didn't. Not a single one of the biggest RPG developers of the Golden Age would survive. Origin closed in 2004 SSI was unofficially dissolved in 1994 and in 2002 Interplay was officially sold to avoid bankruptcy in 1999 and almost all of the original staff left in 2002 ctec disappeared in 2003, as did New World Computing, and there were many smaller casualties. Furthermore, major RPG series would also end alongside them, usually with bitterly disappointing final entries, in their place came new names like Bethesda BioWare and Blizzard and new series that found success through innovation.

One thing that seems to be more than a coincidence here is the role of 3D in both these successes and these failures, many of the biggest disappointments were ambitious 3D games and yet many of the most acclaimed RPGs of their time, like Diablo Fallout and Balis Gate, were games that continued to use 2D elements and an isometric perspective that new technology can have benefits but it can also have costs and 3D almost seems like a siren song that attracted role-playing game developers to its side. Doom in this period, and the only ones who survived were those who resisted its call, regardless of the fact that RPGs changed and also all games disappeared.

In the era of small teams making big games in less than a year, in 2000 game development was more expensive, time-consuming, and riskier, and from then on, RPGs with smaller budgets they would have a hard time competing or even getting much attention. The RPG genre would increasingly be defined by a smaller number of notable games and the changes in the genre would not end there. RPGs would begin the New Millennium strong, but as the years passed, one thing would come to dominate the decade and change the nature of bjra in the Still, the process of the early 2000s would continue exactly where the '90s left off.

BioWare released Boulders Gate 2 in 2000, which continued the story of the first game and improved almost every aspect of its design to become one of the most reviewed RPGs. time when Boulders Gate 1 offered a more standard, introductory low-level fantasy adventure. Boulders Gate 2, on the other hand, embraced being a next-level sequel to explore some of the more unique and creative aspects of the Forgotten Realm environment while increasing the complexity of combat encounters with the characters. build and break down, the result was a sprawling epic adventure that showcases the best of what DND video games have to offer. Boulders gate 2 would also greatly expand the companions' personalities and dialogue, even going so far as to include romance options for several characters. that would be seen many more times in future RPGs and would be considered quite important to a certain subset of the player base and if an Infinity engine RPG wasn't enough for the black year, Studios also released Ice Windale which took the formula. of Boulders Gate, but refocuses on dungeons and combat, while allowing players to create a full party of six characters for Adventure with Ice Windale would receive a sequel 2 years later that would update the D and D ruleset to the Third, generally considered more interesting.

Edition and would become the last Infinity-powered RPG, Icewind Dale and its sequel are easy to overlook for being less well-known than their Infinity-powered compatriots and for being less story-focused, something that could put off gamers. new RPG fans who said these games. offered an interesting combination of older dungeon-centric game design alongside more modern G gameplay and the presentation brought to D and Boulders gate adaptations. Another game that is probably overlooked was CTE and Wizard's last game, Wizardry 8, released in 2001 with ctek on the verge of In fact, ctek was in such a dire position that they even added ads to the game encouraging players to upgrade. your PC with Falcon Northwest, after all, the low frame rate eliminates, despite this, Wizardry 8 is considered by many to be the best entry in the series with a full 3D open world that is as intimidatingly large as previous entries. and with all the complexity in character building and combat that fans had come to expect, Wizardry 8 was the swan song for both one of the most important role-playing game series in history and the Dungeon Crawlers based in general groups like VRA.

From here on, newer series were also having a big impact in these years, the year 2000 brought the release of Iron Storms DSX, an immersive Sim FPS RPG hybrid from famous Looking Glass Studio director Warren Specter, which blurred even more along the lines of the now blurred game genres would take players to a dystopian cyberpunk future, laden with shadowy conspiracies, but what really sets Thex apart from other games was its open level design with numerous problem solutions and an approach continuous in environmental interactivity. New bar for this game your way, addresses the game design to create an experience that can satisfy both fans of RPGs and other genres.

Another series that began in this period was Panit Gothic, whose first entry released in 2001, Gothic, was a third-person action role-playing game. set in a stunning 3D open world that featured truly seen detailsbefore, like its highly reactive reputation system or realistic NPC routine. Gothic also stood out thanks to its tone and setting, unlike the high fantasy heroism of so many role-playing games, Gothic was more of a fight for survival. Set within a magically sealed penal colony where inmates had taken over, this focus on survival was reflected in the mission and world design where danger lurks around every corner and no one is willing to help you without getting something substantial from you.

In return. In terms of realism, Gothic wouldn't become a huge international hit, but it received strong sales and lasting love in its home market of Germany and would receive an even more impressive sequel a year later. Another RPG that sold less than it deserved was the debut of Arcane Studios. Arcs Fatalis, which was released in 2002 originally intended to be a sequel to Ultima underworld, ARS Fatalis shows what such a game would look like 10 years later, set completely underground in a world where the sun has failed. ARX ​​falus impressed with its well-thought-out configuration. A modern take on real-time dungeon crawling and its unique Magic system that involved players drawing runes with their mouse to cast spells.

One final developer that helped define this era was Troa Games, a studio made up of interaction veterans who had previously created the first Fallout game Troyer. Arcanum of Steamworks and magiker obscura, which were released in 2001 and combined many fantasy RPG rules with a steampunk setting where the world is going through an industrial revolution that creates tension between technology and magic in other ways. Arcanum featured everything players could want and expect in a great isometric turn-based RPG including deep character creation that is almost unrivaled in its number of choices and the impact these choices can have, with aspects like race and background that sometimes radically changes how other NPCs might treat you often because other NPCs are racist.

Arcanum was a commercial. success and soon developed cult classic status, Troyer would follow this with Temple of Elemental Evil in 2003, a further adaptation based on Edition 3.5 and set in fantasy, but less fantasy than Forgotten Realm. Greyhawk The Temple of Elemental Evil features an isometric perspective similar to the infinite-engine games but with a completely turn-based combat system, making it one of the most faithful representations of the tabletop Ru set seen to this point. This resulted in impressive tactical combat encounters, but the game was also notoriously buggy and sold less than Arcanum Troyer's third game. and the final game released a year later, Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines was based on the Vampire the Masquerade Tabletop RPG and released in 2004.

This was not the first Vampire the Masquerade RPG in a decade, as the nihilistic software also released Redemption in 2000 with modest success, but Bloodlines was the definitive vampire RPG and still is all these years later, set in the seedy streets of modern-day Los Angeles. Bloodlines presents the player as a newly turned vampire, while retaining much of the choice and reactivity of Troyer's previous games that said Bloodlines was also clearly a modern role-playing game that features action, combat, a 3D world with Full voice acting and some still impressively realistic facial animations that work fantastically if you ever want to pick out bad animations in modern games to show how horrible modern games are now.

Bloodlines was a truly impressive RPG that oozed atmosphere and personality, provided plenty of RPG opportunities and felt completely modern, but it would once again be criticized for the presence of bugs and would once again be disappointing. The games would close just months after their release and if a game like Bloodlines wasn't enough to be successful in the early 2000s, suggesting that there was a serious problem in the RPG genre during this period. And yet, while many RPG developers were struggling at this time, others were finding new success in a new area and no developer is better illustrated.

This is that BioWare after breathing new life into the RPG genre with Balis Gate and reaching new heights of critical acclaim with its sequel, BioWare would begin work on two new games, one that attempted to redefine the computer RPG genre and another that truly redefined it. Neverwinter Knights released in 2002 and saw BioWare graduate from the popular Infinity engine to its new Aurora 3D engine in many ways. Neverwinter Knights to do what Boulders Gate did before it, which is to breathe new life into the genre by returning to tabletop Dungeons and Dragons and attempting to emulate that experience. in a new way, this time, however, that attempt would be even more radical, as Neverwinter Knights attempted to incorporate two of the most defining aspects of tabletop role-playing games, multiplayer and player-created content, things which are rarely seen in computer role-playing games, to this end, Winter Knights was never designed around an online multiplayer system where people had the option of playing with a group of other players and one person even took on the role. as a dungeon master for a dedicated client that gave him control over the campaign.

Never Winter Knights also provided a set of tools for players to create. custom modules similar to what had been seen in Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures in the Goldbox engine all those years ago, this toolset was quite advanced and led to an active and dedicated community built around the creation of shared player-created content, As a result, Neverwinter Knights was a truly ambitious, innovative and technically cutting-edge RPG, the only problem was the rest of the experience. Neverwinter Nights only allowed players to control a single character instead of the entire party of the infinite engine games with any computer-controlled NPC companions, which drastically reduced the complexity of combat.

The base game also had one of Bioware's least interesting stories and even the most technically impressive graphics lacked many of the details and atmosphere of the previous games' pre-rendered backgrounds, making the single-player experience of Never Winter Knights felt clear. a step back from what had happened before the game received multiple expansions and premium modules, several of which would be more praised than the base game, but while Nevern Knight's ambitious experiment in the computer RPG Evolution was Far from being a failure, it has not yet been defined. The future of the genre, but the next bioware game could be Star Wars Night of the Old Republic released in July 2003 on Xbox. 4 months later, it would also come to PC, but for once, PC was not the priority and this would be reflected in the combat.

The user interface. and the controls, which were designed with controllers in mind, even the setup could be seen as an attempt to reach a broader, more casual audience. I mean, D and D have always been popular, but it never has been. The big secret about Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic was that underneath its new sci-fi setting it was still a Dungeons and Dragons game, its game systems using D and D rules and D20 dice rolls in modified real-time. the PA combat system, but the focus had shifted away from building complex characters and varied enemies. encounters towards streamlining and style, the result is tactically simplistic but visually impressive, with plenty of cinematic animations and a more zoomed-in camera that lets you get closer to the action.

This cinematic quality also extends to the rest of the experience with plenty of better voice acting. detailed models and environments, all combined with one of bioware's most memorable stories to create a hugely fun RPG that was accessible enough to win over new fans and impressive enough to satisfy many older fans. Knights of Y Republic was a huge critical and commercial success with the Xbox version alone selling over 1 million copies, proving that Western RPGs could not only be successful on the console, but also Excel and BioWare were not the only ones moving into this new market; one of the other winners of the '90s, Bethesda, would also release its The next main entry in the Elder Scrolls series for both Xbox and PC, Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind, was released in 2002 and was a huge step for world video games. open.

Gone was the focus on procedural generation and dungeon crawling from previous Elder Scrolls, instead Morrowwind made its world the top priority and allowed players to delve into an immersive, alien landscape of scale and scope. almost unprecedented detail. If RPG developers were ever inspired by the world-building of popular fantasy offerings, then Morrowwind feels like the culmination of this idea: its world aspires to be a simulation of a realistic place where things like gameplay and Player convenience is a secondary consideration to credibility and the player is simply a visitor. As a result, Marwin doesn't have the best combat or the deepest role-playing systems, but its depiction of a virtual world is one of them. one of the most impressive ever seen in a game and was appreciated by both PC and console players.

Elder Scrolls already focused on action, combat, and single-character control, making it ideal for a controller-based console and became one of Xbox's best-selling games at the time, Xbox would even get some exclusive role-playing games released in 2004. Fable came from Lion Head Studios and designer Peter Molanu, a man with a long and impressive history of successful PC titles, but Fable was published by Microsoft. As a result, Fable is an accessible action RPG with streamlined character systems, but maintains the emphasis on choice and consequences with a world that reacts to the player's actions in many different ways, although not entirely. to the high degree that was initially promised, but Fable was also full of personality with a distinctly British sense of humor and whimsical visual style and was again a huge success for Xbox and received another highly regarded sequel in 2008.

Microsoft would also publish the next bioware game. Jade Empire was released for Xbox in 2005 and was the studio's first RPG not based on a pre-existing IP, but rather inspired by Chinese mythology. It was also bioware's first live-action RPG with a martial arts-inspired combat system that has little in common with any of its previous games and character systems that feel even more optimized for Knights of the Old Republic Jade Empire would once again impress with its story and its setting set it apart from most other games in the genre, finally the small but esteemed Xbox one. The role-playing game library would be completed with Knights of the Old Republic 2 (CIF Lords) in late 2004, unlike the first game, Knights of the Old Republic 2 would be developed by the newly formed Obsidian Entertainment, a studio founded by several EX Black Isle employees, Knights. of the Old Republic 2 had a lot in common with the first game and was built on the same engine, but Obsidian took this opportunity to put its own spin on Star Wars, creating a narrative that delved into the setting and deconstructed many parts of it.

So where PC-exclusive RPGs struggled, RPGs that also came to consoles thrived, and while the number of PC RPGs still vastly exceeded the number appearing in the two major RPGs They seemed to belong to the latter and, as the decade progressed, a new console generation emerged, this only became more true: Elder Scrolls for Oblivion was released for PC and Xbox 360 in 2006 and continued Marn's focus on open world design while significantly raising the level of presentation for this purpose. Obl would feature full voice acting, a new physics system along with more detailed character and item models, and vastly improved draw distance and environmental details, made possible by the new generation of consoles.

Oblivion also added an ambitious new radiant AI system for NPCs that gave them compelling daily schedules and even allowed for rudimentary NPC-to-NPC interactions. The result was a hugely impressive open-world game that was technically a clear step above any previous game and proved hugely popular with consumers with 3 million copies sold in 2007 alone, despite this clear commercial success; However, Oblivion received criticism from some RPG fans.older. For changes that some saw as a rejection of the series, such as the inclusion of mission markers that show players exactly where to go for mission objectives. Hit detection based combat that no longer used hidden dice rolls.

More extensive fast travel and heavy use of level scaling. These features increased the player's comfort. but some saw this as coming at the cost of challenge and immersion. Oblivion is also notable in that it was primarily developed for the Xbox 360 and then ported to PC later in development and this increasing focus on consoles shows in some of its UI options even though when it comes to the open-world role-playing games, Oblivion had little competition. Pranab Bites' next entry in the Gothic series would be released that same year and provided another large, technically impressive world to explore, but it also lost much of what made the first two games so special and had notable performance issues.

Their next attempt, in 2009, would be more successful, but only returning to panit routes and moving away from a huge open world, there was also the apparently older SCS-inspired Two Worlds in 2007, but was once again let down by the technological problems that seemed to show how difficult it was to create such a large open world game. Oblivion's true rival would come once again from Bethesda when they released Fallout 3 in 2008, bringing their popular open world formula to Fallout. Post-apocalyptic wasteland, like Oblivion before it, Bethesda once again excelled at creating a vast and visually stunning world, rich in detail and atmosphere, Fallout 3 would also add a first-person shooter to the mix and, although its shooting was clearly behind any real FPS of its time.

It was still a significant step that would broaden the game's appeal beyond traditional RPG players to complement this core game. Bethesda also created the Volt Tech-assisted aiming system that players can enter to slow down time and take specific actions, giving combat an optional turn-based element that was intended to retain the tactical feel of the early Fallout games. and once again, Fallout 3 was hugely successful, receiving universal acclaim from critics and even winning many Game of the Year awards despite tough competition, making it one of the most acclaimed RPGs in the world. the history. and yet, where Oblivion received a bit of pushback from some older fans, Fallout 3 seemed to spark its own mini civil war, with many older Fallout fans unhappy that the series had switched from an isometric turn-based RPG to Oblivion with weapons and that the company that did it. change was not the original creator of the series and did not always seem to respect established law.

This was one of the clearest examples of division within the RPG communities and growing discontent towards the way VRE was changing, but for the time being this did not spread. far beyond the online Fallout community, meanwhile, the other leader of the RPG industry during this period, BioWare, was also enjoying record success. In 2007, they would release Mass Effect, another original IP, this time in a sci-fi setting that was inspired by popular series like Star Wars and Star Trek and classic space games like star flight and star control, in fact, Mass Effect's setting where humanity has recently developed interstellar travel due to the discovery of ancient technological devices that put them in contact with other alien races was one of its best features. was intelligently communicated to players to effectively draw them into this new universe.

Mass Effect's gameplay revolved around a third-person shooter combat system that, like Fallout 3, was still behind other third-person shooters of the time, but still represented a significant step forward. Closing that gap and To appeal to new audiences, the game also featured an ambitious, if somewhat flawed, planetary exploration system, but the most praised aspect of Mass Effect was its story and its commitment to providing the game with meaningful options, something that was made even more exciting by being the first entry in a new trilogy. Where it was promised that player actions would have an impact throughout the entire series, Mass Effect would also launch on Xbox 360 6 months before coming to PC and would continue to showcase the console's new RPG Supremacy in this era that said there were still notable PC exclusives.

The RPGs that were released as Obsidian Entertainments were never WI Nights 2 in 2006, which built on the first game while continuing to offer multiplayer and player-created content in other ways, although Winter Knights 2 was never a comeback. to a more traditional DND style campaign that he also brought back. complete party control, although like the first game its best content is considered by most to be found in its expansions, another important PC RPG of this period was The Witcher CD project in 2007. The Witcher used the Bioware engine Never to Knights and adapted the then largely unknown series of Polish fantasy books about a magically mutated monster hunter, in the end, the dark and morally complex environment of the witcher and its unique atmosphere with some of its greatest strengths and, Although the rhythm-based combat was somewhat less successful, it still offered a big, ambitious RPG with a lot of depth. and a more PC focus, other modestly successful PC RPGs could also be found in this period and many retained an older design, but it was clear that the bigger budget and more hyped RPGs would always be found on PC as well. consoles at this time and Games that were still released exclusively for PC generally aimed at a much smaller and more dedicated market, even though appealing to consoles, concessions were made to both complexity and control schemes, and trying to create a game that appealed to both console and PC gamers was a challenge that no game better summed up than the decades-ending RPG Dragon Age Origins Dragon Age would see BioWare create another original IP this time with a focus on heroic fantasy.

Dark as such, the game was conceived as a spiritual successor that would be heavily inspired by the board games Balis Gate and Neverwinter Knights and aims to provide a more tactical and old school RPG after Knights of the Old Republic. Jade Empire and Mass Effect, more console focused, so this game would be a return to bioware's roots, to exactly what made them famous in the first place, and yet how do you make a game like that that also meets the demands of consoles. Dragon Age Origins is largely a product of that dilemma, and the clearest way BioWare has attempted to resolve it is by making substantial changes between the console and PC versions when it comes to UI and control. schemes, this meant that the PC version revolved more around an optional perspective of the city and the ability for players to pause combat to issue commands and micromanage party members, while the console version has no view. top-down and a reduced difficulty focused on playing in real time and broadcasting much more. limited commands to improve both versions BioWare created a clever customizable AI system that helps reduce the need for micromanagement on PC and helps replace micromanagement on console Origins would also mark a return to the more complicated character systems of RPGs older, while trying to optimize these systems wherever possible so that less experienced players don't feel overwhelmed, so Dragon Age Origins is a rare RPG that falls between old and new, the PC and console, while trying to please almost everyone and given the difficulty of This task seemed largely successful, but some more experienced RPG fans found the game too simplistic given what was promised and some console players may have meaning excluded by getting a more simplified version of the game that pleases everyone.

Dragon Age Origins also tends to be difficult. It had some fantastic characters and an interesting and unique origin system where players could choose one of six different backgrounds for their character, each of which had completely different opening chapters and many subsequent consequences. Still, what this game represented is its most interesting aspect to me as Origins. was an attempt to solve a growing problem in the RPG genre and perfectly encapsulated where the genre was at as the decade came to a close, so the 2000s would once again be a decade of change, but this time that change It was about the growing importance of consoles at the beginning of the decade, but over the years the biggest names made sure their games were also released on consoles and often made consoles the top priority, while developers who continued exclusively on PC seemed to struggle with this shift to consoles. a number of additional changes to how the RPGs were designed, including a shift from turn-based and group combat towards action combat and individual character changes to the control schemes and user interface design to make them more controller-friendly gameplay, simplified character systems and rulesets that won't alienate less experienced players, a general shift toward accessibility and player convenience that did occur in other genres, as well as a continued focus on narrative choices and reactivity, but with a particular emphasis on binary morality systems, something seen in Knights of the Old Republic Fable.

Jade Empire Mass Effect Fallout 3 and others and finally a greater focus on the cinematic aspect and production values, for these reasons many could accuse this period of being a time where RPGs would be simplified to appeal to a broader audience, sometimes at the expense of pre-existing ones. Fandoms and this split in the RPG fanbase and the way people interpreted these changes would continue to play a key role in the next decade and yet new markets and greater accessibility ensured that the decade of The 2000s were also a time when many new fans developed a love for role-playing games. which is something that should not be underestimated, it was also the decade in which RPGs really cemented their reputation as great story games.

RPGs with great stories obviously existed before the year 2000, but in the past the story was often considered valuable but optional, and yet in the 2000s the story came to be the most defining and important part. of VRE for many people and the 2000s certainly produced many great stories, so the RPG genre continued to gain new fans and growing issues. The 2010s would take role-playing games to new horizons. heights of commercial success, but this would also be a decade of controversy and disappointment as the gaming industry at large leaned further towards a AAA model while dealing with the rapid rise of independent games, but before that the decade began. in a very similar way to how the last one had ended and its beginnings. years Once More would produce many new titles.

In 2010, BioWare would continue its streak of success with the release of Mass Effect 2, which picked up exactly where the last game left off. The second Mass Effect entry would earn rave reviews and win numerous Game of the Year awards with the story and characters being its most praised effects, despite this, the changes Mass Effect 2 made say a lot about bioware's priorities and the state of RPGs in this period, as their RPG systems were further simplified with the removal of the inventory system and planetary exploration. Meanwhile, the biggest areas of improvement were its third-person action combat and the cinematic quality of its story, which now included dramatic action scenes that would be enough to make even Michael Bay proud, so Mass Effect 2 was one step away. further from the genre. roots and a further step towards role-playing games as a AAA medium that could go toe-to-toe with the popular cinematic action games or third-person shooters and compete with them in their own game and for now this move was widely praised for now Even in 2010, not all RPGs were as successful in making this transition.

Lion Head Studios Fable 3 would also be released that year and would also attempt to streamline its RPG design to create an even more accessible take on the genre, but it did not receive new levels of criticism. praise and, in return,was widely criticized for this simplification, while Obsidian Entertainment continued to play the role of the role-playing game industry's subversive younger brother with the release of its spnr RPG Alpha Protocol, which received poor reviews for its gunplay and technical issues and , however, still developed a cult following. Following the strength of its reactivity and unique setting, Obsidian would have more success with its next title Fallout New Vegas, which was also released in 2010 and also had some technical issues, even though many fans saw New Vegas as a comeback. more faithful to The setting and by leveraging the Brio engine of Bethesda's game, Obsidian, they were able to combine the vast, detailed open world of Bethesda's previous games with Obsidian's writing and Quest's design to create an experience that captured some of the best elements of both in an era when most big role-playing games seemed to be becoming less RPG-like than New Vegas, instead putting a renewed emphasis on interlocking factions and broad player choice, creating one of the most popular and enduring RPGs of its generation. 2011 was an even more year full of CD projects.

The Witcher series returned with its second entry featuring new action combat based on classic Quick Attack, Strong Attack, Dodge Trinity and a much improved presentation that showed clear cinematic aspirations. The Witcher 2 placed even more emphasis on story and player choice, with the middle section of the game having two completely different ones. paths depending on the player's previous actions The Witcher 2 would also be much more commercially successful when its predecessor, thanks in large part to its console release, this time 2011 would also see the return of DSX in Human Revolution de idos Montreal DSX had received one sequel already thanks to the disappointing Invisible War in 2003, but Human Revolution sought to reboot the series and kept much of what made the original a success officially a prequel to the first game Human Revolution brought its own distinctive sense of style with a transhumanism inspired. narrative and the same gaming genre combined 20 2011 was also the year that the soul-like Shamra began its rise to dominance after the success of the software's Dark Souls, inspired by the software's previous Kingfield series, which in turn was once inspired by Wizardry Dark Souls and the genre it helped. to create a distinct enough feel to be recognized as a standalone, but these games would contain many of the features seen in other action RPGs, including character class leveling systems and Cho's narrative voice; however, the move away from direct storytelling and greater emphasis on challenging skills.

The RPG-based gameplay also helps distinguish these games from the rest of the RPG genre. Still, Dark Souls' success not only despite its older difficulty approach, but in many ways directly because it shows a desire to return to video games. In the past and time, this would be seen in the rest of the RPG genre, but 2011 would also feature Pinnacle of B's ​​mainstream success with The Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim, the best-selling RPG ever made and one of the best-selling games in all time.Skyrim received the Universal Award, as well as many Game of the Year awards, making it a truly genre-defining title in many ways, although Skyrim was just the refinement of Oblivion, but this also made it one of the most refined open worlds ever seen in a game right now.

Cue something vast in scale, rich in detail, accessible in design, and offering hundreds of hours of exploration and immersion in a virtual fantasy sandbox. What Skyrim didn't do was innovate with its RPG systems or its storytelling. But in the end, this didn't matter, it was the right game. at the right time, a raising of the bar for open worlds that came just before the open world genre really took off and started to become so saturated, and Skyrim's enduring popularity to this day is a testament to how well it was made and that's why Skyrim was The definitive vindication of the direction RPGs had taken was proof that if an RPG is broadly appealing enough, it can reach a mass audience and that changes to attract to console players, simplifying accessibility, etc., were the right move, except when Bethesda arrived in 2011.

The biggest success in its history also saw the other industry leader, BioWare, get its first taste of failure and was the result of exactly the same thing. Dragon Age 2 abandoned Origin's attempt to appeal to both PC and console gamers to make Dragon Age more like Mass Effect. With the addition of action gameplay, a voiced protagonist, streamlined systems, and a greater focus on presentation, the result was a solid if shallow action RPG that was considered well below the usual bioware standard for years. BioWare had found increasing success championing this focus and dragon. ag2 was just another step in the same direction and yet this time critics and particularly fans felt that BioWare had gone too far and lost the qualities that had made the original Dragon Age so good, but one game by alone does not prove a rule, especially in one year. that Skyrim redefined what success meant for an RPG and blame for Dragon Age 2's lackluster reception was also placed on an accelerated development cycle that led to issues such as extensive asset reuse over time, although it would become in bioware's next role-playing game for more than one game, the long-awaited. conclusion to the Mass Effect Trilogy released in 2012 and focused even more on the action and cinematic storytelling of the last game, but Mass Effect 3 Once More failed to replicate the level of success of its predecessor and, although critics were generally happy , the fans were happy. t and there would be significant backlash for the disappointing ending that many felt failed to live up to the original promise of a trilogy where player choices would have far-reaching consequences.

The biggest addition to Mass Effect 3 was a horde-style multiplayer mod mode that was something new for an RPG, but wasn't something RPG fans particularly wanted. Bioware's next RPG was Dragon Age Inquisition in 2014 with the third Dragon Age. BioWare wanted to address the criticisms of the previous game and create something in between the first and second games that will hopefully appeal to experienced and casual audiences again. To this end, the combat again relied heavily on action, but the view The optional top-down and tactical pause from the first game returned, and although the protagonist once again had a voice, they didn't fully do so.

With a backstory as defined as Dragon Age 2, Inquisition also featured a more open-world inspired design and was huge, far surpassing the size of many other BioWare RPGs in terms of pure content, so In many ways, Inquisition was seen as a return to form after Dragon. Age 2, even if it didn't receive high clades from many previous BioWare RPGs and yet the studio's next RPG was anything but Mass Effect Andromeda released in 2017 and marked a new LW for a developer that had led the role-playing game industry for years and produced. Several of its most acclaimed games, Andromeda, told an entirely new story, made further improvements to combat, and would bring back the focus on planetary exploration seen in the first game, which now fits well with the new popular trend of an open world and, However, it was also heavily criticized for its weak plot and dated presentation, making it BioWare's worst-received RPG to date, but at least the multiplayer horde mode returned while Bethesda also failed to replicate past success with its upcoming 2015 role-playing game, Fallout 4, while it was still selling well and Fallout 4 received positive reviews.

It would also receive criticism for its simplified RPG elements, with the decision to switch to a voice protagonist and use a mass effects-inspired dialogue wheel proving particularly polarizing in other ways. Fallout 4 was exactly what people might expect from an open-world game from Beesa at this point and made substantial improvements to combat while also including a new base-building system and yet the long-standing trend Simply improving the action, combat, and overall presentation to gain a claim and increase sales no longer seemed to be enough and Fallout 4 in particular would be heavily compared not only to the older Fallout games, but also to obsidians Fallout New Vegas and, although industry leaders BioWare and Bethesda showed signs of struggling, promising new RPGs seemed to mostly disappear in this period, the early 2000s were also a time of change, but still. led to the creation of numerous new RPG series and established several notable developers, and yet in the 2010s this did not seem to be the case.

A rare example of a great new intellectual property was the 2012 action role-playing game Kingdoms of Amala Reckoning from great games. which featured an all-star team of developers, including Morrowwind lead designer Ken Roston and fantasy offering Ra Salvatore, and yet Kingdoms of Amal's combination of fast-paced combat and large semi-open world failed to attract enough players to make a profit even though it sold more. 1 million copies RPG budgets had grown a lot at this point, which meant new IPS were risky, so bjra seemed to consolidate into a small number of big series and yes, the genre's problems were still deeper because while role-playing games were becoming less RPG by adding elements from other genres such as action, combat, and cinematic storytelling, other genres were also becoming more RPG, such as adding leveling systems, equipment upgrades, and dialogue options and narrative.

This was the era where open world games came to dominate AAA games and the most prominent open world developer, Ubisoft. was very quick to add experience points and skill trees to its open worlds, does this make Far Cry 3 an RPG? Well, probably not, but at this point the distinction was starting to blur and, as a result, the experience provided by open-world RPGs was becoming less unique. many other genres would also add RPG elements. I mean, even competitive multiplayer games like Call of Duty 4 still added experience points and allowed players to level up as they played and by the end of a decade it had become difficult to find a great AAA. game without at least some kind of RPG element, whether it be loot upgrades, skill trees, dialogue options or all of these things, this was also the period when options matter, the adventure game style grew in popularity with games like ttal The Walking Dead, Life is Strange and Until Dawn all emphasized player choice and narrative reactivity, something that had increasingly come to define RPGs since the 2000s, which now had everything a genre centered around it and therefore, as RPGs were losing their identity, other genres were also claiming it, leaving RPGs older or harder. fans a drift into a genre that had moved away from what used to define it, while ensuring that newer or more casual fans had plenty of options to choose from and were less reliant on RPGs to get their RPG fix, Of course, not everything was doom and gloom in this period.

Great RPGs could still have huge commercial and critical success, as 2015's The Witcher 3 proudly showed that the third installment of the Witcher took the high production values ​​of action, combat and the strong story of the last game and added them to a huge open world complete with horses, ships, card games, and enough memorable side quests to keep players happy for over 100 hours. The Witcher 3 was a fantastic game and exemplified the type of RPG that many developers probably wish they could make, but the reality was that The Witcher 3 was not a game that most developers could make.

Not all developers had the millions of dollars and hundreds of employees necessary to make something of this size and quality, and the small number of developers who did probably felt they needed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and weren't willing. risk making a game that was more complicated or inaccessible than old school due to fear of commercial failure and even if they didn't feel that way, their publisher might as well have done it, so this was the state of RPGs, bamra se had come back every timemore streamlined and simplified after the transition to consoles and RPG fans were increasingly unhappy with this, while other games added RPG elements, further diluting the genre's appeal and high cost.

Development meant that going against this trend was considered very risky, so fortunately the RPG genre struggled during the 2010s. It would also see the rise of indie games and it was through this that older styles of role-playing games would return, eventually leading to the possible salvation of the genre. Role-playing games have a long history and some developers like Jeff Fogle and Spiderweb Software have been making RPGs indie since the '90s and have never stopped; In fact, Spiderweb software has released a total of 26 games, almost one a year, and they're still going strong. The 2010s are when the indie market caught up with its developers as digital.

Distribution and a small number of influential indie hits helped establish indie games as a distinct and valuable part of the gaming landscape. This meant that smaller games could still succeed without needing to appeal to wider audiences and this created an opportunity for game styles and genres that had become ignored by the gaming mainstream, one of the best examples of This was Almost Human Legend of Grimrock, which released in 2012 and was a real-time grid-based dungeon crawler in the vein of the once-so-influential Dungeon Master, except with a modern design. UI in graphics, this meant that Legend of Grimrock was a successful throwback for fans of an older and now rarely seen type of RPG that could also be enjoyed by newer players and could even serve as an introduction for some people to the subgenre. and Legend of Grimrock was very successful selling almost a million copies and led to another well-received sequel 2 years later.

This was also the time when certain older RPGs began to return in the form of remasters, such as the improved addition of Boulders Gate, which was also released in 2012 and as well. helped renew interest in an older style of RPG, but the biggest catalyst for this era was the arrival of crowdfunding. It started in 2012 on Kickstarter when former Interplay founder Brian Fargo showed up in the middle of a desert and started talking about how great Wasteland was in 1988 and how he'd been trying to get publishers on board with Wasteland 2 for years, but He never made it.

Inplay made Fallout 3. I love that game, no, we made Fallout 1 and two, there was a Fallout 1 and two, then he asked people to give him money. and the money that people gave Wasteland 2 would receive almost $3 million in just over a month, which was more than triple the original goal and soon other RPG developers would follow in its footsteps, including genre veterans Obsidian Entertainment and laran Studios, as well as RPG newcomers like hairbrain Schemes and Alcat. The idea behind this was that RPG fans still wanted classic board game-inspired RPGs, but publishers would no longer fund these types of games, so these developers were using crowdfunding to get such games off the ground. games and show that there was an audience for them.

The result of this was a whole new wave of more traditional G-RPGs in a variety of styles and settings. The first to release was Shadow Ron Returns in 2013, which was based on the cyberpunk fantasy tabletop role-playing game Shadowrun. Shadow Run Returns was a modest but solid turn. -based on an RPG with tactical combat and a reactive story and showed that crowdfunded RPGs could be successful. Two more sequels would follow, Dragon fo in 2014 and Hong Kong in 2015, which were significant improvements over the first game in almost every way and featured excellent features. stories and writing Meanwhile, Wasteland 2 released in 2014 to two positive reviews and delivered exactly what was promised: it was a faithful successor to Wasteland and the original two sequels in that it was a grim post-apocalyptic RPG with deep turn-based combat characters and with many narrative options, 2014 would also see Laran Studios' original Divinity as a game that was not based on any particular old board or crpg and yet would feature an incredibly detailed and interactive world reminiscent of the approach once seen in Ultima 7.

This created an impressive level of simulation, but also allowed for a lot of creative puzzle design and became a key part of Original Sin's unique turn-based combat, where elemental effects and environments could be combined in all kinds of creative and chaotic ways. The result was one of the most exciting, rewarding and unpredictable combat systems seen in any RPG and Laran would follow this with an even more successful sequel in 2017 that improved on the weaker quality of the first game, its story and even the level of presentation with features like full voice acting. Meanwhile, in 2015, Obsidian would find success with Pillars of Eternity, a spiritual successor to infinite-engine RPGs that featured real-time with paused combat and a familiar isometric perspective.

Pillars of Eternity was set in its own original universe and featured its own custom-built ruleset, but the influence of Dungeons and Dragons is still clear and the influence of infinite engine games is even clearer, particularly in the design of the user interface, which indicates that there is still a clear attempt to modernize and improve the experience of those older games to create something that can be attractive. new players as well as old pillars of Eternity would also receive a sequel in 2018, which added a greater focus on exploring the Overworld and Pirates and Obsidian, also released Tyranny in 2016, another isometric RPG with real-time combat. with pause that featured the unique premise of a world where the villain has already won and the player is chosen as an agent. of that villain who must maintain order by acting as sworn judge and executioner in exile would also have a busy decade and followed Wasteland 2 with tides of torment by num Mana in 2017 tides of num Mana was a spiritual successor to torments by plcape that was based in the Numera tabletop RPG and explored similar philosophical and thematic themes to its legendary inspiration Plcape Torment is a tough act to follow, but Num Manira's ties certainly tried in exile.

Ben released bards taale 4 barrows deep a year later, which after many years saw players finally Bra reviews returning to the city of Scar for the game was mixed with technical issues cited as a frequent problem, but the Deep turn-based combat was most praised and the modern visuals make the game feel somewhat unique within the now largely overlooked turn-based realm. -based on Dungeon Crawlers finally on Exile would also release Wasteland 3 in 2020 which made many improvements to the second game and received a lot of praise. Another interesting developer that found success through Kickstarter was alcat games, which released its debut game Pathfinder kingmaker in 2018, which kingmaker was based on. the Pathfinder tabletop role-playing game, which itself was a branch of dnd edition 3.5 and featured real-time with paused combat, making it similar to the Pillars of Eternity;

However, while the pillars felt subtly modern and somewhat restricted, Pathfinder Kingmaker fully embraced the complexities and depth of its adapted ruleset. To create an experience that wasn't very accessible but was surprisingly faithful, Alcat would follow King Maker with Raph of the Righteous in 2021, which added the ability to freely switch between real-time and turn-based combat to create an even adaptation. more faithful and fun. All of the Kickstarter RPGs from this era were throwbacks to games of yesteryear, however, Warhorse Studios' 2018 Kingdom Come Deliverance, for example, was an open-world first-person RPG in a similar style to Elder Scrolls. Kingdom Come Deliverance stood out, however, for being a historical role-playing game set in the 15th century.

Bohemia, which went to great lengths to create a sense of historical authenticity, also rejected the modern RPG genre's commitment to player convenience by removing many Quest markers that limit players' abilities to save, requiring players to sleep, eat, and repair equipment, etc., resulting in a game that looked modern but felt distinctive. Kingdom Come Deliverance is an authentic historical setting and the lack of support is exactly the kind of thing modern publishers might be hesitant to take risks on, but its strong sales prove that this was a risk that paid off and is still the game most important role.

What likely came from this era was 2019's Disco Alysium. Disco Alium was not crowdfunded, but was published independently by its developers. Alm was also not based on any existing tabletop role-playing game, but began as a custom game of D&D. Among friends, Disco Alysium casts players as a down-but-not-quite cop trying to solve a murder case. in a ruined post-revolutionary city as he tries to pick up the pieces of his broken life or at least not break it too much. was a clear priority in this game, but surprisingly it went even further than most by completely changing video game lore and not including any combat at all, and yet disco alium was as RPG as RPGs come, with extensive gameplay. skill system and frequent skill checks that can dramatically change the options available and how different scenes play out, plus an inventory and upgrade system and a heavy emphasis on player choice and embodying the role of your character.

The most surprising thing is the success that Disco Alium would have despite its lack of combat. and the topic or maybe even because of it. I mean, if you were to design an RPG that you'd assume traditional publishers would have little interest in, it might look like this, and yet Disco Alium's unusual qualities ended up helping it stand out. and his fantastic writing took care of everything else. There are many other RPGs that could be mentioned here, as well as games that championed exploration like Under Rail or powerful choices and consequences like Age of Decadence or other games inspired by Fallout like Atom RPG or by Rock Gate like Black Geyser or other games with historical settings like the Expedition series or other games that adapted D and D like Salasa Crown of the Maesta or other games about old-school dungeon crawling both grid-based like Grimoire Heralds of the Winged Exemplar and free-to-play .

Motion based action like Luna Sid. There are also games that don't draw inspiration from the past but try to do something new like Banner Saga or Outward. There are also successful RPG Maker games like Lisa the Pain and Undertale, and you can drag this. section for a while if you want and that's not including other mostly ignored subgenres in this video subgenre, like traditional Rogue lies or Diablo-inspired action RPGs, so the rise of indie games changed RPGs once again, mainly by providing much-needed diversity. Every game mentioned in this section is a classic of the era, but every game could be a classic to the right person.

Indie games allowed these more specific audiences and these more specific types of RPGs to survive and sometimes thrive in an industry where they otherwise seemed forgotten and thus when mainstream RPGs became trapped by their larger budgets. , indie RPGs were liberated by the lack of them, when mainstream RPGs became less RPGs, as indie RPGs were able to benefit by going back to the genre's roots, and when mainstream RPGs began to have difficulties due to his inability to please everyone. Indie RPGs came to fill some of the gaps, and yet for all the benefits they brought, they didn't mean the genre's problems were over.

For every decade covered in this video so far, the gaming genre RPG game started off with a bang in the 2020s. However, if that were not the case for the first time, the biggest game of 2020 was CD Project's long-awaited and ambitious follow-up to The Witcher 3, and yet Despite the huge hype, Cyberpunk 2077 would launch with numerous technical issues that were just as bad for the PS4. The version was removed from the PlayStation store and investors filed a class-action lawsuit for years. Tri a RP GS had evolved in only one direction, but now the bigger and better philosophy that has driven thegenre to record success seemed to be reaching its end. breaking point and this doesn't just apply to the CD project, in fact since the beginning of the decade every major RPG developer seems to have let down Bethesda for following the disastrous launch of their life service game focused on multiplayer Fallout 76 with its first new IP in 25 years in 2023 and yet, although Starfield released two positive reviews, it also received significant backlash from fans, particularly Bethesda's core audience, meanwhile BioWare would also release a game of poorly received live-action shooters with the short-lived Anam in 2018 before the next installment in the Dragon Age dreadwolf series was announced in 2018, but it still doesn't even have a release date and its Development has been quite problematic, while a new Mass Effect game was also announced and then nothing more was heard from the final member of the modern Blizzard Big 3.

It would also release the long-awaited Diablo 4 in 2023 to a similar reception to Starfield, as for the other open world games that seem to have created a light RPG version of the genre, they have produced many successful titles, but where these could succeed as games, there is often a feeling that they still fail as RPGs due to their relative simplicity and as for the Kickstarter and Indie success stories, yes they were successful, but they don't seem to have created any promised RPG revolution. In fact, after multiple old school RPGs, Obsidian seems to have gone back to making more conventional action RPGs with both Outer Worlds in 2019 and the upcoming Al World 2 and they admit that they are both currently in development, it seems unlikely that they will be mainstays of Eternity 3 at this point despite strong sales of the first game and story.

I was left unfinished in Exile. I also returned to work on a AAA action RPG titled Clockwork Revolution and even more telling than this is that both In Exile and Obsidian agreed to be bought by Xbox game studios, giving up their independence in Pro ESS when the game was launched. crowdfunding. These games were promised to Making Waves with the idea that publisher involvement is bad for both developers and fans, and yet both Obsidian and In Exile responded to the crowdfunding success by becoming owned by one of the publishers. making old-school RPGs may not have been quite what they expected, and as for future big RPGs, many still seem to be far away and stories of troubled development aren't exactly hard to find, so the RPG genre looks like it could be in crisis once again with protracted developments, high-profile failures, a general loss of identity and developers. indies struggling to capitalize on the success, all of which suggests that the genre is experiencing major problems or at least that would be the conclusion of this video if it weren't.

For a final game release, it seems fitting that if any game were to save RPGs it would be this one, Boulders Gate, released in the genre's darkest period and did more to prove the genre's viability than almost any other game in the history of role-playing games. It did this by returning to what created the genre in the first place, Dungeons and Dragons adaptations that Tred embodies tabletop role-playing game design and now, 25 years later, Boulders Gate has returned with a third entry and appears to have done exactly what same everywhere. Once again, it also seems fitting that Larry and Studios are the developers behind this game.

Laran are RPG veterans who never saw the same level of success as some of their rivals, but continued making RPGs anyway. They are a studio that survived the great migration of console RPGs. something that cannot be said of all PC developers and a studio that stood out during the slind Resurgence kickstarter by creating two of the most reviewed games of that time and now with Boulders Gate 3 they have not only created one of the most acclaimed video games universally. games in history, but they have also shown Beyond any Shadow of Doubt that a deeper, board game-inspired RPG is not only possible in a AAA game, not only viable in the modern market, and not only popular among fans of modern role-playing games, but that this type of role-playing game is for many people better than conventional role-playing games that have been criticized for years for being superficial and moving away from the roots of the genre.

Biscate 3, on the other hand, does exactly the opposite. Character creation is absolutely complicated. Missions often do not allow players to choose. are frequent and have far-reaching consequences that are not always obviously signposted Combat is turn-based and offers many options for tactical depth The world is impressively simulated without being just another generic open world Dice roles are emphasized instead of hiding and all of this is done with a level of presentation and polish on par with other AAA games. Boulders Gate 3 is the game RPG fans have been waiting for and it's the game the RPG genre needed, but what happens next in my ideal future, Boulders, is still unknown.

Gate 3 would inspire even greater interest in indie RPGs, creating even more choice and diversity as new games continue to be created, while also demonstrating to publishers and studio heads the potential of an RPG design. deeper, tabletop-inspired role-playing games, reversing a long-standing trend and leading. to more RPGs like mainstream RPGs, and if I'm really dreaming, Laran Studio's next game does to Boulders Gate 3 what Boulders Gate 2 did to Boulders Gate 1 in reality, although things usually don't work out as planned and as the history of role-playing games demonstrates. Change is the nature of this industry, and just as it happened before, it will happen again.

Reality is complicated and the only way to truly know what the future holds is to stick around and see what happens right now, but it's hard not to. Hopefully RPGs have come a long way, but as long as tabletop RPGs continue to provide inspiration, the genre should never forget where it came from and good games should continue to be made. Thanks for watching if you made it to the end of this video and still want more RPG content then you're in luck. The book Dungeons and Desktops was a great help in creating this video, so if you want to know more about the history of RPGs, I recommend it, go even deeper than this video. particularly about some of the earlier periods of RPG history and their offerings are very knowledgeable.

Matt Barton also has a YouTube channel that contains interviews with many RPG developers, something he's been doing for years and years, so consider checking that out too if you like. For even more reading on role-playing games, there is also the very high-quality book crpg, a guide to computer role-playing games, edited by Felipe Pepe and which has contributions from all sorts of interesting people. It is also available as an eBook for free. The RPG book does something similar. but it's also quite different from dungeons and desktops and is particularly useful if you want to know more about roleplaying games in other non-english speaking regions, which is a topic usually overlooked in this video, so there it is. you have, you have a good reason to check it. and if that's still not enough for you, try checking out crpg addict, which is a blog and review series written by one guy that aims to cover all computer role-playing games in chronological order and has been running for 14 years old, one of the good things about crpg addict is that each game is evaluated according to the same criteria, allowing for excellent comparisons.

It's up to the year 1993, at this point it must be almost 1994. From the looks of it, yeah, there's not much more ahead, anyway, all three are worth it, so check them out and there are also options to support financially to these creators. I'll put links below, you can also support me on Patreon like As usual, the next video should be about the Boulders Gate as soon as I decide which Boulders Gate it will be. See you in a little over a month, I guess.