Xbox has seen fit to acquire no fewer than three dedicated RPG developers in inXile Entertainment, Obsidian, and Bethesda, with Blizzard potentially on the way. Baldur’s Gate 3 and Diablo IV are two of 2023’s biggest games. Led by studios like CD Projekt, FromSoftware, Bethesda, and now Larian Studios, the role-playing genre has lately managed to infiltrate virtually every part of the gaming consciousness. To me, though, Baldur’s Gate 3 is more proof that we’re in the midst of a new golden age for one of gaming’s oldest genres. To some observers it seemed like an upset that an unapologetically dense and old-school RPG like Baldur’s Gate 3 should find such mainstream success. It quickly became one of 2023’s breakout successes, garnering rave reviews and hundreds of thousands of concurrent players on Steam. Last week, Larian Studios released Baldur’s Gate 3 after a lengthy period in early access. Out of this period arose another developer, little-known at the time but making major waves today: Larian Studios. It wasn’t until the advent of Kickstarter that classic Pillars of Eternity, Wasteland 2, and Shadowrun began to find their footing thanks to the backing of dedicated fans who never really went away. Some developers claimed that RPG elements as we know them today were relics of a bygone era and that games were “growing up.” Mainstream developers like BioWare stripped out RPG elements from Mass Effect 3 while older developers faded away. The consensus in that period among western publishers was that old-school RPGs were too dense and esoteric for the average gamer. “ just died for a very long time,” he said at the time.
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