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Baldur's Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 show that the future of RPGs is in games way more ambitious, weird and unexpected than anything Bethesda and Bioware have to offer (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] 72 points 2 years ago (11 children)

It’s funny and sad knowing that Bethesda once were the company making weird and ambitious RPGs.

Morrowind is one of the weirdest and most ambitious games of that era.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    Morrowind was thier hail mary to stay in buisness.

    Then they gave the series to Howard and his crew...

    It's like the super bowl champs giving the next decade to the Bears.

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Morrowind: An oral history on Polygon is a wonderful read.

    All the little stories Kirkbride tells are great. My favourite is him designing progressively weird shit to dupe Howard with. He’d be like “Hey Todd, can we put this in the game?” and after he knowingly got knocked back he’d present him something more palatable.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's a classic negotiation technique abusing the psychological anchoring effect.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Yeah, I’ve heard of writers on shows like the Animaniacs doing it, insisting heavily on a more outrageous joke having to go in knowing it’ll get knocked back as a Trojan horse to slip the real jokes they want in.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Indeed, as the article writes

    Even Skyrim—certainly a weird, ambitious, and janky RPG in its own right—refined and streamlined the formula set by Morrowind and Oblivion, rather than expanding on their eccentricities, and that trend only continued in the studio's following games.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I find it bizarre that people think Starfield isn't "weird and ambitious". Starfield is absolutely weird and ambitious, that's why people didn't like it, it tried to do something new and that something new turned out to not be fun.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    I disagree, if anything I think Starfield was Bethesda not going far enough.

    They created a new setting and added a couple of new mechanics, but they cradled it in the same tired formula that they have been doing for decades.

    I had hoped that since it was a new IP, this would be the moment they would take a chance and try something new. Try a new approach to quest design and world building, don't just make the game bigger but make the experience in it more varied with more interesting interactions. Instead it felt like new coat of paint on an old house and when they got called out on it, they became defensive.

    I broke my heart when they said the lesson they learned was to stick to the same formula and when they tried to do it with Shattered Space, people hated it even more.

    I hate to say it but it seems like Bethesda already peaked.

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