What Happened to Good RPGs?
Remember all those PC RPGs made during the late ’80s and early ’90s? (Ok, I can’t say I remember those from the late ’80s since I didn’t have a computer back then, and I’d have been too young to understand much anyway, but I know they existed.) It seemed like everybody and their cousin was coming up with one and, even with the hardware constraints of the time, some of them turned out really well. Quite normal if you think about it, make enough of something and some are bound to be very good.
Then the genre seemed to have matured in the late ’90s and early ’00s. You had less quantity, but more quality. Who hasn’t heard of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, Diablo 2, Gothic 1 and 2, Knights of the Old Republic, Might and Magic 6, Morrowind or Neverwinter Nights (and the list is by no means exhaustive)? I think these games will be remembered for a long time to come, and even by those who haven’t played them!
But then something snapped. The quantity kept dropping but this time it started taking the quality down with it. You have a lot of focus on graphics at the expense of story and feeling and the few attempts at doing everything right that turned into a bug-ridden mess. New content is scarce and even the sequels flop. Gothic 3 was a buggy mess, Knights of the Old Republic 2 was basically unfinished, Neverwinter Nights 2 seems to have flown in pretty much under the radar and Oblivion turned out nowhere near what it should have been. Thankfully we have The Witcher now, but that’s far too little in far too long…
I know I overlooked some good but lesser known titles, but I only included well known ones on both lists to have a fair comparison. So, honestly, what’s going on? Is it just me not looking in the right places or is the PC RPG an aging genre that should start looking into booking its own funeral?
And no, I won’t take MMORPGs into account, those are something else entirely, I’m talking about games you can play alone, on your computer, and especially about games that you can own, not rent!
