2023 isn’t a blueprint for the future of RPGs — but it might be an omen

polygon.com:

2023 delivered us the ultimate gamer’s dilemma: smooch or spaceship?

At its core, this might be the fundamental difference between Baldur’s Gate 3 and Starfield, the two much-anticipated role-playing games that were released this year. The former, made by a studio paying off a more than 20-year-old franchise, and the latter, building on Bethesda’s reputation for ever-expansive worlds that’s been accruing for the same amount of time, each offered a different way of thinking about what an RPG is in the modern era.

For those of us who have been tinkering in the genre across those 20 years, 2023 felt like a bit of deja vu. Black Isle’s Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn has spent the years since its 2000 release lingering in the top rungs of many “greatest role-playing games of all time” lists, often alongside its fellow traveler Planescape: Torment. BG2 gave you a tightly controlled narrative as the Bhaalspawn, a child of the god of murder, and asked you to navigate a complex narrative in a semi-open world to discover, and determine, your fate. Bethesda’s games, which have spiraled into world-dominating popularity since the titanic release of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind in 2002, did something similar while widening the scope of possible action: A 3D world coupled with radical character customization through skills and spells allowed it to truly engulf players in a freeform fantasy.

The Bethesda brand somehow managed to keep getting both bigger and more personal, culminating in the fantasy shout-’em-up The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim and the similarly compelling legacy act Fallout 4. Bethesda’s games kept a tight core narrative but wrapped boundless play around it, producing a situation where you might start one of the games