The Xbox Series X Is a Must-Own Console for RPG Fans

ign.com:

Microsoft’s recent excellent Xbox Showcase laid bare something we’d already suspected: that the Xbox is about to become the go-to platform for role-playing games – particularly Western RPGs. It’s an interesting shift for a platform that, from its very inception on the back of the Halo franchise, was informally known as the “shooter box.”

None of this is a surprise – not when Microsoft purchased Obsidian, inXile, and then Bethesda Game Studios – but now all of Microsoft’s RPG cards have been laid out, and the hand they’re holding is mighty impressive. To wit: Xbox now has at least one major, exclusive, first-party RPG lined up for the next 3-4 years, if not more.

First up, of course, is Starfield, which will finally be released on September 6 (technically September 1 if you pony up for the pricier deluxe version) after roughly eight years in development. Game director Todd Howard told me he doesn’t want everything he works on from here on out to take that long, but after playing Starfield for an hour myself, I can confidently say that the time has not been wasted. What I mean by that – and the 45-minute Starfield Direct that immediately followed the Xbox Showcase went into more detail on – is that from what I have seen and played, absolutely nothing in Starfield is shallow. The skill trees, the character creator, the dialogue trees, the shipbuilding systems, the planetary exploration, and so much more all have genuine depth to them. Each is something you could spend hours enjoyably doing. Players are going to be plumbing the depths of Starfield’s massive in-game universe for many, many years to come.

Next year, meanwhile, the aforementioned RPG specialists at Obsidian have promised us Avowed, the first-person fantasy