For me the golden age was that entire decade, but I think the first half was still stronger: Star Wars KOTOR 1 and 2, Gothic 1 and 2, Baldur’s Gate 2, Dungeon Siege 1 and 2, Jade Empire, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Diablo 2, Final Fantasy 10 , World of Warcraft, Morrowind.
This. Morrowind, KOTOR, and Baldur’s Gate are classic. Oblivion is only good for memes.
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is awesome too
Oblivion is basically a generic high fantasy european bland canvas, it’s so tepid and undistinctive its like the ultimate modding game imo since you can turn it into literally anything and it’ll have more soul than the out of the box potato pudding sapiens game ever will.
2006-2009 was a terrible time for ©RPGs. Interplay and Troika were no more. Obsidian only had developed Kotor 2 and Mask of the Betrayer at this point. Larian Studios was still seen as some 2-bit studio with rough gems at best. Meanwhile, the Bioware formula was cemented around this time, and the inferior spiritual successor of System Shock was released. The most notable ©RPGs that hit the gaming cultural landscape were Oblivion and Oblivion with Guns. And it was during that time when the infamous horse armor DLC was released, a harbinger of things to come.
golden era of RPG
Oblivion
Jeez, I know I shit on modern gaming for being trash, but I don’t know anything more damning than being nostalgic for fucking Oblivion.
Gothic 3 was hot trash and easily the worst of the 6 in the thumbnail, it kind of sank the entire Gothic ship and the series never recovered.
Oblivion is okay modded, but that doesn’t say much.
I think Gothic 3 was actually quite a solid game with the community patches. That said, the official state of the game is simply insulting to this day, because after the catastrophe of a release it had the developer and publisher parted ways and the game was never properly fixed by either of them.
This messy and very public divorce is also the main reason the Gothic series died, the publisher (Jowood) retained the rights and gave it to other developer studios which created games that more or less flopped (G3 expansion, Arcania). But what do you expect from a publisher that lets the game get fixed by fans instead of actually paying people for it. I mean at least they gave them access to the source, so that’s something, but still…
Yeah I know the rough history, as for the playability with the community patches, I don’t agree. It’s still trash in my opinion, while 1 & 2 & NotR are still amazingly playable.
I bought the third game full price on release, and as a teenager back then it was a lot of money. I am still bitter to this day lol. The only thing I kinda liked was some of the story, and the graphics which while now kinda ugly, still create a pretty cozy atmosphere.
Well yeah, there is no beating 1 & 2, but it still holds up IMHO. Huge world with no loading screen in sight, passable story and side-quests. But what was really great about that game was the music. Combat was meh though, still a Gothic game after all.
I am the kind of weirdo that actually likes combat in 1&2. But 3’s combat was bad
I take it you didn’t play ranged weapons then. :D They tried to modernise the combat and kind of made it worse, except ranged combat though. Free aim was just a lot better than target locking in earlier games. But melee in 3 wasn’t really fun. That said, huge battles generally worked better in 3 and there were a lot more of them with a lot more NPCs involved, so that was kinda cool. Magic was also a bit more fun. But yeah, the game was overly ambitious in many ways and that hurt it a lot, even if you *disregard the clusterfuck of a release and its aftermath…
I thought this was going to be about tabletop, I had fond memories of Dark Heresy
Fable 2?
I found a YouTube link in your post. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
