The CRPG Renaissance, Part 5: Fallout 2 and Baldur's Gate
37 comments
·March 22, 2025zeroq
JFingleton
When I worked in the games industry, we would spent an incredible amount of effort, money and time on creating as realistic a world as we could muster out of the hardware. This would involve talented artists, animators, programmers and hardware engineers.
And then came Minecraft made by 1 guy rendering blocky graphics with basic animations. It was a real wake up call for a lot of developers, that success isn't driven by how realistic you can make a world, but something more fundamental. Most games with ultra-realistic graphics feel more like theme-park rides, where you have little or no affect on the game - as doing so would break the immersion.
After minecraft came out I quit the industry, and am far happier for it.
esperent
This take feels off to me.
Not denying it was an emotional reaction by people working in the games industry at the time, but it doesn't feel grounded in reality. It's like the makers of The Matrix feeling like they should give up because of The Blair Witch Project.
Minecraft and Blair Witch caught gold dust. You could make a thousand similar low budget movies or games - of equal quality - without ever replicating their success.
By contrast, if you make a movie or a game that's any way good with a 100 million budget and another 100 million to market it, you can be fairly sure of making profit. It's a different market. A Marvel movie, a Matrix movie, or a Fallout game, has to be actively terrible to fail to turn a profit.
anthk
Minecraft was a clone of another block game.
On interactivity and emergent gameplay, it predated MC for decades.
Elite, Nethack, Ultima IV-VII, Deus Ex, Arx Libertatis...
zimpenfish
> Minecraft was a clone of another block game.
Assuming you mean Infiniminer?
> On interactivity and emergent gameplay, it predated MC for decades.
Infiniminer was released in early 2009 and pretty much immediately inspired Minecraft (first public alpha mid 2009.)
somenameforme
There's another directly related issue here where Fallout 3 strayed. The original Fallouts have content that is not really constrained in any way, to put it mildly, and it captures the feel of a sort of dystopic hellhole really well. The gimmicky 50s happy-go-lucky style of the things like the music, iconography, etc plays a dramatically stark contrast to the rest of the world.
In the Fallout remakes, that happy go lucky style basically is the world. I mean it's still supposed to be a sort of post apocalyptic dystopia and you can do 'evil' things like blow up a town but even then it all still feels like an episode of Leave it to Beaver (further emphasized by the style that's no longer especially ironic), probably in equal parts in order to ensure mass [commercial] appeal and to abide modern ideals of political correctness in a scenario where that would be the last thing in play.
So the originals just completely drag you into their world, whereas Fallout 3 never really makes any effort at suspending your disbelief. The world is designed to be pretty silly and unbelievable, but has fun enough gameplay that it ultimately doesn't matter that much. I'm extremely curious how a more 'narratively faithful' remake, but with otherwise identical modern gameplay/graphics/etc, would feel.
mattmanser
Is that really true? Not being constrained?
All the isometric RPGs are very linear. You do act 1, then act 2, then act 3, etc.. What varies is how you complete them.
In the Bathesda style RPGs you can never touch the main quest and STILL play for 100 hours before you get bored. You can go in any direction. Some directions are 'level' checked by enemies, but you can sneak past them (e.g. death claws at the beginning in Fallout NV).
Games like BG2/BG3/Fallout 2/wasteland are much more constrained in what you can actually do. You have to clear the gob line camp to get to baldurs gate, etc.
The games are 'free' in very different ways.
I personally believe that the Bathesda 'freedom' of WHAT to do, with less choices in HOW to do it is much more RPG friendly than the on rails isometric 'freedom' which has very little choice in WHAT to do, just HOW you do it.
mrighele
> All the isometric RPGs are very linear. You do act 1, then act 2, then act 3, etc.. What varies is how you complete them.
You can finish Fallout 1 in less than 5 minutes, skipping essentially all of the act [1], so not necessarily that linear. But even if we discount this specific case, isometric RPGs are not that different from Bethesda style RPGs in structure, it is that the latter have very different budget and have a huge amount of side quests.
That said, OP was speaking specifically of Fallout 3, and compared to the following titles, I find it was quite more constrained... lot of time spent in tunnels, areas that were off limits until you could cross a certain metro... Fallout NV and Fallout 4 feel more in line with the original games.
mattmanser
A rare Bethesda hater appears, quick, catch him!
Fallout 3 was magnificent, a wild commercial success and one of the greatest CRPGs of all times.
I'm sure Fallout 2 was good, I don't know because the control system is so bloody awful I couldn't get more than 2 hours into it.
It is acclaimed, but it's hard to replay it.
In today's world it is a bad game. Fallout 3 is still a good game.
Bethesda games are constantly replayed. Skyrim, fallout 4, etc. are all still on Steam charts top played lists.
Right NOW. 10 years after release
Fallout 2 is not.
You are on the wrong side of fact Vs fantasy.
avtolik
I have replayed Fallout 2 like 20 times.
I checked your claim about the steam charts. Currently the 30-Day Avg for Fallout 2 is 159 and for Fallout 3 - 376 players. I wouldn't call this a huge win. F2 is much older and the graphics are not aging well.
technothrasher
To be fair, those Steam stats are probably not reflecting reality. Fallout 3 doesn't work very well with current Windows versions, and so many of the Fallout 3 players these days (most?) are playing it in the New Vegas engine via Tale of Two Wastelands.
iamacyborg
More popular doesn’t necessarily mean better, a lot has to be left on the cutting room floor for something to gain mass appeal.
tmtvl
Fallout 3 was very successful. If selling many copies is the yardstick you measure quality by, it may well have been one of the greatest CRPGs of all time.
By other metrics it may fall a bit lower down the ranks. For example, the writing is quite bad (the water is thoroughly irradiated from a war that happened 200 years ago).
JKolios
>(the water is thoroughly irradiated from a war that happened 200 years ago)
This is what I always found grating about the writing in Bethesda Fallout games. Their writers think that the war happened last Tuesday and there are parts of the old world behind every other door. In universe, the war happened more than two centuries ago and humanity has moved on, in several strange ways.
onli
Very negative depiction of Fallout 2 here. I would instead strongly recommend it, especially to players who liked the first Fallout, or who liked Fallout New Vegas. It does not feel as heartless and disjointed as the article suggests, instead it is a bigger game than its predecessor with more variety and options. Lots of roleplaying and great lore with good quests and interesting characters.
arp242
I'm surprised; I don't recall the reception being that negative/muted at the time. Wikipedia seems to agree: "Fallout 2 was well received by critics, who praised its gameplay and storyline, and considered it a worthy successor to the original Fallout". From what I recall it's quite a lot bigger and less linear than the first game.
When I (re-)played Fallout again a few years back I found it hard to get over the jankiness of it all. I didn't finish it. Porting Fallout 1 and 2 to the Infinity Engine used by the Black Isle games is one of my "dream projects" I'll probably never get around to.
onli
You are right, https://www.kultboy.com/testbericht-uebersicht/2382/ and https://www.kultboy.com/testbericht-uebersicht/2612/ suggests that the games were around equally well received (in the german gaming press at least, which is a good mark for RPGs). I believed the article there, but it's mistaken as far as I can tell.
ewzimm
I loved both of these games and spent a lot of time with them. The Baldur's Gate review here stays pretty close to others I've read, but the Fallout 2 review is the more interesting part because it's more opinionated, and in ways I disagree with. It's interesting how much everyone involved seemed to dislike the game, but very much fits the late 90's vibe. It's also what made it one of my all-time favorites. I never felt like I was playing through someone else's story. It felt like a set of content you could actually create your own character and play through, directed by your character's own motivations rather than the writer's. It's a quality that's rare to find in games, but the conditions of a bunch of people creating as much content as they could without a specific direction make sense for how this kind of thing would have to come together. Baldur's Gate is great, but much more linear and gives less opportunities for choices and role-playing. I wish more games would revisit the freedom of Fallout 2.
mtillman
Two favorite games. The infinity engine / interplay crpgs were all a blast until iron heart where they rushed it out the door. Even that has a ton of promise first half to third if the game.
jmyeet
I got my start with CRPGs playing Bard's Tale, all the SSI Gold Box games, Wizardry and then Ultima Underworld.
I really miss the variety of CRPGs we used to have. I don't like real-time games. I like being able to chill playing turn-based games (including strategy games like Civ). I don't think I'm alone in that and it's one of those fundamental misunderstanding game publishers have: thinking players want "hard" games, which for a CRPG (or, rather, an ARPG) really means how fast you can react.
But I really dislike the Bethesda CRPG model, which is really the only model left. I hate scaling content. It's lazy. I really dislike that in games like Skyrim you have to level efficiently or you get weaker (because of content scaling) and that forces you to do some non-fun things to optimize your levelling.
I know a lot of people enjoyed the Fallout serivce. For me, the aesthetics killed it for me. A brown wasteland just isn't aesthetically pleasing as a fantasy environment.
To contradict myself, I have to give special mention to Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I wish I could erase my memory to play that game for the first time again. It's not without its issues but the feeling you have of being in the world is virtually unmatched by any other game.
janosett
Baldur’s Gate 3 is recent and very much doesn’t follow the Bethesda model! It’s also turn-based which was a big plus for me as well.
ferguess_k
One thing I dislike the Bethesda games is that quests are too shallow. So many times, I wondered while playing the games, someone could put some extra love into some of the quests to make them much more in depth and more interesting.
Alas, budget and time limited I guess.
beloch
A big part was being brave enough to make players put a little mental effort in.
In Morrowind, a big part of gameplay was figuring out where you needed to go to progress in a quest. A NPC might say to go to a town, take the East road out, turn left at the lake, and proceed until you see a certain kind of tree. You actually needed to do all that just to find the next step of the quest. It felt incredibly immersive. In Skyrim and a lot of post-Skyrim games, you just take a direct path to the quest marker without even thinking about it.
Quests in Skyrim often feel shallow because you put in almost no effort. It's a little skippable dialogue, a run across the mountains to a quest marker, kill something, loot something, and run to another quest marker for more optional dialogue. The dialogue in these quests often didn't even explain how you know where to go. Maybe the NPC puts a mark on your map, or maybe you're just psychic! Writers no longer had to care about giving directions, so they often didn't.
Bethesda probably did this because players were complaining about getting lost in Morrowind. If a quest isn't carefully written and the world carefully designed, it is often easy for players to miss the mark. After Skyrim, quest makers became the norm in all sorts of RPG's. It reduced effort for developers and ensured players don't get lost. However, it may be the case that the frustration of getting lost and the triumph of finding your way are parts of a compelling role-playing experience.
BG1 and Fallout 1/2 were both games where you could get badly lost and wander into areas that were way too tough for your character at the stage of the game you were currently in. Getting a little bit lost, a little bit in over your head, and stumbling upon something hidden was actually a lot of fun.
somenameforme
+++++ on this. There are mods for Skyrim that remove the markers and other indicators while also rewriting any quest description that are insufficiently descriptive, and it just completely changes the game. Even more so if you remove fast travel. There are also mods that remove the scaling yet maintain a balanced world. Basically, Bethesda games need to be modded, and there are some absurdly high quality modding teams out there.
But it's also weird because all of these mods sound like you're just beating yourself in the head, and perhaps we are. I remember a game development class I took, and one of the first things we did was define what game was. I thought it was quite stupid at the time, but in hindsight maybe the guy was onto something: "A series of unnecessary obstacles."
And so it always sounds great to remove obstacles, but the more obstacles you remove, the less of a game you have left at the end of it all. For those of us who grew up in the Nintendo era I think none of us will ever forget Battle Toads, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Punch Out, and other such games where the entire games are basically about beating yourself in the head repeatedly, yet at the end of it all - it felt great!
snickerer
I totally feel that.
I would love to play an RPG where I need to take notes. Where I fear to get lost in the wilderness if I take the wrong turn because I could get eaten by a horrible beast then.
I mean, that's what real adventures are about, or not? The mystery of exploration. The need to navigate by markers in nature or even the sun.
In a perfect world for me, game devs would add more dynamic and intelligent NPCs with their own agenda. I am bored by the feeling of Potemkin villages, where everything feels like it is designed to give you a smooth game experience and every NPC is standing there forever, just waiting for you.
Ekaros
For decent time it really has not been about budget or time. Certainly not after say Skyrim and maybe including that. It is more so their game design philosophy and lack of talent in making more interesting things. In the end Bethesda makes worlds filled with small pastiches. And well with Starfield they even failed the filling part.
Semaphor
I started with turn-based RPGs, Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny in my case (the original German version). I was a teen playing shooters when the RTwP craze happened and never really got into those, luckily there’s actually a pretty wide selection of TB CRPGs, nowadays. My absolute favorites are Owlcat’s Pathfinder games, BG3 is obviously the huge and popular one, Owlcat’s Rogue Trader for the WH40k crowds, but there are also tons of smaller niche games. I recently played "Skald: Against the Black Priory" [0] a pixel graphic retro-style RPG, and currently playing "Space Wreck" [1], a fallout inspired CRPG heavy on replayability, but there are many, many more.
[0]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160/SKALD_Against_the...
[1]: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1063540/Space_Wreck/
tmtvl
Yeah, Pathfinder Kingmaker and Wrath are great. I also really enjoyed Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 (I especially liked 2, I believe others preferred 1), Tyranny, and Hare Brained Schemes' Shadowrun series (Returns, Dragonfall, and my favourite: Hong Kong).
Beamdog remastering Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and Neverwinter Nights was a good excuse to replay them, though the new scenarios (Siege of Dragonspear, Pirates of the Sword Coast,...) didn't really do much for me. I believe they're working on Neverwinter Nights 2, which is I game I'm quite fond of (Mask of the Betrayer is such an interesting story), so I'm looking forward to seeing it.
The indie scene is also doing interesting things, Fell Seal: Arbiters Mark is a neat take on the Tactical RPG style based on Final Fantasy Tactics.
archerx
Beamdog took a massive shit on Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 with their awful fan fiction that seems like it was written by a 5th grader who fell out of a tree and hit their head on every branch on the way down. I was ready to buy all of their remasters until I stumbled upon Nera and proceeded to uninstall the game and curse beamdog any chance I get. Thank God I have my original disks.
iamacyborg
Rogue Trader really nailed a lot of the 40k atmosphere which was great.
All the plebs on the ship are being too noisy, just cut out all their tongues.
onli
There are really a lot of RPGs right now that do not follow Bethesda's model. Consider Kingdome Come Deliverance as an example for a very different approach, more akin to Gothic. Speaking of, the upcoming Gothic remake is another game that will be quite different, something to put on the list and to buy if reviews are okay. Or vampire bloodlines 2, if that gets released it won't be similar to skyrim at all. BG3 was already mentioned. For more games that are released, check out Solasta: Crown of the magister, and there are a lot of other options at that level.
thih9
I also dislike Bethesda scaling content and loved Zelda BOTW - I wish there was a way to disable enemy scaling there. For those who didn’t notice - https://zeldamods.org/wiki/Difficulty_scaling
For anyone looking for an alternative, Bethesda’s Morrowind has it all, an open world and no scaling enemies.
null
bschmidt960
[flagged]
Fallout 3 is the best example of uncanny valley phenomenon.
In original Fallout you enter a city which spans across four screens, repetetively uses the same set of limited sprites and is inhabited by some random moving pixels acting as citizens of which several have some interesting dialog lines.
The Fallout 3 seems similar at first, only employing a major leap in technological advancement - the city spans in every direction, there are animated and voice acted characters, and everyone is presented in cutting edge 3D technology.
But it all falls flat upon closer inspection. Every building is exactly the same. Dialogs are mundane and everyone has some sort of hiking accident where they took an arrow to the knee and even though the city has only 8 buildings its easy to get lost.
The reason is simple - in the original the story takes place mainly in your head, it's a mind's eye theatre, the game only gives you a broad outlines of the world and you are forced to fill out the blanks yourself. The game doesn't try to be realistic and leaves you a lot of space.
Once you start animating and voice acting your characters you quickly realize it's an endless money pit. The more lines you add, the cost grows exponentially, because you have to account for all localisation scenarios.
This is summed up very well (forgive me for not looking up reference and quoting from memory) by Bioshock lead who said in interview:
"At work if I have an idea we need to assemble a team - including programmers, modellers, scripters - and just to get a basic prototype that would give us the gist of what we were thinking it takes a month or more. Meanwhile, at home, I can relax after work, and in one evening session create a whole Doom campaign."