Why do modern RPGs have 0% soul?

[The Wall]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

State of RPG and video games craftsmanship is below pathetic, in 2023. ESPECIALLY! in the West Games from 5 years, let alone 20 years ago, look like art from lost high-tech civilization

Let's discuss what are the reasons why Pillars of Eternity will never be what Baldur's Gate was. Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

 

[Fedora Master]

"Why do modern RPGs have 0% soul?"

 

[The Wall]

I'd focus also on engineering part of game making equation. It is fucking FASCINATING to me that in 12 years since Skyrim's release, we received ZERO decent and direct clones. Devs used to write their game engines from 1 and 0, simulate economy, Nature, Society, make highly simulational digital worlds with innovative game design and quest solving. Today they have all engineers from 20 years ago lacked: documentation, knowledge, free tools, direct access to market (Steam)

What's the sitch? What's the problem? Because there is problem. And biggest problem is pretending The Problem doesn't exist. We all expected in 2011 to have futuristic Daggerfalls. We ended up with Starfield

"Why?" is the first question
"What we can do?" is the next one

Let's stop pretending you don't leave main page of /General RPG Discussion genuinely fucking depressed man, in year 2023

 

[The Wall]

My point: Morrowind 2 or Arcanum 2, with every feature you imagined such games would have: checked, are engineering wise 1000% possible. 1000%. And would be insanely profitable. In whatever good taste art style they're made

Sooo......what made such games extinct from market?

 

[Lord_Potato]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

State of RPG and video games craftsmanship is below pathetic, in 2023. ESPECIALLY! in the West Games from 5 years, let alone 20 years ago, look like art from lost high-tech civilization

Let's discuss what are the reasons why Pillars of Eternity will never be what Baldur's Gate was. Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

Cyberpunk 2077 (2020/2023) has tons of soul. Same with Elex (2017), Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018), Atom RPG (2018/2022), Insomnia: the Ark (2018), Chernobylite (2019), Disco Elysium (2019), Space Wreck (2023). Haven't played Colony Ship (2023) but I hear it's got plenty of soul too.

You just have to know where to look.

 

[Faarbaute]

Because mass society has no soul.

 

[Abu Antar]

The gaming industry is bigger than ever. It's all corporations, share holders, maximum profit. Let us not forget focus groups, developers with no passion, it's a regular job. Inability to optimize, coders that are not worth their salt. Many studios get help from similar support companies. Political correctness, wokeism, and a lot more.

I have mostly moved away from AAA gaming. I do buy bigger Asian games, and the odd western big game (last one was Midnight Suns for $20).

On the other hand, if you look for non-AAA, there are still gems to be found.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

We can blame "maturation" of the industry and widespread standardization that comes with it.
That said, 80's RPGs might look all the same for someone who doesn't know what he's looking at.

 

[Iucounu]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

They are mass market products.

Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

Because too much money is involved they don't dare to take any chances, it's safer to copy everybody else. The technology might be better, but there are too few good developers to go around for all the studios. More staff does not increase quality, at best they can produce larger quantities of something (with good supervision by management). Much of the money is spent on marketing, in order to drown out news about more deserving games (that's why we hear more about Starfield than say Amnesia The Bunker).

The good news is that even smaller studios can put together decent games today, but they are of course harder to notice. I've spent the last year playing The Long Dark, one of the best games ever in terms of mechanics. The year before that I played ARK Survival Evolved, one of the best games ever in terms of living gameworld (animal AI, etc). Before that I played SOMA, one of the best games ever in terms of writing and atmosphere. Before that Subnautica, one of the best games ever with a little of all of the above.

 

[Maxie]

All new games: look the same, play the same, tell the same story. Devs betray any idea of innovation after first 3 anonymous Steam complaints. This is Industry wide and exceptions are very rare

State of RPG and video games craftsmanship is below pathetic, in 2023. ESPECIALLY! in the West Games from 5 years, let alone 20 years ago, look like art from lost high-tech civilization

Let's discuss what are the reasons why Pillars of Eternity will never be what Baldur's Gate was. Why with more money, more manpower, 10x better technology and 10x more time, modern Game Devs can't make anything worth remembering

better shitposters than you have brought up this hot take in a more amusing manner

 

[VerSacrum]

Must be the microtransactions.

 

[The Wall]

Still! It's not normal to wait 15 years for next Elder Scrolls. FIFTEEN YEARS, c'mon mate. From Bethesda or any other studio that would make same game under different name. It's not normal to wait 10+ years for GTA6, or any, and I do mean A N Y decent copycat. Game Industry is seriously ill. As is Western Civilization. Pretending otherwise is entering fire and screaming "I'M COLD! I'M COLD!" as you're burning

But whole situation is also giant opportunity, I guess. Fall of Rome was very fun time and carcass of old can be good fertilizer for something new and better. From now on I'll focus on solutions

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Still! It's not normal to wait 15 years for next Elder Scrolls. FIFTEEN YEARS, c'mon mate. From Bethesda or any other studio that would make same game under different name. It's not normal to wait 10+ years for GTA6, or any, and I do mean A N Y decent copycat. Game Industry is seriously ill

Have you tried seeking help for that condition?

 

[The Wall]

Must be the microtransactions.

Not the WOKE mind virus! No, no, no. You see, dangerhair transmale Nigerian feminist will make next Arcanum in HTML, and you'll LOVE IT! Unless you're a bigot. That's: - 6 social credit

 

[thesecret1]

Back in the day you usually had young dudes taking a shot at making games, willing to take risks. Those guys grew up, oftentimes started their own studios, stopped playing games, and absolutely refuse to take risks because now they're betting their retirement funds and mortgages and what not. I know cases like that personally – people who determine the game's design, despite not having played a game (outside maybe some AAA slop) in 10+ years, believing themselves to be hot shit since they made a hit 20+ years ago. And I see young people with tons of great ideas in the industry too, only rather than making their dream game from a garage somewhere, they go work into studios to gain experience (and money). Then they buy a house, start a family, have kids, find they have no time for playing games... and the situation repeats.

You can't be a good game developer if you don't play games, it's that simple – you'll get professionally stunted, not encounter new ideas, and forget the old ones, until you just start copying mainstream shit.

 

[The Wall]

Still! It's not normal to wait 15 years for next Elder Scrolls. FIFTEEN YEARS, c'mon mate. From Bethesda or any other studio that would make same game under different name. It's not normal to wait 10+ years for GTA6, or any, and I do mean A N Y decent copycat. Game Industry is seriously ill

Industry is unable to take billions of $ because Devs are watching CSS tutorials while dilating and drinking soy latte. Game Devs are today the worst. Exceptions are rare indie Devs. You know how you see some great looking and deep, fun to play game, like Manor Lords, made by single or few Devs. And you're like "Howwww is thizzz even possssibryyy?!?"

With modern tools and programming, easily. If you're good programmer. Very few of them in gaming Industry today

 

[Just Locus]

Probably the homogenization of design; Game mechanics, character progression systems, and quest structures have become standardized and samey.
Not to mention the prevalence of DLCs and Microtransactions made it so "DLC(s)" just mean "shit we cut out with a knife and reselling it." instead of the original meaning of the word being full-fledged expansions that are so filled to the brim with content it could've been released as its own standalone title.

 

[The Wall]

Every badly optimized, with poor game mechanics and 10 loading_screens/min video game today released, is 100% fault of bad programmers. Creative Assembly is currently in midst of contraversy, and their inner functioning leaked to public. They way this, major AAA strategy games company owned by SEGA, handles its code and develops video games is so embarrasingly amateur that it's akin to mason using glue and bubble gums instead of nails and concrete while building your house

Overall free-fall of competency across all sectors of Western society is not a meme

 

[FreshCorpse]

Why bother to create a thread to discuss how bad new RPGs are when that is the whole subject of this entire forum?

You could have gone into any other thread and submitted your unsolicited blogpost there instead.

 

[Shaki]

A lot of indie games have soul, AAA productions are mostly souless because they're made purely as a product, without any passion, no one cares about them being good. Good RPGs are an art, they're made possible by blood and tears of the artists, working on pure passion and going bankrupt making games they love. Bioware drone #728 cares about their next game being good, just as much as a production line worker in a factory cares about whatever he makes being good.

Army of zombies under the leadership of a guy in a suit, looking to tick all the boxes on his ESG checklist, is inherently incapable of making anything with a soul.

 

[Gandalf]

There's a plenty of passion in the indie scene, but those games can't compete that much with classics from an old player's perspective. If you'd be super young again and just starting being a gamer, you'd see plenty of soul in those indies because everything would feel new and inspiring.

 

[The Wall]

Why bother to create a thread to discuss how bad new RPGs are when that is the whole subject of this entire forum?

You could have gone into any other thread and submitted your unsolicited blogpost there instead.

Those threads are about those individual games and why they suck. This Thread is about global reasons why Game Industry stinks today. From engeneering pov to societal reasons and market forces. This thread is meta

There is this false narrative being spread around how allegedly 2023 is best year for RPGs EVUR! Yet every day I leave General RPG Discussion's first page with my To: Play list staying the same or I cross one name off it. Last name I crossed was Rogue Trader

 

[The Wall]

There's a plenty of passion in the indie scene, but those games can't compete that much with classics from an old player's perspective. If you'd be super young again and just starting being a gamer, you'd see plenty of soul in those indies because everything would feel new and inspiring.

I agree that there are a lot of unknown indie gems. I'm thinking of ways how to shine light upon them. It's kinda ridiculous that this forum mostly talks about Bear Sex Simulator and StarShit

I'm oldest zoomer/youngest millenial. Not old. It's not that one, chief. Gaming Industry and Western entertainment simply SUUUCK today

 

[duskvile]

How do you define THE SOUL?

 

[Sjukob]

Lyric Suite mode on:

To creative exteriorization, which proceeds from the center to the periphery, responds an initiatory or mystical interiorization, which proceeds in the inverse direction, and whose psychological prefiguration is virtue. Actually, virtue tends from the accidental towards the substantial or from the contingent form to the archetype, to the “idea,” whose essence is the Sovereign Good, the Agathon. The same holds true for art, whose purpose is to transfer the archetype into contingency; and this is true “realism,” since the real lies above us, and not below us as the moderns would have it. But it goes without saying that artistic expression is no more than the prefiguration of spiritual alchemy, whose matter is the soul and which realizes, inwardly and in a fundamental manner, what art demonstrates and promises at the level of immediate perceptions and emotions. The artist brings the Divine into the world; the mystic reintegrates the world – his soul – into the Divine; always with the help of Heaven, for “Without me ye can do nothing.”

When people talk about “civilization” they generally attribute a qualitative meaning to the term; now civilization only represents a value provided it is supra-human in origin and implies for the “civilized” man a sense of the sacred: only peoples who really have this sense and draw their life from it are truly civilized. If it is objected that this reservation does not take account of the whole meaning of the term and that it is possible to conceive of a world that is civilized though having no religion, the answer is that in this case the civilization is devoid of value, or rather – since there is no legitimate choice between the sacred and other things – that it is the most fallacious of aberrations. A sense of the sacred is fundamental for every civilization because fundamental for man; the sacred – that which is immutable, inviolable and thus infinitely majestic – is in the very substance of our spirit and of our existence. The world is miserable because men live beneath themselves; the error of modern man is that he wants to reform the world without having either the will or the power to reform man, and this flagrant contradiction, this attempt to make a better world on the basis of a worsened humanity, can only end in the very abolition of what is human, and consequently in the abolition of happiness too. Reforming man means binding him again to Heaven, re-establishing the broken link; it means tearing him away from the reign of the passions, from the cult of matter, quantity and cunning, and reintegrating him into the world of the spirit and serenity, we would even say: into the world of sufficient reason.

This is the primary reason, everything else: the creative bankruptcy, the reign of greedy corporations, lack of skill, care and passion and the rest, are just the symptoms.