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OK, so in 1995 there were few computer RPGs. True. In fact I distinctly remember myself at that time, as a huge CRPG fan, thinking that they were bad times for

OK, so in 1995 there were few computer RPGs. True. In fact I distinctly remember myself at that time, as a huge CRPG fan, thinking that they were bad times for PC RPGs, and hoping for better times. But 1996 was the year of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, one of the best RPGs of all time (IMO, way better than Baldur's) that would later continue into a saga that is still top notch today. In 1997, Fallout came out. I'm not personally a big fan of this saga, but its enormous success and influence in CRPGs is undeniable. In 1998, apart from Baldur's Gate, we had Fallout II and Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven, a great game that renewed the legendary Might and Magic franchise with a new engine. So no. You may like Baldur's Gate a lot (IMO it's a good game but way overrated) but it didn't save anything, and the image given by the article of being the first brave developers who dared publish a CRPG after a draught is just plain false.

tomc1985 8y ago
I do remember feeling of being in something of RPG drought when Baldur's Gate came along. At least I believe that was the sentiment expressed by PC Games magazine, which I was reading pretty heavily at the time. I don't think ES or Fallout were on my radar at that time but you're the first person I've heard with very positive opinions of Daggerfall; most of the ES nostalgics seem to pine for Morrowind. Baldur's Gate had the D&D license, though, and that gave it a lot of weight and staying power for people who weren't already into CRPGs. I think it also left a much larger impact than any of the games you've mentioned save maybe Fallout II. Part of the draw for me were those D&D rules; I was pretty heavy into tabletop RPGs at the time.
- muro 8y ago
  Daggerfall was a buggy mess or randomly generated, yet still always the same dungeons. No reason whatsoever to walk in the always-same, never ending landscape. The plot was good, the scale huge. Morrowind fixed all of that - much smaller scale, less generated stuff, excellent plot, few (er) bugs - it was actually possible to finish the game. Landscape with purpose, it was actually interesting to walk and explore.
  - sreque 8y ago
    Admittedly, I've only played Skyrim and a bit of ESO, but I've gotten the impression from Bethesda that their RPGs are always buggy, but, at least with Skryim, the game was so good I was more than willing to forgive them for it. Skyrim remains my favorite single player RPG to date. To respond to the OP, I consider the baldur's gate series to be more of a trend-setter than the other games he listed.
    - godshatter 8y ago
      I remember reading somewhere that the developers of Skyrim will leave non game-breaking bugs in the code if they are funny ones that don't break quests. Things like mammoths floating in the air in certain cases, for example.
      - bitexploder 8y ago
        My kids think it’s hilarious to fast travel to a giant camp and see mammoths spawn from the air fall and die.
    - _asummers 8y ago
      Give Witcher 3 a shot if you haven't. I much prefer it to Skyrim, and felt much more attachment to the world and characters.
      - enraged_camel 8y ago
        Witcher 3 is fantastic. Incredible story, enormous amount of high-quality content, and wonderful, hand-crafted world.
      - AngryData 8y ago
        Witcher 3 is what I hoped Skyrim would be and despite playing an already existent character and it felt like I had way more freedom in my choices.
      - z3phyr 8y ago
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
  Morrowind does have more following, but Daggerfall has an extraordinarily staunch user base. 22 years after its release, its Reddit and various forums are pretty active and there is a full remake in Unity getting close to full functionality, with all code recreated from scratch, and people are already creating various mods for it. (obligatory link: https://www.dfworkshop.net/ https://www.dfworkshop.net/). Daggerfall and Morrowind had a quite different spirit, it was not a case of incremental improvement but a change of philosophy, hence they appeal to different (although overlapping) sets of people. Daggerfall was one of the most ambitious open world games ever created. It had an enormous world, the size of Great Britain, with over 15,000 towns and dungeons to explore and tons of quests that would be randomly parameterized with towns, buildings, dungeons and NPCs. The world was procedurally generated once, and stored into the game, so everyone sees the same towns and dungeons. The game play was totally open, to the extent that many Daggerfall fans don't care much about the main quest (even though the main quest story was actually top notch, with lots of twists, treason, meaningful choice and all). Why have a main quest when you can just live your life setting your own goals: advancing in the various guilds, striving to buy a big house, a boat, to become a famous knight, etc. The dungeons were also procedurally generated, and so labyrinthine that you could literally spend hours exploring a single dungeon. This is something that some people hated about the game (I actually love it. It was deeply immersive, and the feeling of finally getting back to the surface and hearing crickets was amazing). The character creation system was more oriented to role-playing (you could do things like give your character specific advantages or disadvantages) than to game balance. You could even make your own spells! Morrowind continued the saga in terms of lore and mechanics, but took a totally different turn. The world was hand-crafted, so it was more carefully put together, but also much smaller. And the open-world nature was very much toned down. You were now "the Chosen One" (in Daggerfall you were just a random person, except for being a friend of the emperor, living their life and trying to make fortune) and you pretty much had to follow the main quest because there weren't that many things to do on the side compared to Daggerfall. The labyrinthine dungeons were replaced by quite linear dungeons (although less so than in later installments of the saga). Roleplaying-oriented features like advantages and disadvantages on character creation, questions to determine character background, etc. were removed. Don't get me wrong, I love Morrowind too, as well as Oblivion and Skyrim, and even Arena. I have enjoyed all of them a lot. But Daggerfall was a unique beast and scratched itches that no other game did. I understand that it's not for everyone, many people hate it. It's one of the most polarizing games I have ever seen, a case of "love it or hate it". Exploring dungeons requires a lot of patience which many people just don't have, and the procedurally-generated nature (with 1996 technology) means that it isn't as fleshed out as other games - for example towns can feel quite repetitive, etc., you have to use the imagination a bit to imagine how each place is unique. Also, the fact that it was very buggy (although it improved a lot with patches, and Daggerfall Unity will hopefully be very stable as it's remade from scratch) alienated some players. But for the kind of player who seeks primarily immersion, the kind of player who actually roleplays, it's an unparalleled wonder because it lets you be whoever you want to be much better than the later games, which take you through the story on rails. Daggerfall feels like a real world, a simulation of a life in a fantasy land, and the emergent behavior caused by quests, reputations, etc. is often amazing. While the subsequent games in the saga are masterpieces in their own right, I long for a game in the spirit of Daggerfall with current (or at least later) technology.
- thom 8y ago
  Daggerfall was absolutely wonderful. It was like Elite but a fantasy RPG. Morrowind felt like a _huge_ step back, and even Skyrim falls short of the scale and sense of wilderness and exploration.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- oelmekki 8y ago
  I'll speak only for me, here, but Fallout 1 is the game that impressed me the most among these, during those times. It had to do with this idea that you could go anywhere you wanted and you weren't forced into a linear plot (somewhat a precursor of current day's openworld games). Granted, I didn't know d&d back then, I guess if it happened now after playing d&d, Baldur's Gate would impress me more.
tdehart 8y ago
There was also Diablo 1 released at the end of 1996. It was a great time for RPGs.
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
  I deliberately didn't include it because it's somewhat contentious whether it is an RPG or not and I had enough games to quote without risking triggering that discussion... but yes. Also very influential, even on Baldur's Gate itself, I'd say.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Diablo was monotonous, linear hack'n slash. If that's your thing it's cool, but it's not an RPG. As a CRPG fan at the time, it still boggles my mind that such a title had any kind of success after the likes of Wasteland, Bard's Tale 1-3, the numerous SSI/D&D titles, or the Ultima series. Those days were glorious, and nearly all of those titles are still fantastic today. Diablo did long-term damage to CRPGs IMO. It established that there was a larger market for completely linear titles than there was for titles where the player could actually decide what to do - or at the very least the order in which you do what there is to do. And as a result, it more or less vaporized any type of funding for non-linear CRPG experiences.
  - badpun 8y ago
    To be honest, I loved Diablo, but I never even viewed it as an RPG. It was just a mostly brainless, almost casual game to play after school. You could jump in and out for however long time you had and grind some XP and loot. My friends played it too, so at school we got to brag who had more Zodiacs etc.
LoSboccacc 8y ago
Everyone forgetting 1995 saw a huge is release that influenced release dates of dozen titles that ended up postponed for testing. The rpg genre itself was doing strong in 1995, heck just check SNES releases, Chrono trigger, dragon quest, finally fantasy... It was just a transitional period for the platform https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2012/12/06/a-visual-history-of-genres-and-platforms/ https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2012/12/06/a-visual-hi...
- int_19h 8y ago
  I would argue that console JRPGs constituted a separate genre from PC CRPGs at the time. I remember that there was little intersection between the fan bases, and even some hostility.
richardknop 8y ago
Fallout 1 and 2 were a huge success. I remember me and my childhood friends spending so much time during lunch breaks and after high school talking about fallout and our game states and comparing things we did right or wrong. I thin the huge influence of the Fallout series is not fully understood and appreciated. They really influenced the RPG genre in a big way. Fallout is the number one RPG universe for me even though I have played all the other RPGs at that golden RPG era. Baldur’s Gate, Diablo, Icewind Dales, Arcana, Might and Magic. All huge titles but Fallout series will always have a special place in my heart and I will be excited about every new Fallout game for eternity.
thom 8y ago
Pretty sure Daggerfall sold quicker than Baldur's Gate at launch, but hit production bottlenecks as they didn't anticipate the success. That just seems like more evidence that the market was underserved at the time.
cialowicz 8y ago
The Wikipedia page for Elder Scrolls II [0] indicates that the game world was absolutely massive: > the actual size of the map is 161,600 km² (62,394 mi²). The game world features over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore. Was that scale part of the magic and fun back then? How varied were the various quests? Did it get repetitive, or was it fun to explore? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfa...
- Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
  Your questions are answered in my answer to a sibling comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735512 Except maybe the question regarding quests. They were very varied, because there were plenty of factions giving quests, and plenty of text scripts (that were parameterized with locations, items and NPCs), from a quick search apparently 227 in total. So sometimes you would do similar quests (especially if you liked to always work for a single faction) but the variety was great actually.
- int_19h 8y ago
  Of course, it was procedurally generated. Later, Arcanum would try to do something similar, at least with a global map. It had premade towns and cities (and nowhere near as many of them, of course); but the landscape between them was done to proper scale, and it was all generated. So, when you reached the outskirts of a town, you could fast travel, or you could just keep walking - and the distance (and time!) you'd have to spend to walk to the next town like that would accurately reflect the size of the game map. And even during fast travel, if you had an encounter (e.g. wild animals, robbers) that dropped you into the detailed map, you'd end up in the correct spot on the generated part of it. Coincidentally, that made it possible to skip large parts of the game simply by heading to locations in advance that you're not supposed to find out about until some NPC tells you. And the game was actually designed to gracefully handle that, despite having a fairly convoluted main storyline.
  - djur 8y ago
Tsubasachan 8y ago
In 1995 there were few games, period. Videogame market was in its infancy compared to what it is today. I absolutely adore Baldur's Gate. It is the ultimate expression of gaming for basement dwelling nerds. Black Isle/Bioware always had penchant for lore and world building.

tomc1985 8y ago

I do remember feeling of being in something of RPG drought when Baldur's Gate came along. At least I believe that was the sentiment expressed by PC Games magazine, which I was reading pretty heavily at the time. I don't think ES or Fallout were on my radar at that time but you're the first person I've heard with very positive opinions of Daggerfall; most of the ES nostalgics seem to pine for Morrowind. Baldur's Gate had the D&D license, though, and that gave it a lot of weight and staying power for people who weren't already into CRPGs. I think it also left a much larger impact than any of the games you've mentioned save maybe Fallout II. Part of the draw for me were those D&D rules; I was pretty heavy into tabletop RPGs at the time.

muro 8y ago
Daggerfall was a buggy mess or randomly generated, yet still always the same dungeons. No reason whatsoever to walk in the always-same, never ending landscape. The plot was good, the scale huge. Morrowind fixed all of that - much smaller scale, less generated stuff, excellent plot, few (er) bugs - it was actually possible to finish the game. Landscape with purpose, it was actually interesting to walk and explore.
- sreque 8y ago
  Admittedly, I've only played Skyrim and a bit of ESO, but I've gotten the impression from Bethesda that their RPGs are always buggy, but, at least with Skryim, the game was so good I was more than willing to forgive them for it. Skyrim remains my favorite single player RPG to date. To respond to the OP, I consider the baldur's gate series to be more of a trend-setter than the other games he listed.
  - godshatter 8y ago
    I remember reading somewhere that the developers of Skyrim will leave non game-breaking bugs in the code if they are funny ones that don't break quests. Things like mammoths floating in the air in certain cases, for example.
    - bitexploder 8y ago
      My kids think it’s hilarious to fast travel to a giant camp and see mammoths spawn from the air fall and die.
  - _asummers 8y ago
    Give Witcher 3 a shot if you haven't. I much prefer it to Skyrim, and felt much more attachment to the world and characters.
    - enraged_camel 8y ago
      Witcher 3 is fantastic. Incredible story, enormous amount of high-quality content, and wonderful, hand-crafted world.
    - AngryData 8y ago
      Witcher 3 is what I hoped Skyrim would be and despite playing an already existent character and it felt like I had way more freedom in my choices.
    - z3phyr 8y ago
Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
Morrowind does have more following, but Daggerfall has an extraordinarily staunch user base. 22 years after its release, its Reddit and various forums are pretty active and there is a full remake in Unity getting close to full functionality, with all code recreated from scratch, and people are already creating various mods for it. (obligatory link: https://www.dfworkshop.net/ https://www.dfworkshop.net/). Daggerfall and Morrowind had a quite different spirit, it was not a case of incremental improvement but a change of philosophy, hence they appeal to different (although overlapping) sets of people. Daggerfall was one of the most ambitious open world games ever created. It had an enormous world, the size of Great Britain, with over 15,000 towns and dungeons to explore and tons of quests that would be randomly parameterized with towns, buildings, dungeons and NPCs. The world was procedurally generated once, and stored into the game, so everyone sees the same towns and dungeons. The game play was totally open, to the extent that many Daggerfall fans don't care much about the main quest (even though the main quest story was actually top notch, with lots of twists, treason, meaningful choice and all). Why have a main quest when you can just live your life setting your own goals: advancing in the various guilds, striving to buy a big house, a boat, to become a famous knight, etc. The dungeons were also procedurally generated, and so labyrinthine that you could literally spend hours exploring a single dungeon. This is something that some people hated about the game (I actually love it. It was deeply immersive, and the feeling of finally getting back to the surface and hearing crickets was amazing). The character creation system was more oriented to role-playing (you could do things like give your character specific advantages or disadvantages) than to game balance. You could even make your own spells! Morrowind continued the saga in terms of lore and mechanics, but took a totally different turn. The world was hand-crafted, so it was more carefully put together, but also much smaller. And the open-world nature was very much toned down. You were now "the Chosen One" (in Daggerfall you were just a random person, except for being a friend of the emperor, living their life and trying to make fortune) and you pretty much had to follow the main quest because there weren't that many things to do on the side compared to Daggerfall. The labyrinthine dungeons were replaced by quite linear dungeons (although less so than in later installments of the saga). Roleplaying-oriented features like advantages and disadvantages on character creation, questions to determine character background, etc. were removed. Don't get me wrong, I love Morrowind too, as well as Oblivion and Skyrim, and even Arena. I have enjoyed all of them a lot. But Daggerfall was a unique beast and scratched itches that no other game did. I understand that it's not for everyone, many people hate it. It's one of the most polarizing games I have ever seen, a case of "love it or hate it". Exploring dungeons requires a lot of patience which many people just don't have, and the procedurally-generated nature (with 1996 technology) means that it isn't as fleshed out as other games - for example towns can feel quite repetitive, etc., you have to use the imagination a bit to imagine how each place is unique. Also, the fact that it was very buggy (although it improved a lot with patches, and Daggerfall Unity will hopefully be very stable as it's remade from scratch) alienated some players. But for the kind of player who seeks primarily immersion, the kind of player who actually roleplays, it's an unparalleled wonder because it lets you be whoever you want to be much better than the later games, which take you through the story on rails. Daggerfall feels like a real world, a simulation of a life in a fantasy land, and the emergent behavior caused by quests, reputations, etc. is often amazing. While the subsequent games in the saga are masterpieces in their own right, I long for a game in the spirit of Daggerfall with current (or at least later) technology.
thom 8y ago
Daggerfall was absolutely wonderful. It was like Elite but a fantasy RPG. Morrowind felt like a _huge_ step back, and even Skyrim falls short of the scale and sense of wilderness and exploration.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
oelmekki 8y ago
I'll speak only for me, here, but Fallout 1 is the game that impressed me the most among these, during those times. It had to do with this idea that you could go anywhere you wanted and you weren't forced into a linear plot (somewhat a precursor of current day's openworld games). Granted, I didn't know d&d back then, I guess if it happened now after playing d&d, Baldur's Gate would impress me more.

tdehart 8y ago

There was also Diablo 1 released at the end of 1996. It was a great time for RPGs.

Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
I deliberately didn't include it because it's somewhat contentious whether it is an RPG or not and I had enough games to quote without risking triggering that discussion... but yes. Also very influential, even on Baldur's Gate itself, I'd say.
ddebernardy 8y ago
Diablo was monotonous, linear hack'n slash. If that's your thing it's cool, but it's not an RPG. As a CRPG fan at the time, it still boggles my mind that such a title had any kind of success after the likes of Wasteland, Bard's Tale 1-3, the numerous SSI/D&D titles, or the Ultima series. Those days were glorious, and nearly all of those titles are still fantastic today. Diablo did long-term damage to CRPGs IMO. It established that there was a larger market for completely linear titles than there was for titles where the player could actually decide what to do - or at the very least the order in which you do what there is to do. And as a result, it more or less vaporized any type of funding for non-linear CRPG experiences.
- badpun 8y ago
  To be honest, I loved Diablo, but I never even viewed it as an RPG. It was just a mostly brainless, almost casual game to play after school. You could jump in and out for however long time you had and grind some XP and loot. My friends played it too, so at school we got to brag who had more Zodiacs etc.

LoSboccacc 8y ago

Everyone forgetting 1995 saw a huge is release that influenced release dates of dozen titles that ended up postponed for testing. The rpg genre itself was doing strong in 1995, heck just check SNES releases, Chrono trigger, dragon quest, finally fantasy... It was just a transitional period for the platform https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2012/12/06/a-visual-history-of-genres-and-platforms/ https://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/2012/12/06/a-visual-hi...

int_19h 8y ago
I would argue that console JRPGs constituted a separate genre from PC CRPGs at the time. I remember that there was little intersection between the fan bases, and even some hostility.

richardknop 8y ago

Fallout 1 and 2 were a huge success. I remember me and my childhood friends spending so much time during lunch breaks and after high school talking about fallout and our game states and comparing things we did right or wrong. I thin the huge influence of the Fallout series is not fully understood and appreciated. They really influenced the RPG genre in a big way. Fallout is the number one RPG universe for me even though I have played all the other RPGs at that golden RPG era. Baldur’s Gate, Diablo, Icewind Dales, Arcana, Might and Magic. All huge titles but Fallout series will always have a special place in my heart and I will be excited about every new Fallout game for eternity.

thom 8y ago

Pretty sure Daggerfall sold quicker than Baldur's Gate at launch, but hit production bottlenecks as they didn't anticipate the success. That just seems like more evidence that the market was underserved at the time.

cialowicz 8y ago

The Wikipedia page for Elder Scrolls II [0] indicates that the game world was absolutely massive: > the actual size of the map is 161,600 km² (62,394 mi²). The game world features over 15,000 towns, cities, villages, and dungeons for the player's character to explore. Was that scale part of the magic and fun back then? How varied were the various quests? Did it get repetitive, or was it fun to explore? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_II:_Daggerfa...

Al-Khwarizmi 8y ago
Your questions are answered in my answer to a sibling comment below: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735512 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18735512 Except maybe the question regarding quests. They were very varied, because there were plenty of factions giving quests, and plenty of text scripts (that were parameterized with locations, items and NPCs), from a quick search apparently 227 in total. So sometimes you would do similar quests (especially if you liked to always work for a single faction) but the variety was great actually.
int_19h 8y ago
Of course, it was procedurally generated. Later, Arcanum would try to do something similar, at least with a global map. It had premade towns and cities (and nowhere near as many of them, of course); but the landscape between them was done to proper scale, and it was all generated. So, when you reached the outskirts of a town, you could fast travel, or you could just keep walking - and the distance (and time!) you'd have to spend to walk to the next town like that would accurately reflect the size of the game map. And even during fast travel, if you had an encounter (e.g. wild animals, robbers) that dropped you into the detailed map, you'd end up in the correct spot on the generated part of it. Coincidentally, that made it possible to skip large parts of the game simply by heading to locations in advance that you're not supposed to find out about until some NPC tells you. And the game was actually designed to gracefully handle that, despite having a fairly convoluted main storyline.
- djur 8y ago

Tsubasachan 8y ago

In 1995 there were few games, period. Videogame market was in its infancy compared to what it is today. I absolutely adore Baldur's Gate. It is the ultimate expression of gaming for basement dwelling nerds. Black Isle/Bioware always had penchant for lore and world building.