At this point in 2023, game fans seem to be split on what would win Game of the Year if the year got called today. Whichever wins, it’s a safe bet that fans of systemic games — the kind where the most interesting stories emerge from the push and pull between the player and the mechanics — will be celebrating.
On one side, you haveThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Nintendo’s long-awaited sequel toBreath of the Wildbuilt on its 2017 masterpiece in virtually every way, with deep building mechanics, better dungeons, endless item combinations made possible through the Fuse ability, three richly detailed maps stacked on top of each other and, arguably, thebest story a Zelda game has ever told.
RELATED:Waiting For Baldur’s Gate 3 On Console Is Torture
In the other corner, you have the challenger,Baldur’s Gate 3. Larian’s game is also a sequel, both to BioWare’s Y2K era Infinity Engine RPGs, and, spiritually, to theDivinity: Original Singames, which placed a similar emphasis on reactive combat and yes… and-ing all of the player’s choices, no matter how strange.
Both of these games give you a suite of abilities and set you loose on the world to make as much or as little mischief as you want. It’s notable that the year’s two biggest critical successes, which are both also among its biggest commercial hits, are so systemically minded. For years, the conventional wisdom has held that the biggest mainstream games needed to easily onboard players for an easily understood experience. TheCall of Dutygames have often been incredibly rigidly structured because of their status as the best selling games in any given year. Often you’re just running down a corridor, shooting, ducking behind cover, and shooting some more. The best COD levels have messed with the template, but it’s still the template.
Recently, though, games likeElden Ring, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and Baldur’s Gate 3 have put up huge sales numbers while staying incredibly dense and complex. These games are not attempting to replicate the feeling of watching a blockbuster movie, a laUnchartedor Call of Duty. Instead, they lean fully into the gamey-ness of games.
Baldur’s Gate 3 feels a bit like an attempt to reclaim the RPG as its own unique mode of play. Over the years, RPG elements have worked their way into basically every genre. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare revolutionized multiplayer shooters by introducing RPG systems, allowing you to level up and unlock new guns and cosmetics as you played. Over time, that’s taken over basically every multiplayer game, with the addition of a steady stream of post-launch content for players to work through as they gain XP. In single-player games, the same change has occurred. You only need to compare The Last of Us’ original 2013 release to its 2022 rerelease — which adds the sequel’s workbenches which let you spend scrap to upgrade your weapons — to see the expansion of the need for the numbers to go up into every area of play. The fact that we’re talking about Zelda, which has historically been an action-adventure series, in the context of a hardcore roleplaying game like Baldur’s Gate 3 is evidence of how much RPGs have taken over everything.
Baldur’s Gate 3, and Larian’s games in general, are a reaction against that. If everything is kind of an RPG, it takes more to stand out as a hardcore RPG for the genre’s most devoted fans. That’s what Larian has done, developing the crunchiest games in the biz. Romancing companions, onscreen die rolls, extensive character creation, the ability to approach a quest in a variety of ways, chemical reactions during battle — Baldur’s Gate 3 is as RPG as it gets. Tears of the Kingdom, similarly, goes deeper on all the things Breath of the Wild did, offering a denser experience that nonetheless is attracting a giant audience.
So, what does this mean? It seems like a generation of players that grew up on games likeMinecraft,Roblox, andFortnite— games that facilitate and reward player creativity — have made systems-focused games increasingly financially viable. Games are still a young art form. I’m only in my 20s and the medium’s silent-to-sound moment, the transition from 2D to 3D, happened in my lifetime. We still don’t know what the medium will become. Maybe Baldur’s Gate 3 and Tears of the Kingdom are a blip, but maybe they could be the future, too.
