‘In a true RPG, you need to think about what is happening’: RPGs have been coddling us, says Outer Worlds 2 director, who’s glad to see games like Baldur’s Gate 3 let players make mistakes

I tried playing the original Baldur’s Gate as a kid, but I had next to no understanding of D&D in 1998 and wound up bouncing off BioWare’s legendary RPG because I just kept dying. Over time, some of the more esoteric aspects of videogame RPGs were sanded away, and when BioWare got to the action RPGs of the Mass Effect series, I had no problem joining the party. (It probably also helped that I was no longer 13 years old.)

But something was lost when RPGs became blockbusters rather than adaptations of pen-and-paper games, and The Outer Worlds 2 game director Brandon Adler is happy to see RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 force players to pay more attention to their build choices and the game world.