What games are you playing right now? Anything you'd recommend?

[LegitHyperbole]

Dante9 said:

HoloDust said:

They are not dead, they were always niche (if we're talking CRPGs, that usually have tactical combat). Even back in the heyday of CRPGs (pick your era, whether it's Ultima, SSI's Gold Box, or first renaissance spearheaded by Interplay/Bioware) they were mostly niche genre for audience that wanted P&P RPG experiences converted to video game format.

BG3 made a mainstream splash since it was riding the massive mainstream success of D&D 5e, it's (on the paper) sequel to CRPG classics that are BG1&2, it's made by makers of D:OS games (which have their loyal following), and last (but nowhere near least) had massive media hype (backed by Hasbro).

I think what made the difference was the actual acting and face to face interactions with the characters. It made it much more appealing to the mainstream than just tiny characters with text above their heads. I wonder how popular Larian's previous games would have been if they did that earlier.

Not that popular. Not BG3 sales anyway. I call bullshit on CRPGs being niche, Larian proved that they aren't. The previous user here mentioned most but the factors surrounding BG3 which caused it to boil over are many, mainly larian cultivating a strong base of dans and then piggy backing off an iconic name, doesn't matter if people didn't play it, they recognise it and D&D popularity being up cause of Stranger things as well as the media and gamer hype. I think the next Divinity won't hold that number as you can see with the Trophy data on BG3, they'll be lucky to get half that again but still more than prior Divinity:OS games LT. Even if they done BG4, they aren't getting that buzz cause the game is clearly too overwhelming for the masses but that's not to say it's niche, 10 million waiting for a BG3 level game is not an niche, if the AAA studios out one out tomorrow they'd have 10 million LT if the the game was as good and hype worthy as Larian games but they won't, I'm not even sure they can make them with severe issues.