Fallout co-creator, Timothy Cain is a renowned name in the video games industry and he has announced his pick of the top five modern role-playing games including critically acclaimed titles like Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3. Cain picked the five games based on his belief that these role-playing games are best to learn “certain aspects” of RPG game development.
He added that the five picks in his list do not mean that these are the best RPGs ever but one should be paying attention to these games whether they like or not and these games are better than other titles at what they do. Cain also mentioned three runner-up titles that did not make the list.
Tim Cain Picks Five RPGs to Play and Learn From, Includes Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate 3
The first RPG title that Cain picks in the video shared on his YouTube channel is World of Warcraft, the MMO RPG from Blizzard Entertainment. Cain stated that it wasn’t the first MMO and maybe not the best out there but it proved that making a game easier makes them more fun to play. He also said that he has played and loves EverQuest but it is hard in comparison to WoW.
He further mentioned that while EverQuest is less stick and more carrot in the carrot stick model of difficulty design, World of Warcraft is “pretty much all carrot.” He added that he does not want to belittle the game but it is easy and it is fun and it stands upon one of his design pillars, fun trumps realism, and having fun is the most important thing about World of Warcraft.
The second pick in Cain’s list which he said would be a little surprising as to what he just said because it is Elden Ring. Cain said that the game proves “the adage that harder is more fun,” adding that games can have a design pillar and if they execute well on those pillars, they set a perfect example and Elden Ring is the best example that harder makes it more fun.
He said that the lore and story were there for players and players “kind of needed to dig for it” and he loved that fact about the game. He added that what he likes in Elden Ring is its use of status gauges that show a player’s character accruing poison or other status effects over time. The players could see and stop the build-up of gauge effects and Cain said he likes it because there is a lot that can be done with that “in terms of role-playing game mechanic.”
Cain’s third RPG is Bethesda’s Skyrim which he called “an absolute masterclass in exploration” and added that he adores the game’s variety in art and level design. He also added that geographical locations in the game are gorgeous and said that it’s the game that he has told many that is “closest that I’ve ever come to playing D&D on a computer the way it seems like it in my head.”
The fourth pick in Cain’s list is Fallout: New Vegas and coined it as a “masterclass” for it to take an older game and bring it to a new era. He mentioned three things that the game did differently extending storylines, taking the characters of the first two Fallout titles, and the humor of the game in both “dialogues and environmental storytelling.”
The fifth and last game pick in Cain’s list is the Game of the Year 2023 winner Baldur’s Gate 3, particularly because he loves character customization in the game. He also added that the game has a lot of choices and lots of reactivity and added that he is happy because the game proved those people wrong who said that “RPGs are dead or turn-based is boring or D&D is dead.”
Follow us for more entertainment coverage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
