Fallout's co-creator has named his personal pick of the five modern RPGs that everyone designing a game could and should learn from.
Tim Cain is no stranger to grand RPGs - he's been making them for over 30 years at this point, beginning with the very first Fallout, and stretching all the way to helping Obsidian make The Outer Worlds 2 in 2024. Bringing all those decades of expertize to bear, Cain has announced his pick of the five modern RPGs that he thinks everyone designing games can learn something from.
It's important to note that, as Cain himself highlights in the video below, these are five games that the developer believes can teach "certain aspects" of RPG development. This isn't a list of the five best RPGs ever - this is a list of five RPGs that you should be paying attention to, "whether you like them or not," Cain says.
Cain leads with World of Warcraft as his first pick. Why? Because even if it isn't the best RPG or even the best MMORPG, it proved that "making things easier makes them more fun," Cain says. Whereas Everquest offers "all stick and no carrot" in its difficulty design, Cain says WoW is "all carrot," in its approach to difficulty, and it's fun as a result. "Fun trumps just about anything," Cain adds.
Elden Ring, Cain's second pick, proves "harder is more fun." Cain loved Elden Ring's lore being there, but "you had to dig for it," and likewise loves the RPG's use of status gauges to show the player character accruing poison or other status effects over time. The player could stop the build-up of status effects with a variety of skills and items, and Cain loves that.
"Skyrim is an absolute masterclass in exploration," Cain says for his third pick. The veteran developer absolutely adores Skyrim for its use of art and its geographical variety of locations. Cain even says Skyrim is the closest he's ever come to playing a computer game what he imagines Dungeons & Dragons is like in his head.
Fallout: New Vegas is similarly a "masterclass," but for another reason: it's ability to take something older, and bring it into a new era. Cain lavishes praise on New Vegas for taking the older characters of the first two Fallout games, and "extending their storylines" by bringing them to new locations. Cain also picks New Vegas for nailing its humor, both in its situations and its dialog.
Additionally, Cain loves New Vegas for its "reactivity." Choices were presented to the player, Cain says, but they weren't presented in a "black or white" lens, and they had "huge consequences." They weren't "fake choices," in that they ended up being sort of similar, but were "fundamentally different" decisions. Cain immediately wanted to play New Vegas again after finishing it, which he thinks is the sign of a really good game.
Baldur's Gate 3 rounds out Cain's top five RPGs to learn from, and that's in part due to character customization. "Again there's a lot of choices, and again there's a lot of reactivity to those choices," Cain says. The veteran developer adores Baldur's Gate 3 simply because it proves people wrong for saying RPGs were dead, or turn-based combat wasn't cool. Baldur's Gate 3 isn't the exception to the rule, Cain adds, "it is the rule."
As we mentioned before, there's no doubt that Cain knows damn well what he's talking about when it comes to RPGs, and making them. If you're eager to see Cain's work in action, we'd highly recommend picking up copies of Pillars of Eternity, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, and The Outer Worlds.
You can also read up on our new games 2024 guide for a look ahead at some new RPGs slated to launch throughout the rest of the year and beyond.
