With Assassin's Creed Shadows pushed back to an already-full February, expect a bloodbath that might decide the future of RPGs

Well, February 2025 looks fit to burst. Between Assassin's Creed Shadows getting pushed back to join Avowed, Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and Monster Hunter Wilds, those sickos who love their bulky RPGs will surely be glutted beyond belief! Right? Right?!

Nah, probably not. As much as we all like to joke about sleepless nights and chameleon-eyed gamers trying to bullishly marathon their way through hundred-hour narratives, only a tiny percentage of people are going to play even half the games listed above, and certainly not all during February itself. Only those with a depressingly high amount of time on their hands are going to play even a few of them, and that'll be over several months or the year itself. Hell, Assassin's Creed alone has a well-deserved reputation for making games that just don't know when to quit.

No, more likely February won't be a feast, but a fight. People have limited time and money at their disposal, so it'll be a time for hard choices about what they actually want and what they'll spend on. Now, that's nothing new in and of itself - busy release periods happen every year - but this might be different for a couple of reasons. Firstly, all the games releasing are ostensibly large-scale RPGs, and secondly they're all looking like they'll be very different from each other, despite that shared DNA.

As a result, February is fast looking like it might become a kind of impromptu vote by the public on what they truly want from one of gaming's oldest - and most diverse - genres: the role-playing game. More surprisingly, it's genuinely tricky to say right now who the winner is going to be.

Each with their own role to play

I'm pretty impressed by how each of February's games seems set to offer a fundamentally different experience and sales pitch. Shadows is looking to be classic Ubisoft fare, Avowed is a brand new IP seemingly channelling the spirit of late 2000s RPGs, Like a Dragon seems set to be an oddball summer holiday, Kingdom Come is setting itself up as the more grounded "hardcore" RPG, and Monster Hunter will be next evolution of the Barioth-butchering job sim we all know and love.

Now, a few years ago I'd have given the expected box office victory to AC: Shadows without question, but nothing's certain these days. The combination of the disgusting backlash to the game by certain figures online, not to mention that Star Wars Outlaws' sales have disappointed… well, it definitely makes success a lot harder to judge.

The reality is that being a big brand doesn't seem to be a guarantee of anything, especially when so many of the big hits this year have been surprise successes (Helldivers 2) - and many of the failures have been major IPs (Suicide Squad). And who would've thought that a top-down turn-based RPG like Baldur's Gate 3 would've been such a smash the year before, even steamrolling over genre titan Bethesda's own Starfield? 

I don't even think that Ubisoft pushing back the launch of Shadows will be as big a deal as some expect, because it barely overlaps experientially with all the other games on offer. I suppose it and Deliverance meet a little bit on the Venn Diagram of "open world RPG/historical elements", but ultimately I doubt they'll be anything alike. Ubisoft tends to design their games for broad appeal, shaving down the sharper edges, whereas Kingdom Come has famously never made that a priority.

Speaking for myself, it's MH: Wilds that I'm desperate for (the Dual Blades are calling to me once again to be turned on the nearest Khezu), but that's kind of the point: with none of these games meaningfully treading on each others' toes, there's a real chance to treat the upcoming February as a kind of community referendum, a way to find out what gaming audiences as a whole want from their big RPGs. 

And it can't come soon enough, honestly. For a while now the industry has felt to be in an uncertain holding pattern, with remakes, reboots, and tentative steps forward, if it takes any at all. Sure, four of February's big releases are sequels, but frankly it can still work as a way for the audience to vote with their wallets - and give some direction to an industry that badly needs it.

It's a challenging time to be making games right now, as Nightingale creator Aaryn Flynn reveals: "Everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face". Or if you want to prepare for February's RPGsplosion, see our list of the best RPG games here.