Finally, A Director Admits It: We're Sick of Dumbed-Down RPGs

In a moment of what I can only describe as beautiful, shocking clarity, a game director actually admitted that players might be getting tired of RPGs with the depth of a kiddie pool.

Brandon Adler, the Game Director for the upcoming The Outer Worlds 2, just said the quiet part out loud. He thinks players want "deeper RPGs." It’s a revolutionary concept, I know. While the rest of the industry has been busy "streamlining" and "smoothing down the rough edges," Adler seems to have noticed that we actually like the rough edges.

The Return of the Crunch

"Players just really want to be able to get in there," Adler said in a recent interview with Danny Peña. "They want to just be able to get the crunchy number stuff, but also just make all the different types of builds they can."

You hear that? That’s the sound of a thousand CRPG nerds weeping with joy. For years, it feels like we've been told that complexity is a bad word. That we need our skill trees simplified, our dialogue options color-coded, and our inventory management handled by a magical fairy who organizes everything for us.

And for what? To appeal to some mythical "wider audience" that apparently gets scared off by the mere sight of a stat sheet. It’s a trend that has led to a generation of RPGs that feel more like checklists than actual role-playing experiences.

The Baldur's Gate Elephant

Of course, Adler isn't just pulling this out of thin air. The elephant in the room, the 800-pound gorilla of tactical, story-rich, unapologetically complex role-playing, is Baldur's Gate 3. The game's monumental success wasn't a fluke; it was a goddamn referendum. It proved, in no uncertain terms, that there is a massive, starving audience for deep, intricate RPGs. An audience that wants to get lost in character builds, agonize over dialogue choices, and read 500 pages of in-game lore.

It’s a lesson that Larian Studios seems to understand in its bones, and one that other developers are, hopefully, starting to take notice of. The success of Baldur's Gate 3 is something I've screamed about before, and it seems like the shockwaves are finally hitting the right people.

Hope for Halcyon

Adler says that with The Outer Worlds 2, Obsidian is trying to get back to its roots, focusing on "player agency and player choice and the consequences of those things." It’s music to my ears. The first Outer Worlds was a fun, stylish romp, but it was definitely on the lighter side of the RPG spectrum.

I played a short preview demo of the sequel, and while I didn't see a dramatic overhaul in complexity during the prologue, Adler's comments have me genuinely hopeful. The idea that a major studio is actively choosing to add more crunch, not less, feels like a turning point. Maybe, just maybe, the era of the braindead RPG is finally coming to an end. We can only hope.