I mean the niche best known for Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls III, IV and V.

  1. (Fantasy) The setting is a fictional world with fantastical elements, and a comparable level of societal progress as the 1600s or earlier.

  2. (Character Creation) You create your own role: character and class. It is a permanent character.

  3. (Action) You have direct control over your characters actions in real time.

  4. (Open World / Sandbox) You aren’t forced to do the main story and can roam around the whole map finding items and doing side quests.

  5. (Single player) Not having to accommodate for multiple players, your choices can make a lasting impact on the world.

  6. (Alive world) There are events that can happen by chance, like meeting people on the road.

Less importantly, they are first person. This connects you more to the character, but downside is you don’t see how cool armor you are wearing. First person combat might also keep it from reaching high action potential, although games like Mount&Blade and Kingdom Come Deliverance features good First Person fencing.

What are the competitors in this genre of single player, open world, fantasy, RPG?

Baldur’s Gate is not an action game.

The Witcher forces you into a premade character and thus I don’t consider it Free Role Playing.

Kingdom Come Deliverance is not fantasy and you are a set character.

Elden Ring has few NPC interactions, choices and well executed quests. The world is heavily hostile. I don’t see it fulfilling the niche quite, but it fills my craving per now.

With Oblivion and Skyrim being real hits, why aren’t there more competitors in the Single Player, Open World, Fantasy, RPG niche?

  • ryathal@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    11·
    2 days ago

    Palworld comes close to what you want. There’s not a ton of story and you can skip all of it if you want, there’s not much gated behind what the main quests are. There’s several different types of random events, you can configure the frequency of some of them as well. It is third person and the tech is more gun focused though.

    If you give up the single player part, FF 14 is basically what you want.

    There’s not a ton of options because it’s a tough type of game to make, and you have to be better than someone’s experience of yet another Skyrim run.