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The times, they were a changin’. Doom singlehandedly restructured the market base for PC games, but there were other, and new genres rising to popularity through these down years for RPGs such as Real Time Strategy, Simulations, and God Games. Just a few months after the release of Ultima VII, Origin Systems was purchased by Electronic Arts, work was finished on the expansion to Ultima VII, The Serpent Isle, but after that the formerly consistent powerhouse developer that always pushed the envelope would only have one more release that was loved in the fan’s eyes.

But it was not all bad during this period of darkness for RPGs. Bethesda Softworks, a company known primarily for making sports games decided that 1994 would be a good year to release its first RPG, The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Arena was quite a mixed bag of RPG design. Outside of the major cities and plot required dungeons the entire world was randomly generated, making it very similar to a roguelike. The player’s perspective was given in first person, and combat was in real time as controlled by the mouse. Bethesda gave players the entire Septim Empire of Tamriel to explore, but Arena’s sequel would set the benchmark for the rest of the series. Despite its release in the mostly dead for RPGs mid 90’s Arena was fairly successful, enough to warrant a sequel anyway.

Bethesda returned in 1996 with Arena’s Sequel, The Elder Scrolls: Chapter Two Daggerfall. Daggerfall focused not on the entire empire, but instead on the Imperial provinces of High Rock and Hammerfell. Combat and control was kept intact, and the graphics were given a considerable overhaul, looking quite good for its time with pseudo-3D environments. The area outside of the cities in Daggerfall is once again, randomly generated, and this allowed the game to have the largest world ever imagined in video gaming. Daggerfall is twice the size of Great Britain, just a bit shy of 500,000 square miles. Bethesda would go for a hand crafted approach to Daggerfall’s follow up following criticism of monotony, continuing the tweaking of their own game formula until they found a true winner in Daggerfall’s sequel.

Another major release came about in 1996, and its arguable that it signalled the end of True Darkness for RPGs and began the renaissance, all by being a detailed roguelike hack ‘n slash dungeon crawler. That’s right, Blizzard Entertainment released Diablo. Now the only reason I personally don’t start the renaissance here is mostly because Diablo is not an RPG in its truest form up to this point, at least in my opinion. It is an excellent evolution and mish mash of previously pioneered ideas. But for me personally, its not RPG enough to truly satiate my hunger. You only control one character instead of using deep strategy with a party. The story is almost nonexistent in Diablo, you’re given enough to go on in the early game and side quests slowly build it up to a final confrontation, but none of it is groundbreaking or shocking. Diablo is still an excellent game, and its sequel would only continue to catapult the series into becoming an instant legend and insane popularity.

During these down years there was one new team that was pushing the idea of combining RPG systems into different forms of established gameplay. Looking Glass Studios was originally formed when Lerner Research and Blue Sky Productions merged. They ended up partnering with Origin to produce an Ultima spinoff called Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, released in 1992. Many gamers of the time were blown away by the first person mouse based dungeon crawling, enjoying smoother turning instead of 90 degree turns in games beforehand. Ultima Underworld became a new success story. A sequel followed in 1993 before LGS did their first real combination of genres.

In 1994 Looking Glass released System Shock, the first game that fully combined first person shooter gameplay with RPG based character progression, and set it all in an awesome sci-fi universe. Unfortunately it would not be a commercial success, perhaps because of the delay of release between the floppy and CD-ROM versions. The CD-ROM version was much smoother and had higher quality audio and graphics, but since it came after the fact most that experienced it from the original floppy release had already moved on. But the game would remain a cult classic and spawn a sequel during the Renaissance.

But the good old days of true RPGs would come about in a reimagined way thanks to our old friends Interplay, who have a brand new team of young, visionary designers, and a publishing agreement with another young and upcoming developer.