I am very much obliged and indebted to Kickstarters; a way of crowdfunding the project with support of zealot fans. And if you are fan of old school RPGs than you must also feel the same. With the release of Pillars of Eternity, Obsidian has proved their mettle on crafting massive yet engaging RPG. This proves that what can very very talented crew can do once they were given free rein. Even though lot many failures in mind, few Kikstarter gems like Wasteland 2, Divinity: Original sin, Dreamfall chapters, Pillars of eternity and many more has just created torrents of wind in the sail of crowdfunding. Anyhow it’s happy-happy situation for both parties as creators getting their hard work rewarded in monetary aspect as well as getting the recognition on larger scale; and consumers can spent money on what they want to play and in turn take part in building good-quality product through feedback and beta testing. Kickstarter is also great way of treading waters before plunging right away into risky Gaming Ocean.

Apart from quality products major influence of such kickstarting projects are revival of old titles, especially old school RPG has gained a lot. Never was I so excited to play old Fallout series along with classic old Wasteland until Wasteland 2 got released. Due credit to these creators on never wavering away from producing old school RPG nostalgia for their true fans. Just when I thought that Gaming is getting drifted towards more pixel crunching, high definition, high resolution, graphics intensive scale; titles like Wasteland 2 and Pillars of eternity has kicked the scale in other direction in the year 2014-15. It also proved that excellent writing is old horse but experience one and you can safely bat on it without losing the money. It’s so good to visualize the atmosphere through pixel produced text rather than pixel crunching GPU rendered atmosphere. (There are two most appealing aspects to me in the life; Gaming and Reading. So anything which can combine the both in most innovative and brilliant manner is must for me. I loved those DA:O lore. I loved to read Skyrim books. I absolutely adored so many text dialogues in Planscape: Torment. Alas for that you need to have highly intelligent character and that’s what I have done.)

RPGs have come a long way since its inception. D&D pen and paper RPGs were purely text based and still lot more fun. Even though 90’s were dominated by FPS gaming, RPGs managed to hang on with help of classics like System Shock 2, Deus Ex, Baldurs Gate, Neverwinter nights, WoW etc. But there were less and less of party based RPGs. Bioware has somehow managed the light from extinguishing with release of Dragon Age: Origins having party based strategic combat at core (It’s altogether sad that they lost track with series to put emphasis on mass appeal). Bethesda has started different kind of RPG strand with Elders Scroll series which was deep and complex and at the same time approachable by many. With Fallout3 and New Vegas, RPG has completely donned new “Avatar” which was entirely different from old school text-heavy predecessors. Mind you, all these modern RPG titles has retained the flavor of RPG for sure. Still there was XP to be earned, points to be allocated, quests to be solved, character to be developed, alternate solution to be found and all the tropes of RPG; but I feel that somehow in introducing and hence using the new graphics hardware those nostalgic text-based adventures were replaced. Heavy tactical combat was compromised. (BTW I am big fan of Elders scrolls and Fallout of Bethesda as they had pulled me into RPG black hole at that time and still time froze than onwards). Titles like Deus Ex:HR and Borderlands have combined few more game types resulting in movie like quality of non-stop fun and action. And those turn based strategic old school RPG were left alone for resurrection which was possible through new god; Kickstarter.

With the release of successive attention grabbing cRPG titles, can we say that computer gaming is getting back to the old route? I prefer to say Gaming has just found new route running parallel to the current expressway of AAA titles. Love to see these old school RPGs getting appreciated and played well by gaming community. This in turn going to result in many more Kickstarter projects resurrecting and/or creating new cRPG games in old school way. And if you are new to RPG than what are you waiting for, gather your party and move…………………