In December 1998, with Baldur’s Gate about to come out, BioWare’s Ray Muzyka told PC Gamer that the game was “inspired by the golden age of RPGs”. He meant the past: “It’s a sequel to all the great CRPGs pre 1992-93, when the great void of CRPGs began.” Three years later Nintendo Power Advance sold Golden Sun to Game Boy Advance owners as a chance to “return to the golden age of RPGs”. The games now most often remembered as role-playing’s golden age were made by people who thought it was behind them. Between 1995 and 2001 Japanese console role-playing games found a world audience, and American computer role-playing games recovered from a slump that had nearly finished them.
Fast facts
- Period: about 1995 to 2001: from Chrono Trigger to Final Fantasy X and Baldur’s Gate II.
- Console landmarks: Chrono Trigger (1995), Final Fantasy VII (1997), Xenogears (1998), Atlus’s Persona games (from 1996), Final Fantasy X (2001).
- Computer landmarks: Fallout (1997), Baldur’s Gate (1998), Planescape: Torment (1999), Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate II (2000), Deus Ex (2000).
- Main companies: Square, Interplay and its Black Isle Studios label, BioWare, Atlus.
- Enablers: the CD-ROM and the Sony PlayStation; BioWare’s Infinity Engine.
The Japanese side
Chrono Trigger came out on the Super Famicom on 11 March 1995. Square had put Hironobu Sakaguchi of Final Fantasy together with Yuji Horii, the designer of Enix’s Dragon Quest, and the Dragon Ball artist Akira Toriyama. Nintendo Power reported two million cartridges sold in Japan in two months.
Two years later Square left Nintendo. A cartridge could not hold what it wanted to put in Final Fantasy VII, so the game went to Sony’s PlayStation on three CDs, with 3D characters on pre-rendered backgrounds and computer-generated film between scenes. It came out in Japan on 31 January 1997, was the first Final Fantasy sold in Europe, and had sold 9.2 million copies by late 2002.
Square followed it with more ambitious and stranger games. Tetsuya Takahashi’s Xenogears (1998) sold 500,000 copies in Japan within months, nearly missed an American release because of its religious themes, and never came out in Europe. Atlus’s Persona series, begun in 1996 as a spin-off from Megami Tensei, continued with Persona 2: Innocent Sin (1999) and Eternal Punishment (2000). Final Fantasy X (2001), the first in the series on the PlayStation 2, had sold 2.3 million copies in Japan by early 2002, though Edge, reviewing the American release, gave it only six out of ten.
The American side
In the mid-1990s computer role-playing games were thought to be finished. Muzyka dated the “great void” from 1992–93. Fallout, developed and published by Interplay in October 1997, arrived as reviewers were writing the genre off, and let the player talk, sneak or shoot through a ruined California.
The revival came with Baldur’s Gate, made by BioWare, a young studio in Edmonton founded by three doctors, and published in December 1998 under Interplay’s new role-playing label, Black Isle Studios. It came on five CDs, used the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules, and let the player pause a real-time battle to give orders. It sold more than a million copies. “Remember when everyone said that RPGs are dead?” Computer Gaming World asked in September 1999. “Now, following the massive success of BALDUR’S GATE, the genre is hotter than ever.”
BioWare’s Infinity Engine then carried Black Isle’s own Planescape: Torment (1999), led by Chris Avellone, whose immortal hero could talk his way past most fights. Critics named it the role-playing game of the year, though it sold modestly. Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate II followed in 2000. In the same year Warren Spector’s team at Ion Storm Austin released Deus Ex, which mixed role-playing with first-person shooting, stealth and hacking.
Why it happened when it did
Storage was part of it. Square moved Final Fantasy VII to the PlayStation for the space a CD gave, and Baldur’s Gate filled five of them. The games were also made by teams that had been working on role-playing games for years, in Square’s case since the first Final Fantasy in 1987 and in Interplay’s since The Bard’s Tale and Wasteland in the 1980s.
How it ended
Both of the period’s biggest role-playing publishers ran into money trouble in 2001. Square’s film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within did badly in American cinemas that summer. Three of its top executives had already stepped down in February, ahead of the company’s first reported loss, and in 2003 Square merged with Enix to form Square Enix. In August 2001 the French publisher Titus took control of Interplay, which had lost $12.4 million in a quarter, laid off 60 staff and cancelled its role-playing game Torn. Black Isle was closed in December 2003, with a third Fallout unfinished, and Troika Games, founded by Fallout’s makers, closed in 2005.
The games themselves kept going. BioWare went on to Neverwinter Nights (2002) and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (2003), and Final Fantasy X had sold 5.4 million copies by the end of 2002. In 2012 the makers of the late-1990s computer games began raising money from players to make new games in the same style, the movement told in the CRPG renaissance entry.
Sources
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 63, December 1998, pp. 65–66: Baldur’s Gate preview; Ray Muzyka on “the golden age of RPGs” and the “great void of CRPGs” after 1992–93.
- Nintendo Power Advance issue 3, 2001: Golden Sun, “Return to the golden age of RPGs”.
- Edge issue 19, April 1995, p. 41: Chrono Trigger, released 11 March in Japan. Nintendo Power issue 73, June 1995, p. 36: two million sold in two months.
- Computer Gaming World issue 182, September 1999, p. 50: “Remember when everyone said that RPGs are dead?”
- Edge issue 107, February 2002: Final Fantasy X’s 2.3 million Japanese sales; the review, six out of ten.
- Edge issue 98, June 2001, p. 9: three Square executives step down before the company’s first reported loss. Edge issue 101, September 2001, p. 13: The Spirits Within at the US box office.
- Computer Gaming World issue 208, November 2001, p. 47: “Titus Takes Over Interplay”.
- See the Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears, Persona, Fallout, Baldur’s Gate, Planescape: Torment, Deus Ex, Square, Interplay, Black Isle Studios and BioWare entries for those games’ and companies’ dates, sales and sources.