Larian Studios’ work on Baldur’s Gate 3 is the culmination of the studio’s years of work on its own Divinity franchise. While BG3 may be the team’s best adventure yet, it’s just one entry in the developer’s history of dense CRPG games, but this one is the one that sold.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, CRPGs were all the rage with the original Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, Fallout, KOTOR and more. Unfortunately, the genre all-but-disappeared afterwards with only a couple of big hitters peeking out of the shadows as time went on.

Speaking at a GCAP 2025 speech earlier this year, Icewidn Dale designer and Fallout New Vegas lead Josh Sawyer explains that the genre disappeared because of the demands of retailers. While games can now just release on a digital storefront, developers and publishers would have to pitch their products to retailers before the creation of services like Steam, and they could turn products down.

“The reason we stopped making Infinity Engine games was because retailers told us no one wanted to buy them,” Sawyer explained, via PCG. “We asked if we could see the research and they basically told us to trust them.”

Despite this, developers still made CRPGs, but the genre did fade into obscurity until studios like Obsidian—where Sawyer still works—brought the genre back via Kickstarter funded projects like Pillars of Eternity, and Larian’s Divinity Original Sin series. While these games were popular enough to get made and turn a healthy profit, BG3 really is a miraculous explosion of the genre’s popularity.

Since release, Baldur’s Gate 3 has been praised by everyone, but it’s also made waves throughout the games industry. Designers working on new Fallout-like FPS RPG The Outer Worlds 2 have explained that Larian’s work on the game hasn’t just revitalised the love of CRPGs, but has also made publishers “more open” to having their studios develop deep RPGs that don’t sacrifice their complexities to chase mainstream trends.

“With things like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Outer Worlds having come out, I think people are a lot more open to it again,” said creative director and Fallout co-creator Leonard Boyarsky. “It feels like we had to prove ourselves all over again, to a certain degree.”

Even outside of massive industry trends, other RPG developers have seen the complexity and density of Baldur’s Gate 3 and have been sucked in. Speaking to FRVR earlier this month, Skyrim lead designer and Dungeons and Dragons designer Bruce Nesmith explained that not only has he played through Larian’s adventure, but it’s the best representation of D&D gameplay in a video game.

“Obviously, they loved this project, the loved the game, and that came through. And they didn’t try to hide behind anything,” Nesmith said. “One of the things that happened in the earlier years of role-playing games on a computer is that you’d often get a lot of inappropriate comedy poking fun at the game instead of poking fun with the game.”

Baldur’s Gate 3 may have proven those retailers wrong—obviously, there is an active paying audience for CRPGS—but not all CRPGs are mega hits like Larian’s adventure. At the end of the day, it is a niche genre, although Larian has found a way to make that niche more appealing to the masses, and it’s always worth celebrating.