Microsoft’s recent excellent Xbox Showcase laid bare something we’d already suspected: that the Xbox is about to become the go-to platform for role-playing games – particularly Western RPGs. It’s an interesting shift for a platform that, from its very inception on the back of the Halo franchise, was informally known as the “shooter box.”
None of this is a surprise – not when Microsoft purchased Obsidian, inXile, and then Bethesda Game Studios – but now all of Microsoft’s RPG cards have been laid out, and the hand they’re holding is mighty impressive. To wit: Xbox now has at least one major, exclusive, first-party RPG lined up for the next 3-4 years, if not more.
From what I have seen and played, nothing in Starfield is shallow. The skill trees, the character creator, the dialogue trees, the shipbuilding systems, and so much more all have genuine depth
First up, of course, is Starfield, which will finally be released on September 6 (technically September 1 if you pony up for the pricier deluxe version) after roughly eight years in development. Game director Todd Howard told me he doesn’t want everything he works on from here on out to take that long, but after playing Starfield for an hour myself, I can confidently say that the time has not been wasted. What I mean by that – and the 45-minute Starfield Direct that immediately followed the Xbox Showcase went into more detail on – is that from what I have seen and played, absolutely nothing in Starfield is shallow. The skill trees, the character creator, the dialogue trees, the shipbuilding systems, the planetary exploration, and so much more all have genuine depth to them. Each is something you could spend hours enjoyably doing. Players are going to be plumbing the depths of Starfield’s massive in-game universe for many, many years to come.
Next year, meanwhile, the aforementioned RPG specialists at Obsidian have promised us Avowed, the first-person fantasy role-playing game set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Unlike Starfield, Avowed won’t be gargantuan. Instead, Obsidian clarified that it’s more akin to the 20-40-hour quest that the studio’s own The Outer Worlds was. But if it’s got the quality of story, dialogue, and pure role-playing that Obsidian has made its name on, then I can’t imagine that anyone’s really going to complain.
Next we move to 2025, which seems like the most likely landing spot for Fable. Before you hit the Comments below saying that 2025 is crazy, think about this: Microsoft put “2024” on the games they are confident are coming out next year, like Avowed and Hellblade 2. Fable had no date on its debut gameplay trailer. Therefore, it’s likely not expected out next year, otherwise they’d have put 2024 on it. Playground has a truly immaculate track record, and if the snippets of gameplay we saw in that trailer are indicative of what we can expect in the full game, then Playground will strengthen its argument that it is among the most talented developers not just at Microsoft, but in the entire game industry.
Things get a bit murkier from there, release-wise, but if either or both of The Outer Worlds 2 and inXile’s steampunk-inspired, Unreal Engine 5-powered Clockwork Revolution slip to 2026 (an entirely possible if not probable scenario in the modern game industry), then you’re looking at four consecutive years of some serious RPG firepower.
And finally, of course, there’s one more RPG in Microsoft’s pocket – one that will probably outsell all of the other ones combined, and one that is arguably the single biggest property Microsoft owns (yes, bigger than Halo at this point) – The Elder Scrolls 6. That one is quite a bit further out, given the fact that Howard and his Bethesda Game Studios teams only work on one game at a time. The follow-up to Skyrim will be a juggernaut, but it’s still so far away that it might not even be released on the current Xbox console generation. If we take Howard to heart when he says he hopes his games don’t take eight years to make from now on, a five-year development cycle for a game as big and ambitious as TES6 is likely to be is probably the most reasonable guesstimate. Four years is unlikely, three is basically impossible. Five years would put us in holiday 2028 – possibly as a launch title for the next-generation Xbox, if the Series X lasts as long as the Xbox 360 did (the Xbox One was seven years, which would even more assuredly put TES6 on the next Xbox!).
The point is, the Xbox is absolutely loaded with exclusive, AAA role-playing games from accomplished game developers. If you love the genre, you’re going to have to start gaming in the Xbox ecosystem if you’re not already there. And you’re going to be eatin’ good for years to come.
Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.
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