Curated playlist

Action role-playing video games

A modder built Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda, and Bungie hired him instead. That twist fits a genre where origins are odd. Dragon Age: Origins got its title from a random name generator before it had any dragons. Vagrant Story had no shops, so players made gear in workshops. The Tower of Druaga was pitched as a fantasy Pac-Man. Final Fantasy XVI sends its hero after a fire monster that turns out to be him. Action role-playing games mix real-time combat with character growth, and these show how many paths lead there.

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy OriginIn Stranger of Paradise, Jack's party are agents sent repeatedly from another world.
Final Fantasy XV: Pocket EditionFinal Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition squeezed a console epic onto a touchscreen. Only the first of ten chapters is free.
Hades IIHades II arrived without warning on the 5th of May 2024, and a rival studio rearranged its calendar because of it. Evil Empire had planned to release The Rogue Prince of Persia on the 14th of May. It pushed the launch to later that month…
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VIICrisis Core: Final Fantasy VII explains a death that fans of the 1997 game already knew.
Fallout 3Fallout 3 is a 2008 action role-playing game from Bethesda Game Studios, and it begins with a 19-year-old leaving the shelter where they grew up. Vault 101 is a high-tech fallout shelter, built for survivors of a nuclear war fought 200…
Kingdom HeartsKingdom Hearts began with a chance elevator meeting between a Square producer and a Disney executive.
Action role-playing gameThe Tower of Druaga, a 1984 arcade game, was pitched as a fantasy Pac-Man.
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VIIDirge of Cerberus was a shooter built around a hero once locked in a coffin. It arrived in 2006 for PlayStation 2.
The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimA modder made Falskaar for Skyrim as a job application to Bethesda. Bungie hired him instead.
Kingdom Hearts IIIKingdom Hearts III, a 2019 action role-playing game from Square Enix, sold more than five million copies in under two weeks. That made it the fastest-selling title in its series. The road to that launch was far slower. Rumors, delays and…
Borderlands (series)The Guinness Book of World Records credits the first Borderlands game with the ability to generate more than 17 million different guns. Borderlands is a video game series from Gearbox Software, published by 2K, that mixes first-person…
Yakuza (franchise)By 2024, Sega reported that the Yakuza series, known in Japan as Like a Dragon, had sold a combined 27.7 million units since its debut in 2005. Those buyers were playing games about organized crime. In the same games they could also sing…
Fallout: New VegasFallout: New Vegas, a 2010 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, was built on a schedule that journalists called remarkably short for a major release. Publisher Bethesda Softworks allowed the studio 18 months. The game…
Assassin's Creed OdysseyAssassin's Creed Odyssey, a 2018 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Quebec, begins its family tragedy on the slopes of Mount Taygetos. A Spartan elder is about to throw an infant off the mountain. The Pythia has declared that the child,…
Dragon Age: OriginsDragon Age: Origins got its title before it had any dragons. A random name generator produced the name first.
Final Fantasy VII RemakeFinal Fantasy VII Remake's reveal sent Square Enix's stock to its highest point since November 2008.
Final Fantasy VII RebirthFinal Fantasy VII Rebirth was released on Leap Day, the 29th of February 2024. Square Enix chose that date deliberately.
Final Fantasy XVIIn Final Fantasy XVI, the hero hunts a fire monster that turns out to be him.
The Last StoryThe Last Story began as science fiction until Nintendo rejected the story outright.
Fallout 4Fallout 4 begins on the 23rd of October 2077, the day the nuclear bombs fall. The 2015 action role-playing game comes from Bethesda Game Studios, and it is the fourth main entry in the Fallout series. Earlier games in the series start long…
NierNier is a 2010 action role-playing game, and its own director summed up its commercial fate with a shrug: "we weren't really in the red, but it wasn't exactly a success either." Cavia developed it and Square Enix published it for the…
The Elder Scrolls IV: OblivionPete Hines, Bethesda's vice president of public relations and marketing, once described the mood before The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion arrived with a wry line. He said: "People were expecting the game to cure blindness and heal the sick."…
Final Fantasy XVFinal Fantasy XV shipped five million units in one day. Square Enix said that covered its development costs.
Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIIIIn Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, Lightning has thirteen days to save the world.
Mass EffectMass Effect began in 2003 as a pitch to build a universe on the scale of Star Wars. BioWare wanted to own it entirely.
Dark SoulsIn Dark Souls, dying twice before you reach your bloodstain loses your dropped souls for good.
Destiny 2Destiny 2 is a shooter made by Bungie, and in June 2026 it receives what is billed as its final update, called Monument of Triumph. That update ends active development. The servers will stay on, though. Bungie confirmed that the game will…
Horizon Zero DawnIn Horizon Zero Dawn, a 2017 game from Guerrilla Games and Sony, an infant is found before a sealed door inside a sacred mountain. She grows up as Aloy, an outcast of the Nora tribe, raised by a fellow outcast named Rost. Her world is a…
Mana (series)The Mana series began as a side story to Final Fantasy. Square's 1991 Game Boy game carried that name.
Namco × CapcomCapcom broke an industry norm by teaming up with its rival Namco. The 2005 game Namco x Capcom never left Japan.
The Elder ScrollsThe Elder Scrolls began as a gladiator game about arena tournaments. Side quests grew as the tournaments shrank.
Elden RingGeorge R. R. Martin wrote Elden Ring's backstory, not its in-game story. Some critics found his role unclear.
Fallout 76Fallout 76 first reached the public through a twenty-four-hour Twitch stream on the 30th of May 2018. The picture never changed. A Vault Boy bobblehead toy sat in front of a monitor showing a “Please Stand By” test pattern, a signature…
Assassin's Creed OriginsAssassin's Creed Origins is a 2017 action role-playing game from Ubisoft Montreal, and the tenth major installment in its series. Its setting was a reversal. Ancient Egypt was among the places fans of the series requested most often, and…
Hades (video game)Hades is a 2020 action game from Supergiant Games in which the hero dies again and again, and that failure is the point. Its hero, Zagreus, is the son of the ruler of the Underworld, and he badly wants to leave home. Every attempt turns…
The Witcher 3: Wild HuntWhen The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt launched in 2015, Poland's prime minister, Ewa Kopacz, and its president, Bronisław Komorowski, visited the studio behind it. That studio was CD Projekt Red, and the game was an open-world action role-playing…
Black Myth: WukongBlack Myth: Wukong is a 2024 action role-playing game from the Chinese studio Game Science. On the 22nd of August 2024, more than 2.4 million people were playing it on Steam at the same moment. Only PUBG: Battlegrounds had ever drawn a…
Kingdom Come: DeliveranceKingdom Come: Deliverance launched on the 13th of February 2018, and at release it drew 95,863 players at once on Steam. That peak topped the 90,780 recorded by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game, from Warhorse Studios, is an action…
Destiny (video game)Destiny, an online shooter from the studio Bungie, took in more than 325 million US dollars at retail in its first five days. That made it the biggest launch of a new franchise ever. It arrived on the 9th of September 2014 for PlayStation…
Demon's SoulsDemon's Souls, a role-playing game for the PlayStation 3 made by FromSoftware, was announced in early October 2008 and put in front of the public at the Tokyo Game Show the following week. Sony producer Takeshi Kajii later described the…
Vagrant StoryVagrant Story, a 2000 PlayStation game, had no shops at all. Players built their own gear in workshops instead.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance IIKingdom Come: Deliverance II has a script of 2.2 million words, according to its lead developer, Daniel Vávra. That tops the previous record holder, Baldur's Gate 3, whose script runs to around two million words according to Guinness World…
Star Wars: Knights of the Old RepublicStar Wars: Knights of the Old Republic begins with a character waking aboard a doomed Republic capital ship, with no memory of who they are. The setting lies four thousand years before the Star Wars films. This one amnesiac premise…
Vampire: The Masquerade – BloodlinesVampire: The Masquerade , Bloodlines sold 72,000 copies in its initial release and earned roughly 3.4 million dollars. That is the entire commercial story of a 2004 action role-playing game from Troika Games, published by Activision for…
Dragon's DogmaCapcom executives doubted Dragon's Dogma, the first open-world game ever proposed for a Capcom title.
The Outer WorldsThe Outer Worlds is a 2019 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, and it begins with a history that never happened. In the game's timeline, U.S. President William McKinley was never assassinated in 1901. Theodore Roosevelt…
Cyberpunk 2077Cyberpunk 2077 broke a record within hours of its midnight GMT launch on the 10th of December 2020. More than one million people played it at once on Steam, and one million viewers watched live on Twitch. Together, the figures doubled the…
Genshin ImpactGenshin Impact, a 2020 action role-playing game from the Chinese studio miHoYo, caused an uproar before anyone could play it. At the ChinaJoy convention in 2019, fans of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild gave the Sony booth the…
Nier: AutomataNier: Automata, a 2017 action role-playing game made by PlatinumGames and published by Square Enix, ends with an unusual request. When the story is over, the closing credits turn into a shooting game that the player must fight through.…
Dragon Age: The VeilguardDragon Age: The Veilguard reached players on the 31st of October 2024 for PlayStation 5, Windows and Xbox Series X/S. BioWare developed it and Electronic Arts published it. It is the fourth major game in the Dragon Age series, and the…