Obsidian makes games much better at the ‘rpg’ part of crpg. ‘Tyranny’ is maybe the best of all time. ‘Pillars of eternity’ is pretty great too. They’ve made a bunch of others, but those are the stand-outs.

Tyranny: a treatise on discourse and the meaning of power taking place in a grimdark sword and sorcery world. The two branches of the Evil Army representing how fascist think they’re strong and how they’re actually strong, and especially the asshole demigods that lead them just can’t get along, and you die in tutorial valley if you can’t figure something out. Character creation is mostly your warcrimes résumé. Which matters a lot.

Pillars of eternity: an intensely Hegelian game about morality in the context of all the fuckedness of history in compressed anachronistic high fantasy america. Wizards are generally upset by the invention of the blunderbuss. Brilliant, beautiful, sometimes a little bit of a slog because I wasn’t joking about the Hegel.