You're forgetting a few major ones:

- Baldur's Gate 3 (German)

- Disco Elysium (Estonian)

- Divinity: Original Sin 1 and 2 (same studio as BG3)

BG3 is notable for its gigantic success. And Disco Elysium is one of the best written games ever made, and it showed that you can have a fantastic RPG with no combat system whatsoever, while still having meaningful progression.

To add to this list, Remedy Entertainment. They don't miss.

- Alan Wake 1 & 2 - Control & Control Resonant (came out last month) - Quantum Break

They are a small studio but release fantastic works of art every time. If you haven't heard of them, you might've heard of Max Payne. It was developed by these guys.

> Order of the Sinking Star

I was going to mention this game as a counter point but then realised that if I am doing that it's kind of the exception that proves the rule.

I do wonder why this is, perhaps there's more money in the US to build bigger games with bigger teams and you just get the 'too many cooks in the kitchen' syndrome.

I must admit most AAA games from the US over the last decade have been underwhelming for me.

Baldurs Gate 3 was made in Europe!

> Anything by CDPR

They're lucky they were able to No Man's Sky CP2077 alongside Edgerunners being well received.

The US gaming industry has serious Hollywood envy. There's a constant push to make games "cinematic" and put big name actors in leading roles. This not only bloats budgets but results in barely-interactive monstrosities where gameplay is just a bridge between long, non-interactive cutscenes.

It's ironic because Hollywood is not doing too well at the moment.

also people shouldn't sleep on Housemarque. Both Returnal and Saros were fantastic. Don't want to spoil Returnal but the narrative and symbolism that tie the game together if you go through everything after you've finished it and have a grasp of the story is incredible. And the gameplay is extremely fun.

I think many of these games you've listed are a 7/10. A lot of games I am playing are either years old now or I am going back to older consoles (via emulation normally) and the classic games on them.

> The Kingdom Come: Deliverance games from Warhorse Studios and the Witcher franchise from CD Projekt Red (both Polish)

Warhorse Studios is Czech; Slavs are not all alike.

Unfortunately CDPR is showing some signs of Bioware-ing. As much as I liked Cyberpunk 2077, it was visibly "less than" Witcher 3 in too many ways. This is a sign of decline.

Not really sure if they're comparable to a Bioware since CD Projekt Red the studio is basically the one and the same as CD Projekt the publisher. They also own GOG.com. They're probably more comparable to a Valve, with game development, game publishing and game distribution under a single roof.

Warhorse studios as well. Rebel Wolves. Machine Games. IO interactive.

The list is rather long.

Neverwinter Nights 2 was made by Obsidian, not Bioware.

And I would argue Obsidian was the better studio anyway. Besides NWN2, and moreso its fantastic expansion, Mask of the Betrayer, they also made the excellent Knights of the Old Republic 2, Fallout: New Vegas, and their own original franchises, Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2, and Tyranny.

That was Obsidian.

There seems to be a bit of a symmetry between what WoW did to Blizzard and what WH40K did to Games Workshop.

> the end of Blizzard

extremely exaggerated. Recent reports said they are the top game studio at microsoft.

> But it has such a "been there, done that" feel that I suspect its more to capture revenue from a new generation.

The "been there, done that" vibe is their pitch to the older generation who no longer cares as much about technically or ladder climbing and just wants something to do when it's cold outside