It's a big day for PC Gamer—the culmination of months of discussions, arguments, maths and refinement. If you're a reader of our illustrious mag then you'll have already seen it, but for everyone else today is the day we unveil our meaty Top 100.
This is a rather momentous one, too, because there's been a big shake up at the top. After dominating the Top 100 for several years, Disco Elysium has been knocked off its throne. Unsurprisingly, given how much time we've spent writing about it over the last year and change, the usurper is, of course, Baldur's Gate 3.
"Baldur's Gate 3 is our tribute to tabletop RPGs, inspired by countless nights spent adventuring and storytelling with friends around a table," says Larian's frequently-armoured CEO, Swen Vincke. "But bringing this world from tabletops to PC and consoles couldn't have happened without the foundations laid by the RPG titans who came before us—videogames that many of our team grew up playing and cherishing. To be named alongside so many of these games today is truly an honour—enough to tug at the heartstrings of even the most cold-hearted Lolth-sworn drow. Thank you PC Gamer, and to all of you, for allowing us to add our own chapter to this legacy of RPG storytelling."
And what a chapter it is—one that not only lives up to the legacy of its predecessors, but exceeds it, embracing D&D and the pillars of tabletop roleplaying in a way that the, admittedly superb, Infinity Engine games never even attempted.
In this age of live service games, most games that are primarily offline, singleplayer affairs have an uphill struggle when it comes to maintaining their relevance. Eventually they tend to slide out of the news cycle and cease to be as fervently discussed on social media—victims of dwindling attention spans and an industry that never stands still. Not BG3, though. We're as obsessed with it now as we were in August '23.
The frequent and often beefy updates have helped, certainly, but BG3 is also just the kind of game that you can't shake, with characters, story beats and roleplaying possibilities that stay with you. It's the kind of 150-hour epic that you finish and then immediately start again, dumping your happy-go-lucky half-drow bard for a dragonborn serial killer, or one of the other countless configurations, dramatically changing the course of your adventure.
It turns out that we also just really love a great RPG. While our Top 100 lists reflect the richness of PC gaming, that one genre seems to spit out more of our faves than any other. Before Disco's dominance, it was Divinity: Original Sin 2 and The Witcher 3, and while Half-Life 2 had a resurgence in our 2015 list, before that it was Mass Effect 2 and Skyrim. For over a decade now, the RPG has been king. We'll have to wait another year to see if Baldur's Gate 3 manages to keep its crown.