RPGDot 2003 Awards: Most Anticipated RPG
The RPGDot Team, 2004-01-14

The last couple of weeks you could vote for the best RPGs and MMORPGs that have been released in 2003. Not us but you the player decide who receives the RPGDot 2003 Awards in the various categories. We thank all those who entered their votes and helped us in making it possible to select the best games of 2003.

Most Anticipated RPG
In 2004 several RPGs will be released. Which of these games are you looking forward to most?

The winner: Arx Fatalis 2
When Arx Fatalis was released in 2002/2003, it was a dream coming true for fans of Ultima Underworld. Where Origin never bothered to deliver a sequel, Arkane Studios did. The game played in an underground world, had a good story line, great levels, a good look and sound and everything else needed by a classic!

The game was constantly improved with patches, so that the US PC version and the recently released Xbox version were very well polished. Arx was quite well received by fans, even though none of its publishers on each platform seemed much to cared about it.

The few flaws of Arx Fatalis should now be fixed in Arx Fatalis 2, which plays before the original Arx Fatalis and also offers un upper world. Now all to do is to wish Arkane Studios to get a good publisher and to hope the game makes it in 2004.

(Garrett)

Runner Up: Vampires - Bloodlines
White Wolf's Vampire RPG system will be brought to a PC RPG for the second time now. After Nihilistic's Redemption in 2000, Troika is developing an Action-RPG for Activision scheduled for release later in 2004.

Unlike Redemption, which spans over several hundred years with 4 major locations, Bloodlines will take place in our modern days in Los Angeles only. Technically, it will make use of the Half Life 2 engine and first screenshots look just stunning.

(Garrett)

Second Runner Up: Thief 3
2004 will also see a sequel in the Thief series. When Looking Glass and Warren Spector first introduced the sneaker concept in 1998, people were quite sceptical about its fun factor, but both Thief and Thief 2 were very well received and resulted in many tactical FP Shooters.

With Thief III, Ion Storm will also implement the latest Unreal engine, extremely well improved AI and a better storyline. And, thank god, the original Thief games weren't real RPGs, so Ion Storm can hardly cut down their features as they did with Deus Ex - Invisible War. Look out for the best Thief ever!

(Garrett)

And 10,8 % of those who participated were unable to select one of the games.

We, the RPGDot team also voted to create our own top 5:

We love to see Arx Fatalis 2 as much as you do, but we love to see Beyond Divinity a lot as well.

Note that percentages are rounded to the nearest number.

Overview of all awards on RPGDot
 Best Sound
 Best Graphics
 Best Atmosphere
 Biggest Surprise
 Biggest Disappointment
 Most Anticipated
 Dream Game
 Best RPG/RPG-Strategy Expansion
 Best Non-RPG
 Best RPG-Strategy
 Best RPG

Overview of all awards on MMORPGDot
 Best Sound
 Best Graphics
 Best Atmosphere
 Biggest Surprise
 Biggest Disappointment
 Most Anticipated
 Best Expansion
 Best MMORPG