That’s not quite the title that Polygon gives to their latest sort-of-preview of Larian Studios’ upcoming RPG, Divinity: Original Sin. But by the end of the first few sentences, it’s pretty clear that’s what they mean:

According to Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke, Divinity: Original Sin is helping to get role-playing games onto a track from which they diverged over a decade ago.

The game, backed with a million dollars in Kickstarter funding, is a top-down party-based fantasy featuring turn-based combat. It is, according to Vincke, influenced heavily by 1992 classic Ultima 7, albeit utilizing technology advances unavailable in the 1990s.

Vincke, in his typically frank style, pulls no punches in his comments to Polygon:

According to Vincke, the years following games like Ultima 7 and its ilk have not been kind to core RPGers. “RPG development used to be all about the quest to give players more freedom,” he said. “And then it stopped because it got too expensive and the money went in to the graphics. It was a development pathway that was abandoned, which I am really unhappy about…”When I look at modern games, there is nothing there for me.”

Vincke seems to understand well why publishers have tended to shy away from allowing the production of Ultima-like games in recent decades:

“Ultima 7 and Fallout 2 were really pushing the boundaries about story and character and freedom and suddenly it was all over,” he said. “Publishers started releasing visually rich worlds with only the illusion of freedom. But it was the wrong path. It was just easier for people to make pretty cut scenes and they sold a lot so they carried on.”

“It became impossible to convince a publisher to put his money in [complex games], because he is looking at a QA nightmare and all kinds of features that are not easy to explain, that are fun but not in an immediately visual way.”…Whenever I showed this to publishers, the games guys would be really into it and then I would encounter the marketing guy and he could never figure out how to market it.

Original Sin’s production has been delayed a fair bit, in part due to the its success on Kickstarter, which has allowed Larian to make several significant enhancements to the game. We should be seeing the finished product this spring, however, and I for one am looking forward to the chance to play through a game that allows for much more free-form play than most 3D RPGs have tended to offer since…Ultima 9, more or less (with one or two exceptions, perhaps).

The First Age of Update: Sergorn notes that there are at least three exceptions: Gothic, Oblivion, and Skyrim. So yeah.