Lemming42
Arcane
That's interesting. My comparison with The Thin Man wasn't based on anything specific about the film, I was just trying to think of something very popular at the time that most people nowadays haven't watched and don't really care about, which is broadly how I assume Mass Effect and The Witcher will be seen 80 years from now.I don't think that's necessarily true. Witcher and Mass Effect, to my knowledge, had success partially down to the developers making it so your choices mattered in later games, even if this was more illusionary than not. Games taking advantage of something unique in the video game medium. Something experimental in theory. The Thin Man, meanwhile, doesn't really do anything that takes advantage of being a film, you could make it a play without much change. It's appeal lies in the dynamic between the two leads. The Thin Man is probably something more like Sam & Max whereas those would be more akin to some forgotten German Expressionism film.
I think you're right though in that a part of their success was in their use (or rather the way they pretended to use) of the unique strengths of videogames as a medium. I guess it's just a matter of waiting for an even more popular game to come along and do it better in a way that makes BioWare games or Witcher look quaint and simplistic in retrospect - maybe BG3 already has for BioWare, Larian's success is definitely going to cause big problems for Dreadwolf.