Morrowind Xbox impressions

Yesterday, we finally got our hands on a brand-new copy of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for the Xbox, and we've been playing ever since. In short, the game seems to be a very faithful adaptation of the PC version of the game, which was released about a month ago. The Xbox version of Morrowind looks similar to the PC version of the game running on a midrange system--the graphical detail is impressive, but you'll notice that the frame rate tends to slow down in the more densely populated areas. Beyond that, the game loads and saves pretty quickly (you can save anywhere, anytime), and the FPS-style controls translate well from the PC to the Xbox--the game basically controls like Halo.

Of course, Morrowind plays nothing like an action game, and it also has little in common with traditional console RPGs like the Final Fantasy series. Make no mistake--this is a hard-core computer RPG, only with first-rate graphics and relatively simple controls. Morrowind is a completely nonlinear game. It has real-time combat, it's played entirely from the first-person perspective (you can switch to third-person, though), and the gameplay is all about exploration and choosing your own adventure. Though Morrowind does have a main storyline, there's plenty to do besides that. In fact, you could probably spend twice as much time exploring all of Morrowind's various side quests as you would finishing the main quest. All told, the PC version of the game offers as much as 200 hours of single-player gameplay, and the Xbox version seems to have all the same content in it. There's also a good amount of replay value to be found, seeing as you can choose to play as entirely different types of characters and choose to align yourself with competing factions ranging from thieves' guilds to religious cults to government-sanctioned assassins.

There's a lot of reading to be done in Morrowind. There's tons of written dialogue, and fortunately, Bethesda pumped up the font size for the Xbox version of the game, making all the text easily legible on a typical TV.

Morrowind lets you create your character by choosing from a long list of classes like barbarians, knights, and sorcerers; by responding to a series of moral dilemmas and having the game choose a class for you; or by creating your own custom class. The third option is perhaps the most interesting, and with it we chose to create a wind walker, a warrior who is skilled with blades but has a good grasp of enchantments and some sneaking skills to boot. We also chose to make him a large walking feline, one of the many races available in Morrowind.

The PC version of Morrowind did ship with some bugs in it, causing the game to crash on occasion. We presume that these have been fixed in the Xbox version--we haven't encountered any yet. The Xbox version of Morrowind doesn't include the "construction set" utility that ships with the PC version and allows players to design their own quests and scenery. However, it's hard to imagine anyone expecting the game to be any bigger than it is. We'll have a full review of Morrowind for the Xbox next week, but we're already reasonably certain that this Xbox RPG was worth waiting for. For more information on Morrowind, check out our full review of the PC version (GameSpot Complete required).