Bethesda announces Morrowind for Xbox

Bethesda Softworks has announced that it is currently developing The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind for the Microsoft Xbox. The follow-up to Bethesda's acclaimed Elder Scrolls: Arena and Daggerfall will be a single-player free-form role-playing game in which a character constantly evolves throughout the course of the player's adventures. Complementing the character development is the game's nonlinear storyline, which has countless branching paths. Even the gameplay itself changes based on the player's actions.

Bethesda Softworks promises that it will take advantage of several graphical effects available on the Xbox hardware. Specific visual enhancements planned for the Xbox version of the game include cleaner and more realistic textures, higher polygon counts, real-time shadows, larger environments, and a dynamic weather system.

"We've been working with Microsoft since we first heard about Xbox," said Todd Howard, project leader for Morrowind at Bethesda Softworks. "They've done a great job on Xbox. It's the fastest system we've seen, and it's easy to develop for. Morrowind is going to be something really unique, and we finally have a system that can do it justice."

"When Bethesda showed us Morrowind last year, we were tremendously impressed," said J Allard, general manager of Microsoft's Xbox division. "We believe this will be the only RPG of its kind on any future-generation video game systems."

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is currently scheduled for release as a launch game for the Xbox.