The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind was a breakthrough game in so many ways. It built on the foundations of the first two entries in the series while giving a deeper look at the overall lore and a more intimate setting for the game. It also helped to bridge the gap between consoles and PC for western rpgs, since while the genre had some presence on consoles, the best games were still primarily confined to computers until Morrowind saw a release on the first Xbox.
This release was a big moment for RPGs and gaming in general, but sadly the port was not up to par. It was not a phoned in port, as many have suggested, but that the first Xbox simply couldn’t handle such a game. Notice the key word there being First, as the Xbox One X has changed things considerably.
Morrowind has now come to te Xbox One via backwards compatibility, and the situation is very different. This is especially true with the Xbox One X, the system I used to check out the game again ( thanks to a friend that let me use his system). In fact, the game is so different now that I was blown away with how it now runs on the Xbox One X,. Almost everything feels improved, such as the game now running at 60 FPS in most areas. This is in stark contrast to the original Xbox release which had a very poor framerate. In addition the visuals and draw distance are also very much improved.
Playing Morrowind on Xbox One feels like playing a remaster. Not a remaster of the PC original, which is still superior in terms of things like textures, visuals and controls. I instead mean a remaster of the port to the original Xbox. This still falls short of the vanilla release on PC, as textures, visual effects and more that were in the PC original but not the OG Xbox release are still absent here. In addition, the re-release still uses the same control inputs as the original release, which is still cumbersome to get used to. All that being said however, this is an amazing experience and Morrowind no longer feels held back by hardware restrictions on console
This backwards compatibility version may not be perfect, but feels like more than 85% of the original game is preserved rather than the 15% from the first release. The characters actually manage look like they are supposed to, and everything is smoother. Even the loading times that were horrendously long originally, have drastically been reduced and the game now actually feels like a finished product. If you can adjust to the awkward controls ( that not much could have been done about to be honest), you will find that this is a game you can sit an enjoy for hours. Morrowind has finally received a port to consoles that has done the game justice and shows off how amazing it truly is. This also shows just how amazing backwards compatibility on Xbox One truly is. I recommend checking this out.
In addition, we would like to add that there are active retrogaming Facebook community groups you can join. For more, visit Retro Gamers Hub (www.retrogamershub.com) for their extensive collection of retrogaming interest groups to choose from.