Cultural Impact: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It may not have been the biggest seller of the year, but it changed the direction the RPG market fundamentally away from single-player experiences and toward preferring open world MMORPGs and proved to be one of the Xbox's most popular games. In fact, it was the first game I bought for the system. (This was the year I got an Xbox, by the way. I couldn't afford to run it on my computer because the system requirements were quite high by the standards of the time and preferred to use a controller anyway, so I was glad a console version existed.) It expanded a lot on what EverQuest and Phantasy Star Online had started in that regard, and in a way that, together with several other titles released later on in the decade (e.g. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, Fallout 3, Dragon Age Origins, and not least of all later Elder Scrolls games) did much to shift the paradigm of the genre toward Western RPGs regaining rapport, increasingly at the expense of their Japanese counterparts. Generally speaking, Japanese RPGs, with their typically single-player, relatively linear, and story-driven approaches were more popular in the 1990s, in the 2000s this type of game remained popular but increasingly had to compete with Western RPGs that remained more loyal to the old Dungeons & Dragons formula complete with medieval settings and emphasis on customization and player freedom. At the time, I kind of loved it. It felt like a cool combination of retro and fresh. Today I have more mixed feelings about this impact. There's no denying that it happened though. It's no coincidence that by the start of the next decade, Japanese developers began to find more success in shifting toward the open world play format themselves beginning with Xenoblade Chronicles, which to me really marked the beginning of the end of what had made JRPGs distinctive and special to me and the point at which I began to resent franchises like The Elder Scrolls more. Neither is it a coincidence that when Disney a decade prior sought to use their characters in an RPG (Kingdom Hearts), they chose to work with Squaresoft and adjacent the Final Fantasy franchise rather than in association with another American company and franchise, by contrast. This characterizes the shift from beginning to conclusion.
From this third installment (the first one I played) on, The Elder Scrolls, for both good and ill, became, I think you could say, to Western RPGs what Final Fantasy was to Japanese RPGs. When one thinks of the term "Western RPG", some Elder Scrolls entry is most likely the first mental picture that comes to mind. For that lasting impact, Morrowind wins in this category. It also really was a pretty neat game by the metrics of the time. I don't just mean that in terms of its sheer scale and customization options, I mean it also in terms of details like the real-time weather effects and day/night cycle that were not at all standard RPG, or video game, experiences; life-like elements like that that the developers took the time to include just so that you would more immersed in their world. You could tell that a lot of love went into it. Online play itself was also almost a novelty at the time and games that used it typically were much simpler and lamer. Morrowind made a real difference in the popularity of the online gaming landscape in general that way.
Favorite Games: That said, Morrowind today ranks in a tad lower on my list of faves from '02 than it did at the time. It's obviously not nearly as fun to revisit today and that's the thing. It's Eternal Darkness and above all Metroid Prime that have really stood the test of the time the best for my taste. Matter-of-factly, in and around 2002 I was a converted Nintendo gamer, straight-up. Check it out.
My 2002 favorites:
1. Metroid Prime
2. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
3. Metroid Fusion
4. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
5. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
6. Alien Hominid
7. Kingdom Hearts
My 2002 favorites based on American release dates:
1. Metroid Prime
2. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem
3. Metroid Fusion
4. Animal Crossing
5. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
6. Alien Hominid
7. Kingdom Hearts
The latter is obviously more like what 2002 felt like to me except that at the time I liked Morrowind better than Animal Crossing. Right around this time window, Nintendo just kinda seemed to be striking that perfect balance between their trademark brand of cutesy and grown-up, male and female-centric, new and old ideas, all the things. The year of the Wave Bird wireless controller and the big N's first ever, and best, M-rated game, with its insanely awesome, fourth-wall breaking sanity effects that made for a tremendous amount of dramatic tension. Eternal Darkness was also just about shit I was interested at the time, like commonalities between all the world's religions, meaning of life type stuff. Very interesting, well-organized, and fun.
Those things said about Eternal Darkness though, nothing topped the resurrection of the Metroid franchise! With no N64 Metroid title, I was really missing the franchise by this point. Lots of older franchises had to be reimagined in the transition to 3D just of necessity, but the shift to first-person shooter format here was an especially brilliant one that to me felt very much like a flawless adaptation of Super Metroid to modern technology and there's nothing I could've wanted more! Indeed, the original Metroid, Super Metroid, and Metroid Prime are in some defining ways essentially the same game, but designed for particular technological levels. The first two even take place on the same planet, for example (albeit in different contexts) and Metroid Prime even begins with a strikingly similar prologue to that of Super Metroid. These three games form the holy trinity of the franchise to me that has always defined it.
The attention to detail and pacing in Metroid Prime makes it stand out from nearly all other games in my mind. Even if it had never been remastered, the original version of this game would still look pretty good even today if that gives you a sense of what I mean. If you look up at the sky when it's raining out, you'll see water droplets hitting the visor of Samus's helmet. In hot areas, the visor gets all steamy and condensation collects on the edges. When there are bright flashes of light, you can see the reflection of Samus's face. The diverse ecology of the planet gives each area truly its own unique feel; no lazy mere changing of textures for different settings here at all. Every area feels very much of its own design. The background music is minimalist in a way that keeps it from feeling distracting and enhances the tenseness, yet present in a way that adds a particular ambience and emotion to each area. The Phendrana Drifts' background music in particular stands out among my favorite tunes in this whole medium. Metroid Prime is beyond a masterclass in immersion is what I'm trying to communicate here, and it felt even more so at the time! And the traditional elements of the Metroid holy trinity propel you forward: the steady drip, drip, drip of continually discovering new secrets, lore, and upgrades to try out sustains one's motivation to explore. It keeps the defining elements of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat in perfect balance, the way they should be.
Metroid Prime found me in a similar place in 2002 to where I was in 1994, albeit for different reasons: lost, depressed, and scared. And it served the same role in my life as had Super Metroid before it. It's my favorite FPS, my second-favorite Metroid game, and my ninth-favorite video game of all time. To say the least, it was my favorite title from '02.
Last edited by Jaicee - on 01 November 2023
