General:Todd Howard: Giant World, Four Buttons

This is a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The diary was originally posted to the old elderscrolls.com website on 24 August 2001.

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Todd Howard, Morrowind Project Leader

Two of the most common questions get asked are "What are the minimum specs to run the game" and "Why Xbox? How is it different?" Oddly enough these two questions have many similarities.

So what is the minimum spec? The correct answer is that until we've fully tested the game across several systems, and everything is optimized and in the game, it's hard to say. It will be lower than you'd expect, and we're adding things to let you run the game on older cards. But you'll obviously have to scale the graphics back. I'd hate to prematurely tell you a min spec that is wrong.

What I can say is this…it runs great on Xbox.

And that's the Xbox answer. Why Xbox? Because we can bring an RPG to a console unlike anyone has ever seen. We can show those Final Fantasy fans the difference.

So it runs great, but how will it play? I've read many discussions with console or PC fans smashing each other with their view. "Console games stink!", "PC Games stink!", "Consoles are only good for platform action games!", etc. The fact is that when doing a good console game vs. a good PC game there are really only a few things you need to take into account, provided what you are attempting lines up technically. For what we are doing with Morrowind, Xbox is a great technical fit. We were doing graphics for high-end PCs at the end of 2001, and Xbox is slightly better than that.

Many times a really good PC game makes a bad console game because of a bad technical fit, whether it's speed or memory. Overall the main things to take into account when doing a console game are -- 1) the controller; and 2) it's on a TV. Other than those two, the fact that it is on a console has nothing to do with "good game" or "bad game."

First, the TV part. This only prohibits you from putting massive amounts of text on the screen, which you should avoid anyway, regardless of the game or platform. This obviously makes it hard to do things with lots of text or small units. Mainly strategy games.

Second, the controller. Again, bad for most classic strategy games, though I've seen some moves in the right direction. Also, historically not a great 1st person device when compared to a mouse. I don't think it ever will be. But the new controllers are made with that in mind, and the Xbox controller does a better job of first person than most everything else (with the d-pad and thumbstick across from each other).

So how do we go about taking Morrowind, a game designed for a PC and mouse, and move it to a TV and controller?

Both items (the controller and the TV) made us rethink the interface completely. For the PC we have a very "Windows™" like system. You can drag and drop things, rescale your menus, etc. Really the ultimate in PC game interfaces. That all gets thrown away on Xbox, and replaced with a system that uses the controller. It's superior to the PC interface in some ways. Overall it's actually faster to do things. The other thing with the interface is that it gets bigger on a TV, because of text size. This has caused us to change the art for the interface to make more of it transparent, so that the screen is not hidden.

We've also made the Xbox version default to playing in 3rd person mode. You can still play in 1st person on Xbox, but 3rd person has been spruced up and we're able to use the controller better. For instance, on the PC you hold shift to run. But on Xbox, there is no run button. You simply push the thumbstick further forward and you start to run instead of walk. Since running drains your fatigue, you don't want to always run and the ability to control this is much easier on Xbox with the thumbstick.

Xbox has caused us to rethink many things that we do and they've all benefited the game as a whole, regardless of platform. For example, making the interface more transparent, since both versions look much, much better now. Xbox has no virtual memory, something we use extensively on the PC, so we reworked some systems and now the PC version loads in a tenth of the time it did a few months ago.

I've also read many threads about "The Death of PC Gaming!" We all know that is silly, and there are things a PC does that a console will never do better. But if you're a PC fan you should broaden your horizons into consoles more. Because there are some amazing games coming out that you'll miss, and they do things that no PC game could ever do. Consoles have the one big advantage that the PC can never touch…they are all the same. We can tweak the movement and speeds because every person has the same controller. We can add certain visual effects because they all have the same processor and video chip. And they all work.

So which version is better? Depends on who you are. Do you like to play first person games with a mouse or do you like to slouch back on the sofa with a controller? What kind of premium do you place on graphics and performance? What kind of PC do you have and are you buying an Xbox?

They both offer a giant world for you to experience any way you want…but one of them only uses four buttons.