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The 10 RPGs that defined Xbox and evolved the genre

We love an RPG quest that seems simple at first but gradually gets more complex as you embark on it. That’s exactly what happened with our quest to try and narrow down the 10 RPGs that defined Xbox. While you may associate Microsoft’s consoles more with Halo, Forza, or Blinx the Timesweeper (for the real ones out there), they’ve actually boasted a rich history of great role-playing games. Xbox also did more than any of the major platforms to erode the barrier between PC and console RPG.
But this isn’t a list of the ten best RPGs on Xbox. Otherwise The Witcher 3 and Skyrim would have definitely gotten shoutouts. Instead, please enjoy this trip down memory lane as we embark on this perilous quest to tell the story of RPGs on Xbox in just ten titles. These are all game-changers that, while they might not seem it today, altered the way we even thought about RPGs on a console for decades to come. Oh, and every game on this list is backwards compatible on Xbox Series X and S! And a bunch are some of the best Xbox Game Pass games you can try with your subscription. Handy, as many of them are still among the best RPG games to play today, which is great news if you have a spare 10,000 hours free…
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind
(Image credit: Bethesda)
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Platform(s): Xbox
Release date: June 6, 2002
Long before the all-conquering Skyrim, Bethesda brought a much weirder RPG to Microsoft’s original Xbox. This 2002 release was a hugely ambitious open-world for the time. Fair warning, mind, that a babysitter who lets your children play with the liquor cabinet would be less hands-off than Morrowind. It’ll happily tell you a quest location then leave you to work out how to find it in an absurdly hostile land with no mission markers, decent tutorials, or any of the things we take for granted in modern RPGs. A difficult game to master, then, which also makes it incredibly rewarding if you’re willing to persevere with it. Good luck!
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
(Image credit: LucasArts)
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Developer: BioWare Edmonton
Platform(s): Xbox
Release date: July 16, 2003
A year after Star Was: Episode II – Attack of the Clones had given us the line “I hate sand”, Bioware massively overcompensated with this beautifully written 2003 epic that’s still one of the best Star Wars games ever made. Hot off the success of Baldur’s Gate 2 (which was a genre highpoint many, many years before the recent Baldur’s Gate 3) Bioware crafted an RPG for PC and Xbox simultaneously with all the accessibility of a console title but all the brains its acclaimed PC games were known for. An incredibly confident sci-fi debut from a studio that was just getting started with this genre. This wasn’t just a good Star Wars game, it was as essential a part of your Xbox collection as the original Halo.
Fable
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Platform(s): Xbox (Remaster: Xbox 360)
Release date: September 14, 2004
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Designer and visionary Peter Molyneux knows his fantasy, even if that’s partially due to some pie-in-the-sky promises for this flawed-but-fun first entry in the Fable series. Yet, while the game didn’t make good on all of Peter’s ideas – honestly, nothing could – it was still a delightful romp through a gloriously silly fantasy universe that nevertheless delivers on its lofty ambitions. The opening alone, in which you play a child who can punch any NPC and happily take a bribe from a cheating husband to not to tell his wife about his affair (you’ll then be called out by a guard as

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