Summer 1977, I’m five years old and my Dad takes me to the theater for the single most significant event in cinematic history… Star Wars. There just are not enough words to express the impact that movie had on a young boy in the late 70′s. It was like nothing we had ever seen before. We had Lost in Space, Space 1999, Star trek, things like that, but Star Wars was on a completely different level. It was action and adventure, lasers and space ships and the ultimate weapon… the lightsaber. I watched the movies, bought the merchandise, got into lengthy arguments about why Star Wars is better than Star Trek. So naturally, when it comes to video games, it’s a given that you can take just about any genre of game, slap a Star Wars skin over it and I’m going to play it.
First it was the old arcade Star Wars game, you know the one, where you replay the final battle against the Death Star. Then there were many, many, very bad Star Wars games for the Atari 2600 and various other consoles which I won’t mention. Then came the Star Wars: X-Wing series of games, space combat simulators that are still some of the most fun you can have with a joystick. Real-Time-Strategy made an appearance in the form of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, a game that disappointed some, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. FPS came along in the form of Dark Forces which evolved into the Jedi Knight series, still one of the most popular games to carry the name of Star Wars. The Battlefront squad shooters were very popular as well. Knights of the Old Republic is still considered by many to be the best Star Wars story written since the original trilogy (way better than the prequel trilogy). So yeah, I’m a bit of a Star Wars fan.
Naturally when I saw the first ads for Star Wars Galaxies I was beside myself in anticipation. A massively multi-player online game set in the Star Wars universe, it was a dream come true. Of course, after the original announcement, it was delayed… and delayed again… and then in 2002 as I watched TechTV, I saw a review of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. The graphics (at the time) were amazing, the gameplay looked dynamic and the game world itself was so incredibly detailed compared to anything else around. The entire game world, from the terrain to the interiors was built by hand. No randomly generated environments like other games, everything was designed, sculpted and placed individually down to the loaves of bread in the basket on the table in some cabin out in the middle of nowhere. I immediately had to get it and play it.
Continued in Part IV, TES…