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
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
This month, we're diving into the highly anticipated upcoming Obsidian game. To find our coverage, visit the Avowed Big Preview hub.
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
Developer: Lionhead Studios
Platform(s): Xbox (Remaster: Xbox 360)
Release date: September 14, 2004
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 "accessory to Improper Man and Lady Behaviour"), is a sublimely cheeky antidote to more self-serious RPGs. Here’s hoping the new Fable can pull off the same trick.
Jade Empire
Developer: BioWare
Platform(s): Xbox
Release date: April 12, 2005
A passion project from studio veterans, this RPG mixed Chinese mythology and homemade fantasy in Bioware’s first attempt at an original IP. Tragically overlooked on Xbox as the Xbox 360 was on the horizon, this was an essential part of Bioware’s journey. The usual sharp writing and great characters were now joined by a far more hands-on martial arts combat system that replaced KOTOR’s sit-back-and-watch fighting. Didn’t hurt that the game was filled with great villains who really deserved a smack in the face, either. We also wish more fantasy RPGs had aerial combat sections inspired by top-down arcade shooters (no, really!). If you loved Dragon Age: The Veilguard, go try this studio’s hidden gem immediately.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release date: March 20, 2006
A lot of early Xbox 360 games were simply HD ports of what we’d been playing on the original Xbox. That all changed when Oblivion came along. Finally, a game that used all that extra horsepower to give us, well, a really big field. But what a field! Oblivion was beautiful, utterly massive, and would probably be talked about a lot more fondly today if Skyrim hadn’t completely stolen its thunder a few years later. As much of a statement of what consoles could do as Morrowind had been on Xbox, except this is infinitely more accessible and has Patrick Stewart in it. So world-shattering was this release that we declared "welcome to the first day of the rest of your role-playing life" in our The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion review back on Xbox 360.
Mass Effect
Developer: BioWare
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release date: November 20, 2007
Easy to forget that this was once an Xbox 360 exclusive, and a series so important to that console’s identity that it was basically Xbox’s Final Fantasy. Mass Effect 2 may have been the peak of the series, but none of that would have happened had this game not gotten so much right the first time. You’re the subtly-named Commander Shepherd, leading a squad of loveable/hateable/I-want-to-romance-you-able characters on an unforgettable mission through the cosmos. An incredible achievement that proved Bioware didn’t need Star Wars to make a beloved sci-fi adventure, and led to one of the greatest trilogies ever in gaming. So much so that in our Mass Effect Legendary Edition review we reiterated that it's "an unmissable" series.
Lost Odyssey
Developer: Mistwalker, Feelplus
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release date: December 6, 2007
We could have written an entire list of poor, doomed games that Microsoft developed to try and crack the Japanese market (RIP Blue Dragon). One of the more successful attempts was this heartfelt RPG from no less than the creator of Final Fantasy. There was a real hunger for a more traditional turn-based JRPG after the divisive Final Fantasy 12, but Lost Odyssey is probably most fondly remembered for its frequent flashback sequences that tell NPC short stories. These play out like little visual novellas and really go for the heartstrings. It’s probably the most conservative game on this list, but a surprisingly strong JRPG on a console that’s as American as a bald eagle eating an apple pie.
Fallout 3
Developer: Bethesda Game Studios
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release date: October 28, 2008
New Vegas gets all the love these days, as if it wasn’t working off the incredible template that Bethesda forged here. One it got so right that we basically accepted an identical shinier retread with Fallout 4. There’s the incredible opening that sees you go through your entire childhood before the shocking reveal of leaving the bunker and seeing the post-nuclear wasteland for the first time. A terrifying horror game lurks in its ghoul-infested subway stations. And there’s a bit where you meet a cult worshiping a sentient tree that begs for death. Fallout 3 pushed the 360 to breaking point, but few Xbox games were as willing to take the RPG to such ambitious, bizarre places. Back on release, we called it "a huge, varied, epic, ambitious masterpiece" in our Fallout 3 review.
Dragon Age: Origins
Developer: BioWare
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release date: November 3, 2009
Bioware was so un-confident that this game would be a hit, that it didn’t plan any sequels (which some of Dragon Age 2’s meaner players might say is pretty damn clear). It's easy to forget after the success of 3 that the idea of a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate was a pretty tough sell back in 2009. But Bioware attempted – and succeeded! – in making the old-school character-focused fantasy RPG more appealing to modern console players' tastes. So began a series that’s still giving us great games today, based on our Dragon Age: The Veilguard review.
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – Enhanced Edition
Developer: CD Projekt Red
Platform(s): Xbox 360
Release date: 17 April, 2012
One of the PCs most ambitious RPGs was somehow miraculously squeezed into your humble Xbox 360, in what would be the most incredible Witcher-based miracle until some demons somehow got the third game running on Switch. Geralt’s second adventure is no The Witcher 3 – few games are – and yet it might even be more ambitious, famously featuring a second act that can play out completely differently depending on early decisions you make. Proof that a series which was PC to its bones could work on console, this was Geralt’s first victorious step into the gaming mainstream, and well worth revisiting. In our The Witcher 2 review, we gave it a five star rating and called it "a brilliant masterpiece".
Want more? Avowed is set to be a more up-to-date Xbox RPG favorite. Despite the Skyrim comparisons, Avowed is an Obsidian RPG first and foremost: "Let's bring in all the greatest hits"!
