I think I'm still catching up on my sleep post Potlatch, since I've been pretty exhausted these past couple of days. I've been managing to get essential tasks done during the day, but I've been spending the evenings doing relatively untaxing things like playing Morrowind on the XBox.

I'm coming perilously close to finishing Morrowind. I'm rather astonished. There are only a handful of RPG's I've managed to play all the way through: Ultima 6, Betrayal at Krondor, Fallout (I came close on Fallout 2, but hit a killer bug near the end), and Baldur's Gate. (Or did I finish Baldur's Gate? No, I think I didn't.) It's a bit of a paradox - I like RPG's because they have long storylines and potential for evolving characters, but it's a rare game that manages to keep things interesting for all those hours of game play.

Morrowind doesn't have all that compelling a storyline, but it does have a pretty continuous array of interesting challenges. And a nice selection of character abilities to play with. And gorgeous scenery.

There are occasional unintentionally funny touches in Morrowind as well. The other characters have little voice samples that they play when they are in conversation range of your character. They're selected mostly based on your reputation and the character's disposition towards you, but otherwise they don't really have much connection to what's going on in the game. Mostly I ignore them. Last night I started talking back to them:

Dark elf wizard: Greetings, outlander. I feel as though I should know you.
Me: Damn straight you know me! You just named me the messiah reborn and warleader of your house thirty seconds ago! Are all you wizards senile?

Uppity dark elf alchemist: Make it quick, outlander. I don't have much time.
Me: Damn right! I have a magic warhammer that will smack you to the next continent if you don't tell me what I want to know in 15 seconds.

Redguard warrior: I like what I see.
Me: Sorry, Charlie. I'm busy saving the world. Go hit on some other collection of pixels.

Well, okay. It was probably one of those "you had to be there" things.

The single best computer RPG I've ever played in terms of story was Planescape:Torment. Man, that had a story. I'm going to have to go back and finish that one of these days, because I still wonder how it all comes together in the end.

Okay, time for me to get some more coffee and do some real work.