8 Impossible Games That Pushed Consoles To Their Limits

7. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Xbox)

You probably didn't put too much thought into the under-the-hood workings of the Xbox port of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind from PC, but for the classic open-world RPG to run as fluidly as it did, Bethesda had to employ one devilishly clever trick.

As revealed by studio head Todd Howard in a 2020 podcast interview, because the original Xbox only had 64MB of RAM, Microsoft clued them into a trick to keep the game running while running low on memory.

Basically, Microsoft showed Bethesda that they could invisibly execute a command whenever the RAM reached a certain threshold which quickly rebooted the Xbox without the player's knowledge.

The reboot would be disguised as a long loading screen and then return players to where they were previously, ensuring they were none the wiser - until now.

Howard called the trick a "hail Mary" to keep the game running on the Xbox hardware, and while hardly ideal it is an impressively crafty way to make an incredibly challenging port work.