In the last weeks of December 2002, you had the opportunity to vote for the best RPGs released in 2002. Nobody knows better what these are then you the player and as such The RPGDot 2002 Awards will look good on any game receiving one.
We thank all those who entered their votes and helped us in making it possible to select the best games.

Best Single Player RPG
The last one of the awards. Which RPG was the best of all in 2002? And the winner is...

The winner: Elder Scrolls 3 - Morrowind
2002 was a year with a lot of great releases in the CRPG genre – and according to our poll Morrowind has topped them all. Bethesda Softworks did a great job continuing the Elder Scrolls Saga, and while it wasn’t perfect in all areas, the package as a whole seems to have convinced the CRPG fans.

With the modular concept that allows users to create addons to the world (and more than 1000 have been published so far), Morrowind has a longevity that is hard to top. The original game itself is huge – there are quests that can keep you busy for more than 300 hours, and looking at the boards at Bethesda or here at RPGDot, people are still playing the game with lots of enthusiasm.

Morrowind is the perfect RPG for people who seek freedom in their gaming experience. It offers a dense background, a nice story you can follow, and an enormous amount of quests. Although it suffers from some problems already seen in Daggerfall (rather generic NPCs and a tendency to become uber-powerful after some time), the game as a whole has set new standards for the genre and is a worthy winner.

(Rendelius)

Runner Up: Neverwinter Nights
Neverwinter Nights single player was mostly designed to show what you could do with the toolset the game shipped with. In short, it was a 6 module demo of the real marketed product.

Well, for a demo it was pretty fun! The 3rd edition ruleset was implemented very well... in fact, what they missed in Neverwinter Nights are, perhaps unsurprisingly, on the list for the expansion pack. Once the toolset is upgraded, I suspect you'll be able to customize Prestige classes. Once that point is passed there is very little Neverwinter Nights will be unable to do when compared to the tabletop game.

In many ways, Neverwinter Nights wasn't a single game. It was, the last time I checked, over 1000 games. I've never seen a game with so much replay... download a user module, or one of the ones Bioware occassionally puts out, and you've got an afternoon of enjoyment just waiting to happen. Now that's single player replay value.

(EverythingXen)

Second Runner Up: Divine Divinity
As a dark horse from an unknown studio running against some of the biggest names in the business, Divine Divinity from Larian Studios has proven that simple, fun gameplay can be combined with a complex world to make a great gaming experience. With a fantastic musical score, excellent gameplay and a solid story Divine Divinity has surprised and treated gamers to an old school game world reminiscent of the Ultimas.
The downside is that the gameplay may be too simple for some gamers to enjoy. Some claim it's too Diabloish with a simple point-click destroy monster combat scheme. However, with the unique quests and better interactions with NPCs and the game world itself, Divine Divinity would be a good game for introducing potential players to the genre.

(Val)

The Numbers
To make it complete we now give you the top 10 as voted by our visitors:

And 6,3% of those who participated were unable to select one of the games.

We, the RPGDot team also voted to create our own top 5:

The differences are not big between the visitors and our votes. We rank Neverwinter Nights a lot lower, causing Divine Divinity and Arx Fatalis to rise one place, but the top 4 shows the same games. The shareware game Genforge is a surprise though.

Note that percentages are rounded to the nearest number.