Agreed. I'm still keeping an ear open for how those madmen making Skywind are doing, but I fear their ambitions will get the better of them.
IMO Bethesda has never quite gotten it as right as Morrowind for the feeling of the world; it's better than just "oh yeah, standard-issue fantasy world, cool" and it has always drawn me in. Yes, I want to learn more about the dickhead wizards that live in mushroom towers, more than I want to see "another Nord town".
The development team thought Bethesda was about to go bankrupt, so they said "screw it" and indulged the fuck out of themselves when they made Morrowind.
Then Morrowind saved the company and they had to make more Elder Scrolls games, except now there were going to be committees and marketing executives making sure that everything they made from then on out was as bland and inoffensive and easily played as possible.
The issue with that is that it has been in development for far over a decade by now and is still seemingly pretty far from any release candidate.
Every time I watch one of their yearly progress videos, I get instantly nostalgic and hyped, but also frustrated because they seem to have hit a snag a while ago and it seems as far away now as it did ten years ago.
The scale wouldn’t work with modern mechanics. The island felt big because we walked everywhere, could only see a hundred feet ahead, and fast travel had a non linear payment system so you might need to memorize routes to get where you’re going.
If you could sprint or map travel it’s ruined. With modern view distances they’ll need to expand the size of the island
A lot of difficulty came from the fighting and stealth mechanics, with those overhauled you’ll need to rethink how each works. Maybe add more bad guys to compensate. I would love for kingdom comes fight style in morrowind
I have zero nostalgia for Morrowind and I tried to play it a few years ago. Had to drop it because of the gameplay. I don't care about the looks (I'm 37 so the graphics don't bother me too much in general), or the movement, and I actually like how deep it is in terms of roleplay and skills and everything, but the whole "hits are determined by random dice rolls" thing is dumb as shit, and I'm unable to imagine a time when it wasn't dumb as shit.
And it's not like you need to go the exact opposite route and do a Skyrim either. You could still have a skill based combat experience, just not have it be determined by randomness. Because the way it is, it feels like the game is cheating you more than anything.
Probably an artifact of the times. Morrowind came out about two years after Baldur's Gate 2, a heavy D&D 3.5 game. It's possible RPG gamers expected dice mechanics and To Hit dice rolls. We don't now. I think it could be lost without missing much now.
That would be epic but personally they would have to change the hit chance. It always ruined it for me having to swing 50 times to get a hit all while the enemy is just beating the hell out of u
My Morrowind install is just around 118gb and can go a bit further. As much as I want a remaster, no company could pull it off better than what is available right now.
You can get it so the mod list to automatically install everything. Just choose one of the 8-9 flavors of how far you want to take it, and follow the instructions!
The gameplay isn't the big problem. The UI, controls, and graphics are atrocious. I tried playing last year and I found it harder to figure out than any other game, dwarf fortress included.
I get the graphics and controls if you're used to the newest AAA games but the UI design in Morrowind peaked.
The text is a bit hard to read by default but only with a mod that upscales the UI it's my favorite in the history of gaming.
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u/ya_bleedin_gickna Jul 29 '26
Morrowind