Maybe that’s they point, people want to play Morrowind but they don’t have a platform that can actually play it
For PC, there’s already OpenMW to do that: https://openmw.org/
Basically, it’s a fan reimplementation of the Morrowind engine, which you feed the original game files into. It also has a number of improvements over the original, like higher resolution, higher view distance and virtually no loading times.
The gameplay sucked but what makes Morrowind a far superior game to Skyrim and Oblivion is Morrowind is weird.
Bethesda is only capable of making boring big budget fantasy epic setpieces these days, gone is the feeling of going into a random shop and reading a random book, gone is the feeling of “what the hell is over the next hill!?”.
You always know what you are going to get with Bethesda, they won’t take ANY risks. Bethesda will never again present a vision of fantasy that doesn’t simply meet the expectations of well worn fantasy tropes, as far as they are concerned that would be bad for business to do otherwise.
If you showed me of a picture of dragon from Skyrim, a dragon from Harry Potter and a dragon from Lord Of The Rings I don’t think I could tell them apart, the same cannot be said for almost any aspect of Morrowind down to basic things like the architecture of its buildings.
I wouldn’t say that Oblivion or Skyrim has much better gameplay, honestly. Yeah the weird dice-roll mechanic is gone, not that dice rolls necessarily make for a bad game (see the entire Baldur’s Gate franchise, including the latest installment) but the combat in Oblivion and Skyrim isn’t exactly good. It’s floaty and feels really weird.
Oblivion retains more of Morrowinds roleplay mechanics, too. Skyrim is just a flat, empty game. They leant really far into this garbage faux viking aesthetic, complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don’t sound like that here in the Nordics) and there’s nothing really memorable about it. It plays and feels about as drab as it looks.
Like to-date, there are still aspects of Oblivion and Morrowind I recall fondly. One of my favourite wow-moments in Oblivion was the quest with the woman who tasked you with finding her painter husband. That’s a fun quest. Skyrim has nothing like that.
(…) complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don’t sound like that here in the Nordics)
If you want a better viking game with much better Nordic sounding accents, Banner Saga is out there. Though there is only like 10 minutes of voice acting per game - but what is there is good! They used an Icelandic VA studio to make sure it’s authentic.
The best swedish accent I ever heard was that one blonde knight in Witcher 3 - Blood & Wine. Which is funny as I don’t think it makes sense for the setting at all, but accent voice direction in that whole expansion is a complete clusterfuck with zero consistency.
The best Swedish accent I’ve heard was the Russian gangster father of Alfie Allen in the first John Wick film. Makes sense given that the actor, Michael Nyqvist was Swedish.
Skyrim’s NPCs sound and act like they’ve been lobotomised.
I meant in video games, of course. In films there are a ton of examples. I usually go for Ingrid Bergman’s accent in the Murder on the Orient Express movie, although that one - while accurate - is slightly exaggerated for effect, I think.
It’s not like Bethesda couldn’t afford to hire Nordic voice actors. They just chose not to do so.
Skyrim’s NPCs sound and act like they’ve been lobotomised
So they’re going for a Danish accent I see
I don’t think it’s just because it’s weird. It’s because it’s weird and immersive. Part of what makes it so immersive is that there’s no modern fast travel. There are in game fast travel options but they can only get you to major settlements, or fortresses that you’ve found and cleared, or whatever point you’ve marked that you can use the recall spell to. Beyond that your on your own two feet. You want to get to the Urshilaku camp? Better start walking because you can’t fast travel there. And at the start of the game you’re slow as fuck. I still remember it being quite an adventure to get from Seyda Neen to Balmora on foot.
And that’s to not even mention the quests. I don’t wish the for the Morrowind style journal, but the quests didn’t have a huge waypoint telling you exactly where to go. If you wanted to know where you had to go you had to listen to the directions you were given and then actually try to follow them. One of my more memorable side quests from Morrowind was where I misunderstood the directions, took the wrong left turn and kept searching for a farm almost all the way to Caldera. The actual farm was pretty much just around the corner had I taken the right turn. I don’t even remember what the quest itself was about. I only remember getting lost.
I remember getting a high enough acrobatics and enough skooma to “fast travel” by finding a high place to jump across the map from. Good times
A time honored tradition of getting lost because of misreading the journal. I don’t remember which quest it was, but it was one that asked me to find something heading south. The first time I went south I got pretty much to the end of Vvanderfell. Next time I tried doing the walk, I kept to the road. It didn’t take more than 1 minute from the city (Balmora? Can’t remember) to where I was supposed to go.
I know there’s one quest that gives the wrong directions. I assume that’s part of the reason they don’t do it anymore. If they modify the game and the position of something changes they need to go back and modify any text that referred to it. With a quest marker they just mark the location and it works automatically. It shouldn’t be that hard to make a procedural text directions generator though, but that wouldn’t work with 100% voices lines.
Thats part of the reason I think that is flawed. They can’t have characters give you detailed lore about the world because it needs to be voiced, so they have to shove it in a book, which means you can’t have a conversation about it. I think a hybrid approach would be better, but there’s no way Bethesda is going to do that now.
I guess there is an argument for AI generated voices for this task. It’d be doing something that is impossible to do otherwise, so it’s not replacing anyone.
Sorry, that was a huge tangent/rant.
I disagree on it being weird the thing that makes it great. No, it’s because they cared. They wrote a deep intriguing story, and they trusted the player to treat the world as meaningful and to learn on their own. They expected you to read and to be interested.
Now, everything is dumbed down and simple, and it’s baby fed to the player. There’s little to discover that isn’t shoved down your throat. Sure, there’s (precedurally generated) loot to gather, but nothing more.
Morrowind was built as a world, and then they set a game there. The people, locations, and events make sense in that world. Starting especially with Skyrim, but even with Oblivion, it’s built as a theme park. The world is just there to entertain you, but there’s nothing behind the fecade.
Only a couple things need fixing.
No dice roll combat
Enemies don’t aggro/prevent resting and saving from miles away
But how will Jiub become Saint Jiub the Eradicator if nobody is hassled by Cliff Racers with infrared vision locking onto them from the other side of the island?
I have gone back and played Morrowind. Multiple times. Because it is, in fact, a game I want to play again.
It’s almost like that’s the reason people are asking for a remaster.
Yeah, Morrowind is my favorite game of all time.
These days I play it with higher res textures and a mod to make the wildlife less insanely hostile via the excellent OpenMW.
did you read the article
No need. Either the headline is accurate and they disagree with the premise of the article or the headline is rage bait in which case they don’t deserve clicks.
yeah the title is ragebait. the guy says a remake could be great but a remaster as it is would be way too archaic
Ragebait headline. The guy does say that a proper remake or a new game set in the Morrowind region could be good. Just a remaster like the Oblivion remaster, with modern graphics slapped onto the original gameplay wouldn’t work too well.
The Oblivion remaster is a lot more than just modern graphics though… There are a ton of completely changed mechanics, new ones and others that are just tweaked. It’s very much not just a graphical refresh.
I would still call it virtually the same game, especially since they didn’t even bother to fix lots of awful bugs.
But I think, we can both agree that Morrowind would need a significantly larger overhaul, if you wanted to make it feel ‘modern’. You’d need voice acting. Perhaps optional quest markers. Well, and the combat system would basically need reimplementing from scratch.
Well fuck me and my heavily modded OpenMW
Ok I did. And I’ll play it again, too. It was the best Elder Scrolls game to date.
The only thing that could make it better is updated visuals, better combat, and NPCs that actually move around and have schedules.
Oblivion and Skyrim have slightly better combat, better visuals, and NPCs that walk around. And nothing else that made Morrowind so fucking good. Let Kirkbride write more than 1 or 2 quest lines, god damn it.
Morrowind was my favorite. I couldn’t play Oblivion for more than an hour and I have tried multiple times over the years. Something about that game just bores me to death. Skyrim was good though, after getting some used to.
Same for me. In the moment I left the starting dungeon I lost all interest in exploring the world. Tried it 3 times over the years and never progressed further. I am wondering if the remake might be different and worth another try… I heard so much good about oblivion that I really see me enjoying it.
What? You guys don’t have phones?
God, I immediately thought of Blizzard talking about how “No one wants to play Classic WoW” and yet… here we are…with like 7 versions of WoW Classic because, yes, people do want to play that shit.
I have played Morrowind many many many, many times. hell I’ve played multiplayer Morrowind a few times
I regret not to have played these Elder Scrolls games when they were new. These are really special games. At the time, I wasn’t a fan of western RPGs and leaned heavily into JRPGs. But man, I regret it.
Morrowind is undoubtedly better today than when it was released. The thousands and thousands of mods, thundreds of mod lists, dozens of tools, and hell even the complete, open source, crossplatform reimplementation of the core game engine and its crazy good multiplayer fork, all add up to today being an even better time to experience the game and the community!
I highly recommend picking up the base game and then playing it through OpenMW, with minimal mods the first playthrough (tho unofficual bugfix patch and the like are still probably a good idea)
The “I Heart Vanilla” pack is supposed to be good for that, I run with Just Good Morrowind, plays extremely well on the steamdeck too.
It’s still by far my favourite of the series.
Then there was me bouncing between Morrowind and Chrono Cross depending on who’s turn it was with the PC.
JRPGs have their charm and, depending on your age, will feel a lot more relatable and “easy to get started” than most western RPGs. I don’t remember when I started caring more about WRPG over JRPG, but I think it happened when I was 17, I suspect Warcraft 3 and World of Warcraft played a significant role in that.
Morrowind Online is one I still have to try. I fucking love Tamriel Rebuilt, and I’ve only explored a small fraction of the mainland.
Is he high? There are thousands of people still playing & modding Morrowind.
Well for him, thousands of people is basically nothing. Skyrim has sold over 60 million copies.
One of the problems with growth in popularity is a growth in expectations. A Morrowind remaster that sold even 1 million copies would be considered a failure.
If they revisit Morrowind, they need to go ALL IN on it. Keep the setting and themes but redo everything else. I love Morrowind as a world to get lost in but the combat gameplay in particular is quite bad, possibly the low point of the entire Elder Scrolls franchise.
I enjoy the combat in Oblivion, Skyrim, AND Daggerfall more than Morrowind, simply due to the feel of weapons connecting with enemies. Daggerfall probably feels the best, due to the crunchiness of it and the way you can do different types of swings in rapid succession.
The exploration stuff in Morrowind is just amazing though. Some of the dungeons are like Russian dolls of awesomeness! Also just love the music. So relaxing!
Why not go and make something new?
Because it’s too risky. Shareholder want reliable income not a gamble. Remastering old shit is more or less guaranteed money.
Yes, I do, and I have recently. Next question!
Morrowind would be a GOTY release if it came out today and made it so 1. running stamina loss only happened in combat, 2. low combat skills caused lower damage instead of lots of misses, and 3. draw distance was further than 10 feet away then fog.
Yeah, make the combat not suck ass as a newbie trying the game out for the first time and it’d be awesome.
The combat doesn’t suck. Morrowinds combat is good, you just don’t understand how it works when you are new to the game.
The weapon swing animation tells the game to roll Attack dice, just like in a Table Talk RPG like Dungeons and Dragons. Then, if your Attack Roll (with modifiers like current fatigue, weapon skill, etc) beats the enemy’s Armor Class (with modifiers like their current fatigue and enchantments, etc), its a hit. Otherwise, its a miss.
The one thing Morrowind could have done better with combat is communicating the feedback to the player better. Because the game can get the result of the roll immediately, it can then change what animation plays back to the player, so rather than always playing back the same weapon swing animation regardless of result, it should instead choose different animations based on the result. Missed? Play an animatiom that looks like the player missed. Hit? Play an animation that looks like a hit. Hit but damage was blocked? You get the idea.
Perhaps it would be helpful if the game displayed a UI dice result to better communicate this, who knows. I like the game better without floating damage numbers, but they could be helpful to reduce frustration of new players that don’t understand how the game works.
The problem with translating classical RPG combat into an FPS is that the game already has physical missing based on player skill. The dice roll stacks on top of that. Add in the total lack of communication on whether a miss was you or the dice, and it makes the player think that the hitboxes just suck.
Later games that do something similar tend to move it to the enemy, giving them a chance to parry for reduced damage. It’s mechanically very similar, but it feels way better for the player since they can see the hit still connect.
Yeah combat aged very poorly but it does a host of other things someone should take and expand on.
Morrowind was a terrible action game, and a fantastic hand-crafted world to explore.
Oblivion felt like a huge step back to me. Sure it looked a lot better, it was technically bigger, it was entirely voiced over, and its physics… err… existed.
But it was so bland. Completely generic environments, copy-pasted dungeons and buildings everywhere, almost any encounter a leveled rando with no personality.
And then everything they did to make the game more modern only made it more boring. Voiced over? Sure, enjoy everyone having one sentence of dialogue. Looking for stuff? Nobody’s got time for that, just follow the magic compass.
I understand why they did those. But despite how janky Morrowind could be in some aspects, nobody can convince me Oblivion was the better game.
The combat is great. It just doesn’t sit right with people that it’s not as action RPG as it looks (swing and miss) and it never tells you how important stamina (fatigue) is.
Idk, there’s the loading screen tips, one in particular says “if you’re entering a new or strange area, be sure to walk to conserve fatigue” or something along those lines.
Maybe an NPC tells you in Seyda Neen?
Yeah combat aged very poorly
I disagree, it’s a matter of what you are looking for and your taste in gaming.
I prefer combat like say in Morrowind or even the original Deus Ex. When I am playing an RPG, I want the combat to be challenging from a gameplay experience perspective (it’s difficult to shoot when you start out in the OG Deus EX) and reflect the fact that you’re a low level character and that you need to learn the game and understand how combat works.
Many modern RPGs almost play like an FPS with RPG elements tacked on. If I want to play an FPS, I will play a real FPS.
General UI/UX improvements are a must, but it’s not wrong for combat to be on some level unintuitive when you start out.
It’s sort of like saying Jazz has aged poorly just because it’s not mainstream in the way it may have been 70+ years ago.
Combat always ages poorly, because anything happening in real time requires muscle memory. As developers develop new combat mechanisms, it is constantly getting incrementally better. It’s like trying to compare a modern performance car to a Model T, or an '89 honda accord. The 65 Shelby Cobra doesn’t have bluetooth or antilock brakes or passenger airbags, but there are many enthusiastic fans of the car today. The modern Shelby Mustang is essentially a remake with modern tech trying to capture the spirit of the original.
That’s what we want. We want Morrowind, but better. The classic is still the classic, so we don’t need that again. Modders can reskin the game with better graphics.
IMO, Morrowind is one of the greatest games ever made. I play it regularly and it holds up. The problem is that it’s not intuitive if you don’t know how it works.
Is this the same
guyperineum who told WoW players they didn’t want to play the original?
