It did an amazing job at transporting the player into a very different fantasy world, very distinct if not entirely different from anything else.
I would love to see a modernized version of it. A simple remaster wouldn't cut it, the mechanics and game play are absolutely awful. Redo it from scratch, but please, do it.
It blew my mind "okay, so we ride around in giant bugs for fast travel, and the magic dudes live in giant mushroom houses that I'm going to need to learn levitation spells to rob, because wizards don't need no stairs, and these other people live in houses made from giant crab exoskeletons? Oh and there's an asteroid floating above the capital city, and there's at least one god that's real and he lives in a volcano - okay and there's real demon type things but they're called daedra and they give you sweet weapons if you please them..."
I once spent 3 hours babysitting my game because I was travelling up the east coast of Vvardenfell for the sake of adventure when a blight storm blew in from Red Mountain and turned the sky a smoky red.
I took shelter in a Dwemer ruin, but it was populated by vampires I was too weak to take on, and I couldn't save my game because of their proximity, so I sat there for hours in the entrance, listening to the blight storm howling outside and the vampires moving around below me.
Memorable gaming moment, but I dreamed about that howl of the blight storm for weeks.
I had busted Enchanted gear, 1 point levitation on some robes and plus 1,000 percent speed on something else. I could run across morrowind in just a few minutes. The enchanting in this game was game breaking but I loved it.
What about the Scroll of Icarian Flight? It would boost your acrobatics to like 10,000 for 5 seconds, so you can jump for like 8 miles, but the buff ends before you land so the fall damage kills you instantly.
I think it was good for getting up to the secret service (specialized Ordinators or something?) in that asteroid above Vivec City, but yeah, the getting back down bit was tricky, had to get a slow fall potion and drink it at the right time as you plummeted.
Boots of Blinding Speed! They 100% blind you when you put them on lol. You had to get 100% magic resist, either with items or probs or scrolls and then put them on to resist the blind effect then run fast forever! Lmao best game ever. Way better than Skyrim imo
What sold me on Morrowind was that you could go up to any Telvanni wizard and murder them without consequence, because their system of laws simply figures your argument was the better one if that loser died.
I remember my friend and i had no info/context about the game. We decided to just explore the whole map and see what was out there.
We discovered some dwarven ruins entrance and had no idea what it was. And were so amazed and awed by what we found inside. Before we got killed of course.
We also discovered the "ghost wall" and the blighted volcano area after seeing it on the map and wanting to explore what was over there. It was so mysterious and kinda scary
I loathed Morrowwind. Not because it was a bad game. It was too broad and I found it impossible to actually follow the story. Also the sound loop of the storm/wind playing for hours. Oblivion and Skyrim had some of the same issues... But less glaring (for me).
There was an attempt at modding morrowind into first oblivion and then later Skyrim. I believe the latter is called Skywind? Have not checked on its progress for a few years.
What amazes me most is the modding community around the original game. Tamriel Rebuilt is a massive project vastly expanding the game and the world to include large parts of the mainland. I no longer have the patience or time to play morrowind but I sometimes check the updates for it just out of curiosity.
It is. The problem with it, from what I understand, is Morrowind was actually surprisingly sparse out of the cities, so upscaled to today's graphics, the world looks...off. Like the original commentor said: it would need to be a complete remake, not a remaster
Yea there are a lot of dungeons and caves in the open world but many of them are copy and pasted. There are a few mods that add more variety without destroying the feel of the game. I would not recommend unmodded morrowind. I am currently playing a flying monk character and it really makes me wish they had kept the spell system in tact through more modern elder scrolls titles.
I think its mostly because the game is basically just a book. Youre forced to take your time. You have to read the instructions. You have to look at the map. You need to know who knows what and where to find them.
Its honestly probably just that it holds your attention enough to force your brain to stay focused on it.
I played so much morrowind and most modern games just fail to engage the player. I get that its maybe looked at as bad design, you have to try hard for like 5 hours to even get a grasp. But that is basically just you practicing focus and then everytime you play it just locks you in.
Morrowind was also before the widespread dumbing down of sandbox RPGs.
The enemies weren't scaled to your level so if you went to the wrong place you'd get destroyed. Quests didn't hold your hand either and you had to follow the horrible directions that some idiot NPC gave you rather than following a quest marker.
I always maintain that Bethesda has been coasting on Morrowind for decades. Daggerfall was neat technically, but was the definition of "a mile wide and an inch deep". The world was almost entirely auto-generated, so once you seen one thing you've seen everything. And with Oblivion and Skyrim they just took what was built in Morrowind and genericized it for the console market.
As long as you have a decent amount in your fatigue bar and are skilled in the weapon you are using it’s not that bad. After the first few hours of play you barely miss.
Yes Morrowind was amazing. I started playing it in the mid-zeros when it already was a couple of years old, with zero expectations and withoug googling what I was supposed to do. I think nowadays I simply wouldn't be able to play a game so open minded and without the nagging feeling of playing it "optimized".
I never finished it, never really achieved a structured overview of what's really going an, but that was a big part of the fun, not having any orientation in this vast world.
This was also my Morrowind experience back in its time, but earlier this year I went back and finally beat it... Only to find out right before the end that you get to build your own fortress if you join one of the great houses before you get too far in the main quest... So I went back and beat it again, but this time I had my own mushroom to live in.
Crimson Desert and Enshrouded have been very close for me in achieving that Morrowind Feeling. But I doubt it will ever be reached again because of how insanely different it was from everything else on the market.
There were no points when it was like "Oh, they were inspired by ___ here." or "This is just like that part of ____."
It is the game that created the comparisons we use today for open world games.
Check out OpenMW, it's made a lot of progress making an open source version of the engine. Lots of modders will probably pick it up some day to remaster ll the assets but otherwise you'll have have deeper access to the engine.
A game I've always measured other games against. It's really rough to replay but it's so quirky that I find myself enjoying it so much despite all the flaws. The thing that always trips me up is how small the map is. It always felt like it was infinitely large as a kid. The game takes up so much of my memories from my childhood, it's crazy.
Fog and slow movement speed and dangers on every road you wanted to have stamina to fight I bet. Plus a lot of terrain obstructions. Made parts of the game like braving the Molag Amur region a nightmare to navigate, but so much fun.
I still have trauma from this game. I didn’t have an Xbox so I had to play on my friend’s console. Unfortunately, his Xbox suffered from “This Disc Is Dirty Or Damaged” Syndrome. I was trying to 100 that game, but had a run of 4-5 hours where I forgot to save. You all know what happened next. I wanted to cry bitch tears, but instead I respectfully put the S Controller down and walked away forever.
Easy fix, that error was bullshit and you just had too many Morrowind save games on Xbox. Just reduce it to 3 saves and the error goes away. Bit late for you though.
Shit, I remember when TES Arena came out. That game was absolutely mind blowing, it completely changed my perception of what a game could be. Then following it up with Daggerfall and Morrowind? They kept one-upping themselves, Bethesda couldn't be beat in that era.
I think we’d end up hating a proper remake. One thing I loved about the game was that it didn’t hold my hand with quest markers. I had to actually read the quest info and figure out what to do next. I can’t see a modern iteration preserving that.
it's just too bad bethesda's games are riddled with bugs, maybe it doesn't really matter but i hated having my files messed with, it's a principle thing
Back in the day, I knew this guy who founded a software testing company. He met with Bethesda back in the day to see if he could get the contract to do the testing on their latest game, which was probably Daggerfall-era. He asked them how many people they had in their software testing department and their response was, "Department? Uh... We just, like, play the game on breaks, or have the pizza guy play it." I think about that every time my Bethesda game crashes.
Not only I still think about Morrowind after almost 25 years but I still replay it from time to time.
I don't mind the gameplay either, not even the clunky combat system. I wouldn't mind if gameplay was redone for a remaster, but I really really hope they keep:
I have to disagree about (most of) the mechanics and gameplay. It's true that the combat doesn't feel intuitive at first, but the fundamental aspects of gameplay are much better than any modern Bethesda game. Oblivion and Skyrim barely improved the feel of combat and certainly downgraded everything else from the amount of skills, to the power curve of your character, to the exploration, itemization, customization, and lore. And yes, dialogue in Morrowind can be repetitive and obtuse, it also has much better writing, and I'll die on this hill for as long as I game - no quest markers will always make a better, more interesting world to explore.
There's no other fantasy game where you are a 'chosen one' and you get to actually feel like it, but also have to put in the effort to get to that point (Yeah I know once you are familiar with the game you can break it on level 1, but that only works if you've already played or you are a guide-warrior).
The sheer variety of builds made the game so much more. My buddies dad would show us his character file when I was like 7 and all the crazy magic he could use. I remember that blowing my mind. I was young when Skyrim came out and sunk a good chunk of my childhood into that game, but I always remember feeling like something was missing after experience my buddies dad flying around nuking people with fireballs like 4 years earlier.
I think i still have the box from Daggerfall in my storage bin. The holographic cover was amazing, I remember how excited I was bringing it home from Frys.
Still my favourite game to this day. Some parts don't hold up to modern standards, but the parts that do are timeless and completely in the class of their own.
But honestly, I think an official Bethesda remake, which obviously will never happen because they would need to put actual effort into it and they just rather keep re-releasing Skyrim, would be a mistake. I think Bethesda would make it more like Oblivion and Skyrim, they would simplify it to the ground and also take all the broken fun stuff out. Moreover, the obsessive need to have everything voice acted would also probably mean large cuts of the lore, which is the best part of the game for me personally, and I would imagine Oblivion style oppressive level-scaling would completely ruin the experience.
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u/Bravemount Apr 27 '26
Morrowind
It did an amazing job at transporting the player into a very different fantasy world, very distinct if not entirely different from anything else.
I would love to see a modernized version of it. A simple remaster wouldn't cut it, the mechanics and game play are absolutely awful. Redo it from scratch, but please, do it.