I didn't even look at the water until now. Look at the buildings, the silt rider, and the fauna. There is no way in hell this isn't modded. The brick textures on the temple look better than Skyrim on the consoles. The water is better than Skyrim on the consoles. No game in 2002 looked like that.
The OP obviously used an underhanded tactic to slur the argument in his favor. As another user posted, every other game shot is close up, while the Morrowind one is from a distance. And Bethesda always has a repuation of having awesome distance graphics.
I didn't even look at the water until now. Look at the buildings, the silt rider, and the fauna. There is no way in hell this isn't modded. The brick textures on the temple look better than Skyrim on the consoles. The water is better than Skyrim on the consoles. No game in 2002 looked like that.
The OP obviously used an underhanded tactic to slur the argument in his favor. As another user posted, every other game shot is close up, while the Morrowind one is from a distance. And Bethesda always has a repuation of having awesome distance graphics.
Ah, should correct that, I looked at the second poster's pic before replying. Sorry about that x.x
Anyway, I agree with the OP's general idea (however utterly irrelevant I may feel this 'discussion' to be >.> ), Morrowind did look good when it came out (it wasn't top of the line, but decent for sure). When I install it today, it makes my eyes bleed, but back when I was a fresh faced boy yelling "why the fuck is my dagger missing that rat for the umpteenth time?!", it looked just fine.
PS: Anyone find the little tiny dwarf soldier in OP's pic just hilarious? Seriously, what the hell, that looks like a 3D fail of some sort :\
The only people who say the graphics suck for its time where not around when it launched. I was about 18 years old when that game came out and it was one of the best looking games on the market when it launched in May 2002.
Go read the reviews, in fact here is the original IGN review:
http://www.ign.com/articles/2002/05/15/morrowind-review?page=5
They gave it a 9.5 on Graphics category, and a 9.4 out of 10 overall, a very high score for them.
The graphics were amazing at the time, no doubt. With MSE the graphics are passable even today.
EDIT: A quote from that IGN review: "First, a simple statement: In my opinion, Morrowind's graphics are the best thing I've seen in the PC gaming world to date. The engine has its peculiarities, and we'll be examining those in a bit, but for now, let's just focus on the wow factor."
For its time, when it was new, the graphics were great. That OP screen shot is 100% modded, just the view distance tells me that.
All that I remember impressing me back then was the water effects in Morrowind. Back then we didn't use shaders for anything, and yet Morrowind did. Everything else was exceedingly average though.
That screen shot is from the TESOverhaul 3.0 mod, which is completely gorgeous, but not at all representative of the very flat world of Morrowind originally.
Having used the mod, I have to say I find Morrowind almost unplayably ugly without it. Obviously the story is the same, but it's like coming home to find your house and furniture replaced by cardboard cut outs, the overhaul version is so much more immersive.
Damn you're right. Egg on my face yea it was 1 a.m. here when I read the bashing on morrowind and even later when I posted (obviously).
Still, with the other pic that was posted of morrowind I still think the graphics are better then other games. Not the characters per se. But the environmnent at least. I always play the original morrowind. No mods or anything like that. I just remember morrowind coming out and thinking: HOLY FUCK. Thats nice!
Anyways, I was throughly put in my place (deserved no less :/) but I still got the answer I was looking for. Guess I am looking at morrowind with fanboy goggles... But to me the graphics were good to begin with. Still enjoy playing it even with all its faults.
Graphics is not the most important thing in making a game great. They might have had to sacrifice some graphics to make the game so massive and immersive.
That screenshot is modded, so it's not really a fair comparison. That said, Morrowind (despite its aged graphics) has plenty of atmosphere in the world to make up for it, plus the Overhaul mod can bring it up to modern standards anyway.
I played it back when it released and i thought it looked terrible, like most pc games did at that time. Just compare it to Silent Hill 2 or something, it looks like crap, especially the 3D models of characters. And curse the dull ashlands to hell .
Here's some gameplay (unfortunately low FPS) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoh3bxAuaLI
Some other games I can think of from around that time top it, too. Ghosthunter, a PS2 exclusives, has amazing stuff like volumetric water physics, cloth physics, mild god-rays (very prominent in some cutscenes... but they're cutscenes) and some ridiculously detailed faces in-game.
http://vimeo.com/72038315 - God rays (hardly noticeable, much easier to see when playing yourself) + face.
http://vimeo.com/72026673 Water + annoying as fuck voices
http://vimeo.com/72037345 Cloth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jY2LCpuwidE Opening cutscene + more complete gameplay
Then there's Final Fantasy X and MGS 2 as well, which both look much nicer. I'd place Soul Reaver 2 and LoK: Defiance above it, too (although Defiance might be a bit late for comparison? Idk) Heck, even the Dreamcast's Shenmue tops it, imo. And, for another open world game, didn't Wind Waker come out just the year after?
I mean, you could argue that, as a PC game, it beats out everything but LoK in FPS and resolution by default, but if those games had also been on PC then they would have enjoyed the same benefits, boosting their visuals even further. And if we compare them to the Xbox version there's no contest.
Still Morrowind had a huge and extremely detailed (in the interaction sense) world, which probably spent all of the resources, in both a computational and monetary sense, that would have gone into the visuals other wise. And I don't think Morrowind wasn't really ugly for its time, just kinda average; it's better looking than GTA 3 anyhow. I reckon that period of gaming probably had the largest visual gap between big-budget, same-generation games ever.
The game certainly hasn't aged well. Even with the wonderful/heavy modding.
However, the game was VERY impressive back in the day. I'd say easily one of the prettiest games of 2002. I very clearly remember being stunned at what a beautiful world they'd created.
With heavy modding, I'd say it's still very playable if you can get past the fighting mechanics (I personally have never cared about attacks being a dice roll. Table top game much?). This is probably one of the most deserving games of an asset overhaul and re-release.
I still have my xbox Morrowind game. I love it and play it often. I modded a version on the PC but didnt like it, it wasnt Morrowind after the mods and i love it for the story. Then you look at something like FF13, great graphics, shitty story, thus i have zero interest in playing ever again. I actually bought my xbox just to play Morrowind.
Gaming depends on when you started playing. I started with Atari so for me graphics always got better for me. If you first started gaming with PS3 or 360, then its more difficult to take a step back into worse graphics. But then in 20 years time the current games graphics will look shit in comparison compared to 2034 graphics.
That statement I take issue with, mostly because I hated the UI in Oblivion, and the UI in Skyrim wasn't any better. The only thing that made the UI in Morrowind difficult was figuring out that ctrl-click and Shift-click did things in your inventory. Once you learned those, then there wasn't much you couldn't do with 2 clicks. I will admit it did get cluttered after a bit, but you still could resize windows to your needs. Customization is important, and not many games offer it for their UI.
That statement I take issue with, mostly because I hated the UI in Oblivion, and the UI in Skyrim wasn't any better. The only thing that made the UI in Morrowind difficult was figuring out that ctrl-click and Shift-click did things in your inventory. Once you learned those, then there wasn't much you couldn't do with 2 clicks. I will admit it did get cluttered after a bit, but you still could resize windows to your needs. Customization is important, and not many games offer it for their UI.
Its not a problem exclusive to Morrowind. Bethesda UIs are pretty shit all around.
The specific problem I had with Morrowind's was that it felt just... clunky to me. Yeah, you could resize it, which is wonderful, but I just couldn't get comfortable with it, no matter how much I switched it up.
Its a personal problem, really.
Morrowind's graphics were fine at the time, even somewhat above average. Not insanely cutting edge or anything. In the 'looks reasonably good but can still be run by most peoples standard PCs without sinking in hundreds of dollars" region. Compared to whichever Might & Magic we were on (the other 'open world' RPG of the time), they had a huge advantage.
That Morrowind screen is definately modded though.
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yea it was 1 a.m. here when I read the bashing on morrowind and even later when I posted (obviously). 
