Morrowind Remaster Not Going to Happen, Says Bethesda

[Buizel91]

Here's one interesting tidbit...the original XBox and XB1 both run on standard PC X86 architecture. Unlike the 360, there's no real reason the XB1 cannot easily play all original XBox games as is.

Also, the creators of Skywind called, they want to have a word about how it can't be done

Bethesda never said it can't be done, just that it would require a lot of time and it wouldn't be very worthwhile for them.

I heard about Skywind only a couple of years after Skyrim came out, and it still isn't finished, so they aren't wrong. They might as well make Morrowind 2 and leave it at that. There is so much stuff and the world is so vast, gameplay mechanics that just wouldn't translate well in a modern game all need to be changed and modernized. And even after all that, they would need a complete voice over for every single character. Oblivion could be done, but it was Skyrim that was the most successful, It was Skyrim that brought the Elder Scrolls, from being a game series that had a lot of fans, to having even more. People still talk about it, and play it today, many more than oblivion, and a fuckton more than Morrowind.

I would like to think that in this "Remaster" of Skyrim, a few things are changed in terms of gameplay, instead of just shinier Graphics. But one can dream.

 

[anonymity88]

Yeah, the dialogue sucked, the combat sucked, the graphics, by today's standards suck.

Well you've sold me on the prospect of Morrowind with a pitch like that.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I'd take Morrowinds long text boxes with a few spoken lines over Skyrims horrible voice acting any day. I'd much rather have to read than have the lines talked at me deadpan

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

From calling it an Xbox game to that comment about the dialog system, I think it's best if Bethesda sticks to putting out bad new games rather than going back and ruining what they did well before.

 

[Lawnmooer]

Ehh, I'm not too upset about Bethesda not taking on a Morrowind remaster. I mean, I've been following Skywind for a while and that looks to be it, Bethesda doing it themselves will probably need the Skywind team to mod all the bugs out of it anyway...

However, remastering Skyrim? Really? The game isn't that old, it doesn't need a remaster... Want improved graphics? There's hundreds of mods for that.

It seems like it's just a thing so that they can sell more copies to console games who want to play Skyrim on their new gen consoles...

I'd much rather they work on a new TES game, than remaster one that's still going strong (As of this post, it's sitting as the 15th most played game on Steam)

If they REALLY feel the need to remaster something, go for Oblivion, which isn't getting a fan made remaster like Morrowind, but is more than 5 minutes old and thus could actually benefit some from a remastering.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Of coarse they won't do it. That would actually require them to work. They would need to make new assets and textures and stuff. Waaaaay to much work, especially for Bethesda. We all know that the last gen games need remastered version.

Also Bethesda would fuck it up so hardcore that they game would be completely unrecognizable.

 

[lastcigarette]

Morrowind was a frustrating buggy piece of shit on the Xbox. I still enjoyed it and remember it fondly.

 

[Trunkage]

snip

Wut? Skyrim outclasses Morrowind in both sales and reviews by a long shot. And outsell Fallout 4? Bro... come on. A Morrowind remake is something only a very small market of fans want, not the massive audience Bethesda now has.

I'm going to ask if those figures account for the entire gaming industry growing over the years and reviews suffering from inflation also. Plus by that point they had a marketing campaign.

Fallout 4 was only popular because of hype, as a Bethesda title it's the least inspired and most derivative game of the entire series, a box ticking exercise of what takes no effort to put in the game and can be sold as a gimmick.

I find it funny that many of the insults people have for Fallout 4 and Skyrim are exactly the insults thrown at Morrowind when it came out. Morrowind striped out more RPG mechanics than any other Elder Scrolls (going to full 3D being the main reason). The people made that successful, so Bethsheda repeated the formula. You liking Morrowind in the first place directly made Skyrim.

As much as you complain about the loss of story, there have been definite gains in gameplay.

I might by a remaster of Morrowind, but the gameplay needs to be close to Skyrim, because its awful in the original.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Ok, then lets make Morrowind backward compatible on the console and then let us use the many amazing mods that were created. That seems like a meet in the middle type solving of the situation.

 

[EHKOS]

Yeah, the dialogue sucked, the combat sucked, the graphics, by today's standards suck.

Well you've sold me on the prospect of Morrowind with a pitch like that.

Shit, I forgot to type the part where I say "but despite all that it's still lovable."

 

[Zen Bard]

Just curious. Has anyone played Morrowind recently?

Every time I finish playing a recent Elder Scrolls game, I get this twinge of nostalgia and immediately go back and play the previous one.

After my first playthrough of Skyrim, I went straight back to Morrowind. I needed to feel the rich variety and unrestrained freedom to do anything I wanted after slogging through an endless litany of Draugr fetch quests.

I never finished. I missed having a block button, spoken dialogue, the ability to change weapons in the middle of a fight, a manageable quest log...and don't even get me started on the fucking Cliff Racers.

Don't get me wrong, Morrowind was a phenomenal game for its time. But making it palatable today would require a complete overhaul, not just a remaster.

Bethesda's time is much better spent making sure The Elder Scrolls VI doesn't suck.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

Just curious. Has anyone played Morrowind recently?

Every time I finish playing a recent Elder Scrolls game, I get this twinge of nostalgia and immediately go back and play the previous one.

After my first playthrough of Skyrim, I went straight back to Morrowind. I needed to feel the rich variety and unrestrained freedom to do anything I wanted after slogging through an endless litany of Draugr fetch quests.

I never finished. I missed having a block button, spoken dialogue, the ability to change weapons in the middle of a fight, a manageable quest log...and don't even get me started on the fucking Cliff Racers.

Don't get me wrong, Morrowind was a phenomenal game for its time. But making it palatable today would require a complete overhaul, not just a remaster.

Bethesda's time is much better spent making sure The Elder Scrolls VI doesn't suck.

I have. Every time I try to replay Oblivion or Skyrim I get bored and go play Morrowind. And I don't miss having a block button, spoken dialogue, quest markers, or any of the new stuff.
Hell, sometimes I go and play Daggerfall!
But I understand I am in a minority.

 

[Smithnikov_v1legacy]

Morrowind was a great ride. Look forward to seeing Skywind eventually. Do not miss the game, though, and would never go back. Screw that hit detection and counter intuitive character leveling/creation. I'm quite fine with modded Skyrim, thank you very much.

 

[SolomonGrundy]

I haven't played Morrowind, but I have played Skyrim and Oblivion. Both had me getting bored and failing to complete the story.

I'd like personally to try Morrowind but I'd like to see it updated. However remasters in terms of HD graphics and higher res textures I think is a great thing. Rebuilding worlds without painstakingly sticking to the original will mean a lot of bitterness for long time fans which is the main audience I would think.

It's one reason why I think the FF7 remake will probably be a let down but sell well at first. Fans that loved the original as kids will realize it's a dated story with tropes and not be as impactful, those that still like the story will find the gameplay and look and maps completely different and alien in a way as to not cater to their nostalgia. New fans have their own favorite games from childhood and will compare the remake to their favs and probably still prefer what isn't FF7.

I think remasters can fall flat when they aren't about finding a new audience and finding a new voice in some way.

 

[Amir Kondori]

Are they REALLY going to do an Oblivion "remaster"? What a disgusting money grab. I will lose major respect for them if this is a real thing, especially when they've just made so much money on the back of Fallout 4.

I never would have thought Bethesda would sink so low.

 

[Sonmi]

Are they REALLY going to do an Oblivion "remaster"? What a disgusting money grab. I will lose major respect for them if this is a real thing, especially when they've just made so much money on the back of Fallout 4.

I never would have thought Bethesda would sink so low.

Skyrim, not Oblivion.

Which is a shame, Oblivion could do with a remaster. I personally think it was way better than Skyrim while having aged better than Morrowind. Fix the problem of the characters having butterfaces, spruce up the visuals here and there, and you've got yourself a hit.

Leave Morrowind to the Skywind team. They would do it justice, unlike modern day Bethesda.

 

[Redryhno]

The disconnect between people in this thread and the rest of the gaming hobby is amazing. Morrowind was a great game for its' time and intended audience (me included) but it is an incredibly clunky, counter-intuitive game by modern standards and was to some degree even on release. From its' "dialog"-system that was basically just keywords to get intended response and the adjoined "persuasion"-system that meant you clicked a button and prayed to the counter-intuitive fighting system where you could see your sword connect but the game said you didn't hit to the lack of directions in many quests that led to a lot of people spending a lot of time just running around aimlessly hoping to find their destination. And let's not even get into the fact that to make the game somewhat manageable to playthrough you had to abuse alchemy and/or enchanting at some point so that you could get a long duration or constant levitation effect to spare yourself the trouble of backtracking up and down hills.

Don't get me wrong, I love Morrowind. I love it for a lot of its' weird flaws, but I also know that those same flaws is what made most of my friends give it a pass. Remaking Morrowind is not a cash-cow, at best it is a break even proposition or a minor profit. Morrowind never was and never will be a mainstream appeal game and there's absolutely no point in re-making it when the same team could be making the next TES or Fallout game, a game that is likely to sell at least twice or thrice as much as a Morrowind re-make.

So what you're saying is you don't like RNG and old-school mechanics?

But I will agree that it's very much not going to jive well with alot of the gaming demographic these days. I mean, you've got people bitching about the newest Doom being counter-intuitive for crissakes. Though wandering around aimlessly largely is what half the market is at the moment.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

So what you're saying is you don't like RNG and old-school mechanics?

I am not sure how you reached that conclusion after I said I loved Morrowind. While I find Morrowind's systems perfectly fine, even today, there are many who don't and I know I make up the tiny minority that can still stand Morrowind. Morrowind was a great, if flawed, game at release and it has not aged well at all due to many of its' archaic design sensibilities.

 

[Gearran]

Hmm...I don't really blame them for this. Considering the technological advances that have passed between Morrowind and Skyrim (how many game engines has Bethesda made in that span of time?) the team would basically have to rewrite the entire game from scratch to bring it up to date. While fans have done it as a labor of love, there's no sure thing that the product of the team's efforts (which they would have to be paid for, devote time and resources to that could be used for new games, and would have to be released with a price tag) would sell well enough to make all the effort put into it worthwhile. There are people out there that have played Skyrim and even Oblivion who have never even seen Morrowind, much less played it, and there are significant differences between Skyrim and Morrowind that might put off people today. It's such a risky bet (hedged on nostalgia, which is always a big gamble) that Bethesda would have to be either insane, massively confident in its smash success, or so enormously flush with money that they could take a big financial hit before this would be a good idea.