These are heady days for Tamriel Rebuilt, the 24-year-old Morrowind mod that aims to build out—in a brilliant and fanatically lore-friendly way—all the parts of the titular province that Bethesda didn’t get to. The team has just put out Grasping Fortune, its ninth and biggest expansion, which adds in a humungous new landmass to explore that includes Narsis, the capital city of Morrowind’s merchant House Hlaalu.
Sitting down for a chat with PCG, the team sounds more fired-up and ready to plough ahead than ever, though we’re still operating on ‘volunteer modding project’ timelines, here. “I’m thinking we’ll be done in 2035,” says TR senior dev Cicero, “Just by projection.
“I’ve been around since 2011, 2012. I’ve seen what TR is like when it’s slow, and I’ve seen what it’s like when it’s fast, and we’ve been fast since 2018. It’s just been getting faster and faster and faster since then.”
Cicero’s not alone. If anything, his estimate is conservative. “I really feel that we can complete all of mainland Morrowind, maybe even this decade,” says TR creature animator Grumbling Vomit (internet names are a treasure). “We’ve got a lot of momentum. Just depends on how much time is devoted to improving what has already been made vs implementing new regions.”
Which sounds great to me, but you’ve gotta wonder if the team aren’t a little bit nervous that Bethesda might follow up Oblivion Remastered—which has reportedly made several gajillion dollars—with some kind of Morrowind re-do that fractures the fanbase and sucks up a load of their potential audience.
Well, sort of. “I’m always happy to hear when Todd [Howard] says he doesn’t want a Morrowind Remaster,” says Cicero, “because that would just mess things up… Modernising Morrowind would just ruin the game entirely.” That’s a statement I agree with so hard I wrote a whole op-ed saying pretty much the same thing.
But Oblivion Remastered didn’t fill the TR team with trepidation. Quite the opposite, actually: “The thing is [Oblivion] is easier to remaster than Morrowind, so I don’t think we’re worried about it. In fact, Oblivion Remastered helped TR, because [Grasping Fortune] released a week after Oblivion Remastered released, and we kind of got sucked into that wave of Elder Scrolls news.” I can attest to that one personally.
So, with any luck, Todd Howard will stick to his guns on a Morrowind remaster and leave the game’s current fanbase—and modding scene—unified and in peace (though, again, if he fancies writing a cheque for the OpenMW team I’d love to see it happen). If not? Prepare for some mixed feelings.
“I think Morrowind is an amazing game and more people should experience it,” says GV, but he does wonder “about how it may impact the modding community. I know I have a bias, but I’d rather have a completed TR over ‘Morrowind but with prettier pixels’.”
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