The modders at Tamriel Rebuilt have been building the rest of Morrowind for over two decades now, and the project just put out its ninth and largest expansion in the form of Grasping Fortune, which adds on an enormous chunk of the mainland province that stretches all the way down to its southern border. It’s a behemoth, and its crowning jewel is the city of Narsis—capital of the wheelin’ and dealin’ House Hlaalu.
The city is huge, and stuffed with quests, characters, and the machinations of Hlaalu grandmaster Athires Hlaalu. It is, in fact, so large that it’s “bigger than any playable [Elder Scrolls] city in general,” says senior TR dev Cicero in a chat with PC Gamer—bigger than Oblivion’s Imperial City, Skyrim’s Solitude, or Daggerfall’s… well, any of the over 15,000 places in Daggerfall. Though I suspect that game’s map as a whole still puts every other TES to shame, in terms of size.
Putting together Narsis’ exteriors—that is to say, its outside bits, not the areas you load into whenever you enter a building—took the TR team two years by itself. Or, rather, it took one member of the TR team two years: “One guy made the exterior,” said Cicero. “It took him two years.
“I don’t think he was working on too much [else] at the same time—like, he’s working on other claims and handling the asset repository, Tamriel Data—but yeah, he was spending most of his time on Narsis. It was a long time for sure, but he did it pretty quickly, considering.” After all, TR is a volunteer modding project. These guys have day jobs.
Narsis’ interiors, meanwhile, were an even more mind-boggling amount of work. For reference, base Morrowind’s biggest city, Vivec, has around “150 to 250″ interiors, in Cicero’s recollection. Narsis has between 600 and 800—”way more than anything else in Elder Scrolls.” Those had a few more hands on-deck: “It was definitely a team effort getting that out the door.”
It’s all an absurd labour of love, but what I’ve always found most impressive about TR is less the sheer scale of it, and more the care that goes into making it all feel like the Morrowind you know and love. I’ve still yet to get around to playing Grasping Fortune, but if the project’s previous expansions are anything to go by, it’ll be full of stuff that feels right at home in Bethesda’s best and weirdest game. I’m hoping for another wizard who’s turned himself into a crystal, personally.
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