My first introduction to the Elder Scrolls game series was their third entry, Morrowind. It was first released way back in May 2002, so the game will be 22 years old in a couple months as of this post. Does this count as "retro game" yet? I think so. I played it a lot starting in about 2005, and had a blast installing a lot of community mods to change up the graphics, add quests, and so forth. Between mid-range hardware and classic Bethesda Softworks bugs, it was unstable and chaotic.
In short, I loved it.
With 2024 here, and an urge to revisit some nostalgic memories tickling my brain, it was time to see what it might take to get it running now on a decent modern laptop. I have an AMD Ryzen 5 instead of an old Pentium 4, and the integrated graphics are still at least an order of magnitude better than the old ATI graphics card I used to run. That means new hardware has no problem handling the data. New software, however, doesn't always play nice.
The last time I installed it, I still used Windows 7 on a desktop, and I never played it much. I used a massive overhaul pack to make it prettier, but I think this time, I want it to feel mostly original. I don't want the old Bethesda bugs on top of compatibility issues, though, so I was pleased to find the OpenMW project and its complete game engine replacement. Just point it at the data files from an official installation, and you're good to go. 1080p widescreen resolution, mod support, and a massive array of tools to optimize and customize the game experience. This is awesome.
Screenshot in OpenMW using the otherwise unmodified Game of the Year edition with all expansions installed
This does not look bad at all for such an old game. Sure, the foliage is a bit geometric and flat, and there are very few polygons for the 3D models and terrain, but it remains eminently playable. The feeling of exploration in this game is far and away superior to Skyrim or Oblivion, and I will not tolerate any claims otherwise.
Now, I could just mod away and transform everything, but I want it to feel more like it did originally, with updates kept minimal and unobtrusive. While browsing the web for ideas, I ran across this guide and mod list. I am not a new player, but this approach fits what I am looking for.
This will fix bugs and optimize a few things. I can always add more later if I want it to be prettier. I am a bit annoyed by the need to sign up for NexusMods, but burner e-mail addresses are easy enough to create. Free accounts get slow downloads, but when mods are only a few megabytes, slow is still fast enough. I remember the days of dial-up. You do not scare me, 3MBPS speeds!
What I really want to try, though, is installing Open MW on my Raspberry Pi 4 and running it on the official touchscreen display. I am not familiar with compiling code from scratch, and I'll probably need to chase down a lot of dependencies. Running it on Windows with the default .exe means I can be challenged by the game instead of by installing the game. I'm here to squash scribs, not actual code bugs.
I know people who hate Morrowind. It rolls dice behind the scenes for everything, and there is a high chance to fail at almost everything when a new character starts out. When The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion landed, I remember feeling almost giddy at doing damage every time my weapon hit. Now, as an experienced tabletop role-playing games player and game master, I don't mind it.
Morrowind is also a lot slower. There is no fast travel on the world map. The mark, recall, and intervention spells along with paying for travel from boats or silt striders are the way to travel quickly. Most of the travel will be on foot. Movement speed is slower. There are no steeds. Running costs fatigue. It's not wrong, but it is a different mindset from modern game design.
Unlike the graphics and mechanics, the music has aged beautifully. This game has an amazing soundtrack of ambient music. if you want to change it, the music file folders can be edited just by dropping in MP3 files from your library. No downloads required! I also appreciate the aesthetics of the island of Vvardenfell. This is not Mundane Medieval World no. 4739. There are cities built in the shells of extinct gargantuan crustaceans, wizard towers built in living mushrooms that tower over the landscape, and tent settlements of nomads. If you have played Skyrim, you will also find the mechanized Dwemer ruins familiar. The world feels unfamiliar and mystical in a way few other games do. And on top of that, it always feels like there are consequences to your character's choices. Sometimes you are forced to choose between factions. Absolutely every single NPC can be killed, and no one is marked "essential," so aside from a warning that your bloodthirsty rampage has broken the story, you can continue in a world you have possibly already doomed by careless actions. there is a lot to like in this game that has been lost in newer entries.
I highly recommend playing this classic, and using one of the methods suggested in the video above to make it work better. Don't look up spoilers and walkthroughs. Just dive in and let it unfold organically. Get that Dark Brotherhood Assassin Fix patch, though, because it just doesn't make sense otherwise.
EDIT: If you really want to go wild, check out this guide.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
New video games are less and less interesting to me, lately I have been going back to 2D 90s computer games I played the crap out of a long time ago.
I played a fair bit of Duke Nukem 2, but during the 2D era, most of the games I had were edutainment. Do you remember any of the software from The Learning Company?
I grew up on MECC on Apple IIs, our schools had their monthly--or was it quarterly?--software subscription.
Checking out the wikipedia page, seems like TLC bought them, and then TLC themselves got bought and gutted by some ruthless businessmen at a company called SoftKey. TIL it was none other than Shark Tank's Kevin O'Leary that was part of that takeover. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SoftKey
ugh :(
Oh wow this brought back the memory of those things sitting on the floor at CompUSA. It didn't take long to associate those sorts of displays with absolute garbage shovelware.
I remember playing Oregon Trail on an Apple ][ in the "computer lab" during my brief public school incarceration. When my dad got an IBM clone back in the day, I played Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and OutNumbered! along with some other geography, history, and math games. My sisters played Reader Rabbit and Richard Scarry's Busytown a fair bit later on.
My first real game was probably the version of Descent bundled with a sound card.
MECC made I several versions of Oregon Trail, the last one for one of the later revisions of the II (or maybe it was an early Macintosh) had the best hunting minigame. You could mow down the entire animal kingdom with rapid fire. Of all of their games though, I ended up playing DinoPark Tycoon the most, but by then I was playing at home. It was a fantastic game and birthed a huge strategy genre. I had a pirated copy of Carmen Sandiego and could never quite figure out how to play or make it fun.
Descent was so good. I didn't play a ton of it but I ended up playing its N64 clone Forsaken for many hours. Mechwarrior 2 was the first real 3D game I got into. I can remember being amazed at its limited and low resolution texturing.
Loved Morrowind, and it didn't start there. I remember buying Daggerfall somewhere in Northern Arizona in this huge oversized box, and before that Arena.
I have since acquired TES 1&2. They're free to download nowadays on Steam.
I had some issue with the Arena dungeons, but can't remember my gripe, it's too long ago. Would suggest you avoid that and try Daggerfall if you want enjoyment.
Arena had weird combat with mouse movements. I've heard a lot of people online say Daggerfall is a masterpiece of 2.5D open-world gameplay.
Daggerfall had a load of patches I remember those. Some things about Bethusda have never changed.
Those is the one Elder scrolls game I haven't played. Even with the bugs I am fond of most Bethesda games!
I do recommend OpenMW to modernize the experience. Give it a go!
You miay have inspired me to pay Morrowind again. The Elder Scrolls series(3-5 at least) are my favorite games of all time.
I’m not very good with video games but I always admire when I see one
The game looks cool sha but since you said they will fix the bugs, it may be looking better than this after then
I also said the game is 22 years old. The developers long ago abandoned it. The only way to fix the bugs is to use the patches and mods provided by the community.
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Hope the window 7 on the desktop will not have really made it slow