Elder Scrolls Morrowind modders says an official Bethesda remake wouldn’t make sense as modernising it “would ruin the game entirely”
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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is a clunky beast, and I love it for it. Despite its less accessible approach, the now 24-year-old RPG is still receiving major mods including Star Wars KOTOR total conversions and the ever-updated Tamriel Rebuilt.
A massive mod project, the Tamriel Rebuilt mod adds the mainland of the Morrowind Province to the game alongside the original island of Vvardenfell. With it’s own quests, characters, items, enemies and more, the project is intense, but what if Bethesda decides to release an official remake of the original game?
Morrowind modders aren’t concerned about a potential remake
Speaking to PC Gamer ahead of the release of the Tamriel Rebuilt Grasping Fortune expansion, the Tamriel Rebuilt team explained that there’s pretty much no sense in making an official remake of the third major Elder Scrolls game.
While Bethesda released an official remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to massive success, the team can’t see a reason for the studio to do the same with the series’ older games. Sure, it would bring in a tonne of money, but it would also ruin the charm of the older RPG.
“I’m always happy to hear when Todd [Howard] says he doesn’t want a Morrowind Remaster,” explained senior developer Cicero, “because that would just mess things up… Modernising Morrowind would just ruin the game entirely.”
Tamriel Rebuilt has been in some form of development since Morrowind’s release in 2001, and the volunteer-based team is still working hard on the massive mod. While Skyblivion—the remake of Oblivion made in Skyrim’s engine—is releasing in full later very soon, but the team behind the older mod doesn’t expect to be done for many more years with Cicero thinking they’ll “be done in 2035”.
“I really feel that we can complete all of mainland Morrowind, maybe even this decade,” explained the mod’s creature animator. “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.”
The long in-development time for Tamriel Rebuilt is a sign of the unending commitment of the series’ fans. With fans even creating an open-source engine remake of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, Bethesda’s RPG franchise will never die.
