Something to look forward to: An ambitious effort to remake Morrowind within Skyrim's engine still has no release date after a decade of development. To raise interest and hopefully recruit more volunteers, the modders released a 20-minute gameplay video showcasing the mod's unique visual and gameplay changes to mark the 21st anniversary of Morrowind's original release.
Modders released a lengthy new video demonstrating their progress on Skywind, the long-in-development total conversion aiming to rebuild content from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind using tech from its more advanced successor, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It's still unclear when Skywind will be available to the public, but the development team has volunteer openings.
The 20-minute gameplay reel shows what the Elder Scrolls Renewal team has done with a quest from the original Morrowind – Necromancer in Mawia. The conversion isn't a straight port of Morrowind's content into Skyrim's graphics, nor is it a simple adaptation of the Morrowind setting into Skyrim's gameplay system.
The modders have rebuilt many environments and character models from scratch while making gameplay changes to set it apart from Morrowind and Skyrim. The user interface and dialogue system are new, the latter featuring remastered audio. Skywind incorporates Skyrim's quest compass while retaining Morrowind's tendency to give players detailed directions to objective locations. A combat encounter at the end of the quest is slightly different from the original version.
While the video appears highly polished, the team didn't indicate how far along the whole project is. Its goal is to reimagine everything from Morrowind and its expansions, and TESR has been working on it since 2012. The group plans to eventually start a closed beta. When Skywind publicly launches, downloading it will require legitimate copies of Morrowind and Skyrim, whether they be the disc, GOG, or Steam versions.
Nvidia's RTX Remix could lead to a separate, equally interesting revisit of Morrowind. When demonstrating the upcoming set of mod tools, Nvidia teased the idea of adding real-time path tracing to the game while improving its textures.
Meanwhile, TESR is also developing two other total conversions. Morroblivion, a remake of Morrowind within The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's engine in development since 2007, is fully playable and freely available but technically still in open beta. Skyblivion, which started development around the same time as Skywind, plans to rebuild Oblivion in Skyrim.