Bethesda will not remaster Morrowind

Not about OpenMW? Just about Morrowind in general? Have some random babble? Kindly direct it here.
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Starsheep
Posts: 54
Joined: 06 Jun 2018, 16:09

Bethesda will not remaster Morrowind

Post by Starsheep »

As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, from an interview by The guardian

Howard:
for something like Morrowind, my personal preference is not to remaster it. I’m happy that you can play Morrowind now on an Xbox One, as it’s backwards compatible. I actually prefer that over remasters,” he told The Guardian. I’d rather you play Morrowind the way it was … I think the age is part of its identity.
Noting that RPS mentions OpenMW in their article!
Chris
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Joined: 04 Sep 2011, 08:33

Re: Bethesda will not remaster Morrowind

Post by Chris »

This is like the five billionth time (hyperbole) they've said they don't want to remaster Morrowind. It's a clear case of people not knowing or realizing what they're asking for. Morrowind's engine isn't designed for high-fidelity assets, so they can't simply replace the models and textures with ones that have 10x more detail and throw in modern shaders for ultra graphics and long view distance; the engine would buckle or break. MGE XE has to override a large part of the internal rendering methods and put in its own stuff to enable the features it offers, and it still suffers in performance from core engine limitations.

To do it properly, Bethesda would have to either port all of Morrowind to the SkyrimSE/Fallout4 engine, or go back to the old engine code and update it with modern rendering techniques and general performance improvements (and probably update to 64-bit as well), which would be a lot of work. And this hasn't even begun to talk about the work to actually update the old assets, and whether people would be happy with the results. Also what about audio? The audio system in Morrowind is trash (3D sound is as basic as it gets, no environmental audio support, and music is separated into two whole playlists), and a lot of Morrowind's sound assets are from old asset libraries they don't use anymore (it's telling that HQ audio mods try to pull sounds from later games, even though they're not technically supposed to). Morrowind has the smallest soundtrack in the entire mainline series, and while the tracks it does have hold up well, the repetition is readily apparent.

And even if that was all somehow worked out and they got something put together, they'd then have to contend with looking and sounding better than a tricked-out modded Morrowind to get people to buy into it. And the final gotcha: say goodbye to preexisting mods (or look forward to a huge number of conflicts). At best, maybe console players would appreciate the update, but console players would also be less forgiving toward the archaic mechanics, UI, dialog system, etc. It's ultimately an unwinnable proposition where nobody will be satisfied with the results.
mistermoonshine
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Joined: 03 Apr 2018, 20:35
Location: Ireland

Re: Bethesda will not remaster Morrowind

Post by mistermoonshine »

Don't worry I'm sure we'll see "Morrowind: Re-nwah'd Edition" in 20 years as an exclusive for the Xbox Two.
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