In a proper answer to last week's new cinematic trailer for Skyblivion (the big modding project porting Oblivion to Skyrim's engine), we've now got a full 11 minute gameplay video for sibling mod project Skywind, which is, yes, Morrowind recreated in Skyrim. The video shows off a few key features that Morrowind fans have asked the TESRenewal team about in the past.
The video begins in Balmora where the Nerevarine, Morrowind's protagonist, accepts a writ for the assassination of a Dunmer named Sarayn Sadus. Like almost every other part of Skywind will be, it's a recreation of an actual quest from Morrowind.
The upgrade to Skyrim's engine does the riverside Dunmer town plenty of favors, updating it from its sparse Morrowind look to a golden, hazy hub closer resembling its appearance in The Elder Scrolls: Online. It feels like a realization of an imperfect, rosy memory of a place—that is, it looks like what I might think Balmora looked like in Morrowind if I were reminiscing, which isn't what I'd see if I booted up the original game from 2002.
Even the dialogue system, formatted like Skyrim's instead of the oppressively large text boxes from Morrowind, keeps a touch of 2002 with its blue and gold color scheme.
One big takeaway is how the video shows off using the map during the quest to kill Sarayn Sadus. Morrowind, unlike later Elder Scrolls games, had no fast travel and no quest markers. Instead, quest givers verbally give directions to important locations. In the FAQ section of Skywind's website, it does address its plans for both, saying:
"You will be able to use fast-travel and quest markers because they come with the Skyrim engine. However it will still be quite possible to play through the entire game without them."
As it also points out, Skywind's quests are built with this in mind, providing the same context in dialogue that the original Morrowind did.
Instead of fast traveling, the video shows a player mousing over locations mentioned by the quest giver before setting a custom marker on the map to navigate by. Skywind's site also mentions that it plans for this aspect to be configurable, so perhaps it's already possible to play without quest markers appearing uninvited.
Poking enemies with a two-handed polearm is another feature that differentiates Morrowind from its younger siblings. Here, the player goes through the entire quest jabbing enemies to death, only briefly swapping to a bow to shoot at a their sleeping assassination target from above.
There's just one major discrepancy in the gameplay we've seen so far for Skywind. If this were truly a Morrowind recreation, the player should have bunny-hopped the entire way to and from Balmora to increase their acrobatics skill. Perhaps we'll see that fundamental Morrowind feature in Skywind's next video.
