Morrowind - Tamriel Rebuild

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PC Gamer takes a look at the oldest Morrowind mod still in development: Tamriel Rebuild

The 15 year quest to mod the mainland into The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Tamriel Rebuilt began long ago but the vision to create the entire Morrowind province remains.
Vvardenfell is about half the size of Manhattan. You do laps around the island for hours, picking up incidental sidequests from the flawed populace holding on to their lives in musty townships like Balmora and Vivec City. This was a big deal in 2002. The Elder Scrolls toyed with open worlds before in the roughly 62,000 square mile procedural generation of 1996’s Daggerfall, but this was the first time Bethesda packed 100 hours worth of handmade design onto a beaming landmass and set the player free as soon as they stepped through the harbor. It might look quaint from the vast Imperial drama of Oblivion, or the treacherous hikes and dense hamlets of Skyrim, or, hell, the fully realized continent from The Elder Scrolls Online, but it was Morrowind where a generation first got their taste for the studio’s distinct, freewheeling fantasy.

It has been said that everyone’s favorite Bethesda game is the first one they play, as if stepping into that freedom for the first time is far more powerful and resonant than any prospective gameplay upgrades or graphical bumps. There’s probably no better proof than the community at Tamriel Rebuilt—a mod that’s been in development since Morrowind’s original release date.

[...]
Thanks henriquejr!

More information.
 
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All these remakes of Morrowind have been going on seemingly forever. It was a good game, but if you want to play it, it already still works OK with some mods. Instead of obsessing over decade old games, why can't they just make something new? Just seems like a waste of development talent - that is if the developers actually have any talent.
 
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Instead of obsessing over decade old games, why can't they just make something new?

It wasn't a decade old when they started so the whole argument is strange.. if you move on to a new game every 3-4 years we'd never have finished (large) mods. Or maybe i should put it; we'd have even more mods who would be in an even more unfinished state..

How long has that HL2 mod Black Mesa taken (another example of a large mod) 10+ years with a full team?? Maybe more ( + it's now a commercial project since a few years back).
 
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Many of these people do it for free in their spare time so fine with me.
 
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Have said it before… I'd be happy to pony up cash for straight remakes of old games in modern engines. Whether they'd cut it in the wider, modern market to make doing that economically viable though is another question.

I was excited for TR about 5 years ago when I was really into MW. The long incubation time and constant reworks of areas have seen that enthusiasm wane. Sad to say I haven't fired up real MW is over a year or two. I have visited Vvardenfell in Morroblivion though so I haven't completely forgotten it ;)
 
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Ha - you just gave me a Slartibartfast moment! I had almost forgotten about this mod, and then, when clicked that link, I saw that map I did 15 years ago, my shorelines, my beautiful fyords!

Only mod I ever worked on (only to go AWOL after a few months), so funny to see it living on and having grown!
 
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Many of these people do it for free in their spare time so fine with me.

Well it's fine with me too. Beats twiddling your thumbs for 14 years, probably. But if they do ever manage to release their stuff they will still be tied to Bethesda's apron strings. And surely the gaming world is crying out for new ideas and innovation rather than the painstaking reconstruction of someone else's discarded old clothes.
 
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All these remakes of Morrowind have been going on seemingly forever. It was a good game, but if you want to play it, it already still works OK with some mods. Instead of obsessing over decade old games, why can't they just make something new? Just seems like a waste of development talent - that is if the developers actually have any talent.

Well, for one thing it's easier to recruit help when it's a familiar game engine and setting. Large projects require a number of hands to help with the multitude of details. If you try something new, it becomes a more difficult sell and hence is less likely to get finished.
 
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Tamriel Rebuilt is great for several reasons


- lore friendly
- its like a huge quest mod
- plus giant landmass
- nice platform for further modding (I think its main purpose)
 
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Well it's fine with me too. Beats twiddling your thumbs for 14 years, probably.

Twiddling your thumbs?


Let me tell you something, once youre dead nothing really matters

They chose their own hobby, whats yours?
 
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But if they do ever manage to release their stuff they will still be tied to Bethesda's apron strings.


1. they aren't doing it for cash but satisfaction
2. they wont ever charge for it
3. the point is not to strictly release/finish it, but to provide a canvas for more modding
 
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So there is skywind, morroblion and Tamriel rebuilt. Each project trying to do the exact same thing… Not to mention Morrowind overhaul which works with Morrowind. :)
 
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//Simpsons comic book guy... Technically they are different. MWOB is a recreation of MW in the OB engine - quests, conversations, everything is the same. Skywind is the MW landmass in the Skyrim engine but set in a different time and therefore different content (isn't it? I haven't checked for a while). And TR is everything except the base MW landmass. So not quite the same things.

But I get what you mean =)
 
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Twiddling your thumbs?


Let me tell you something, once youre dead nothing really matters

They chose their own hobby, whats yours?

Well OK I was probably trailing my coat a bit conspicuosly with that one. However it does seem a bit of a pity that there are at least four projects remaking Morrowind in one form or another, and it just seems like it would be better if they were not all doing essentially the same thing.

There is a huge community of modders and what would be really neat would be an open source vendor independent engine to mod. It isn't as if Bethesda's tools are anything special (and the paid mod scandal was a bit worrying). As to hobbies - well, programming is one of them and I'd sure sign up to something like that, as I think would many others.

The real challenge is to have a consistent vision across a whole project, and I guess that is why people are working off some common backbone, such as Morrowind. In reality people with the team managment skills of Linus are thin on the ground. There have been a few attempts, such as "Embers Of Caerus". But, that crashed and burned very quickly due to completely unrealistic goals and poor management, otherwise I'd probably have joined that.
 
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Oh, well, i might pick it up for a trial. But again, most of the mods that were modifying the game were a bit disappointing last time i've played Morrowind.
 
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Great news, never enough mod support! :party2:

I'm not sure TR is compatable with any XP mods atm. It was great having an XP mod working in my latest run of Morrowind, using Morroblivion with builtin support for, Oblivion XP. Think I actually hated the leveling system in Morrowind/Oblivion more than level scaling of mobs.
 
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Morrowind fight system still sucks. Although i love this game, i can not play it anymore.
 
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These sort of discussions remind me of the "charity donation discussions".

Why did "that person" buy "that item"? Thats ridiculous. They could have donated it to "that cause."

In the end "that money" wasn't going to ANY charity, so does it really matter where it went?

I'm glad there are people that have a passion for projects, regardless if the project is completed or is redundant. Passion is better than dead.
 
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Every single Morrowind refresh I tried was a boredom because they wasn't refreshing every single bit and part of the game.

Is really now Morrowind has been fully redone? If not fully such refreshing hurt more my eyes than they help because the elements not refreshed look even more ugly and weird when they are merged with refreshed stuff.

I know it's not the main topic of this mod but it seems use only modernized graphics.
 
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Instead of obsessing over decade old games, why can't they just make something new? Just seems like a waste of development talent - that is if the developers actually have any talent.
It would require talent to drag a project based on a new IP over the same length of years.
Morrowing reputation ensures publicity at no cost and a dragging project is kept alive over years by that simple virtue.
 
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