A former veteran Bethesda developer has cast doubt on the possibility of a Morrowind remaster in the same vein as the recently released Oblivion remaster, saying going back to play The Elder Scrolls 3 now, over 20 years after it came out, would make fans “cringe.”
The gameplay sucked but what makes Morrowind a far superior game to Skyrim and Oblivion is Morrowind is weird.
Bethesda is only capable of making boring big budget fantasy epic setpieces these days, gone is the feeling of going into a random shop and reading a random book, gone is the feeling of “what the hell is over the next hill!?”.
You always know what you are going to get with Bethesda, they won’t take ANY risks. Bethesda will never again present a vision of fantasy that doesn’t simply meet the expectations of well worn fantasy tropes, as far as they are concerned that would be bad for business to do otherwise.
If you showed me of a picture of dragon from Skyrim, a dragon from Harry Potter and a dragon from Lord Of The Rings I don’t think I could tell them apart, the same cannot be said for almost any aspect of Morrowind down to basic things like the architecture of its buildings.
I don’t think it’s just because it’s weird. It’s because it’s weird and immersive. Part of what makes it so immersive is that there’s no modern fast travel. There are in game fast travel options but they can only get you to major settlements, or fortresses that you’ve found and cleared, or whatever point you’ve marked that you can use the recall spell to. Beyond that your on your own two feet. You want to get to the Urshilaku camp? Better start walking because you can’t fast travel there. And at the start of the game you’re slow as fuck. I still remember it being quite an adventure to get from Seyda Neen to Balmora on foot.
And that’s to not even mention the quests. I don’t wish the for the Morrowind style journal, but the quests didn’t have a huge waypoint telling you exactly where to go. If you wanted to know where you had to go you had to listen to the directions you were given and then actually try to follow them. One of my more memorable side quests from Morrowind was where I misunderstood the directions, took the wrong left turn and kept searching for a farm almost all the way to Caldera. The actual farm was pretty much just around the corner had I taken the right turn. I don’t even remember what the quest itself was about. I only remember getting lost.
I wouldn’t say that Oblivion or Skyrim has much better gameplay, honestly. Yeah the weird dice-roll mechanic is gone, not that dice rolls necessarily make for a bad game (see the entire Baldur’s Gate franchise, including the latest installment) but the combat in Oblivion and Skyrim isn’t exactly good. It’s floaty and feels really weird.
Oblivion retains more of Morrowinds roleplay mechanics, too. Skyrim is just a flat, empty game. They leant really far into this garbage faux viking aesthetic, complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don’t sound like that here in the Nordics) and there’s nothing really memorable about it. It plays and feels about as drab as it looks.
Like to-date, there are still aspects of Oblivion and Morrowind I recall fondly. One of my favourite wow-moments in Oblivion was the quest with the woman who tasked you with finding her painter husband. That’s a fun quest. Skyrim has nothing like that.
If you want a better viking game with much better Nordic sounding accents, Banner Saga is out there. Though there is only like 10 minutes of voice acting per game - but what is there is good! They used an Icelandic VA studio to make sure it’s authentic.
The best swedish accent I ever heard was that one blonde knight in Witcher 3 - Blood & Wine. Which is funny as I don’t think it makes sense for the setting at all, but accent voice direction in that whole expansion is a complete clusterfuck with zero consistency.
The best Swedish accent I’ve heard was the Russian gangster father of Alfie Allen in the first John Wick film. Makes sense given that the actor, Michael Nyqvist was Swedish.
Skyrim’s NPCs sound and act like they’ve been lobotomised.
I meant in video games, of course. In films there are a ton of examples. I usually go for Ingrid Bergman’s accent in the Murder on the Orient Express movie, although that one - while accurate - is slightly exaggerated for effect, I think.
It’s not like Bethesda couldn’t afford to hire Nordic voice actors. They just chose not to do so.