Damnit, now you got me wanting to buy Morrowind and Oblivion on PC (I only have them on Xbox).

DeadDuck

Huh, weird coincidence I just reinstalled Oblivion just now. I actually loved morrowind, but couldn't get into Oblivion. So I guess I could give this a whirl and see if it can bridge the gap between games I've been feeling.

drifter13

This is very cool. I'm one of the many who couldn't get into Morrowind, but really enjoyed Oblivion. I'll be giving this a try for sure.

subnet6

@ps360blows: LMAO, too true.

This is ****ing awesome - I'll definitely give it a try.

TheCakeIsALie

I'm in the same boat Mike. I just couldn't get into Morrowind. Maybe it was because I was playing the Xbox version but it was just so ugly and had such long load times. Also I didn't like the combat nearly as much as I liked Oblivion. The addition of physics to Oblivion also made me like it much more than Morrowind.

Gray665

@Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.: I agree with you. The Dark Brotherhood quest line is by far the best one in Oblivion and you can tell how much love and passion was put into it. It makes the rest of the game seem like crap, and yet that amount of passion went into all of Morrowind. You really get the impression that Bethesda just liked that game more.

mhlaxp

SKKKRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE in HD.

Tsalagi

Sweet! Another reason to murder Fargoth once again!

ps360blows

This is by far the best news I've heard all year. I am now officially going to fail all of my exams, excellent.

shazmuscle

Time to replay Morrowind.

Gouki4u's avatar has a severe case of Jekyll and Hyde

Also, DO NOT talk about this mod or link this site on the official Bethesda forum. That is a one way ticket to a ban. The reason for this is complicated and has to do with the fact that there exists content in Morrowind that Bethesda does not own the copyright for and bringing that content into Oblivion without the permission of said copyrights' owners would be a violation of such copyrights.

FinalFrog

O_O

That actually works? Holy dook! That rocks! Does it work with character mods as well? Just curious because I'd love to see MacHall's Mog Mod running around Oblivion.

Salen

Excellent. Fortunately, I no longer have either game, so the next 6 weeks of my life will not suddenly disappear. Awesome mod, though. The biggest beef I had with Oblivion was that the easiest way to beat it is to try to complete the campaign immediately, before the Oblivion gates get really tough baddies in them. I beat the game at around level 20-25. How does that even work?

thefais

@mva5580: Amen brudda.

homernoy

Assuming it has the combat system of Oblivion in Morrowind (the sheer ability to hit targets more often then 1-2 times fer ten hits, and the block button!) and the fast run system and suddendly I have a WoW replacement game.

If they can just let me load from my old save files....

huginn

Sorry Mike...I'm on the flipside with that opinion. Morrowind is better than Oblivion.

Morrowind's graphics weren't bad for the era the game debuted. But more important, the pacing and storytelling in Morrowind is head and shoulders better than Oblivion. Case in point. In Morrowind, if you talked to Paladins or Wizards early in the game about Daedric Temples, many of them would tell you flat out "I'm not going in there, to do so is death" I understood that but once I leveled up enough (after about 70 hours of gameplay) I was strong enough and had the tools to go into Daedra Temples and murder and loot.

Of course the demons were still hard hitting but in Oblivion, your character is running into Oblivion gates in the first 20 minutes of the game. According to Morrowind, Oblivion gates were far WORSE than any daedric temple. So how the hell is that supposed to fly? Bethesda also blew it with Oblivion when they made a conscious decision to not thoroughly connect the stories or Morrowind and Oblivion. Their excuse was, "we didn't want gamers that didn't play Morrowind to be lost in Oblivion trying to keep up with the story" that's just brilliant logic at work there. So gamers that played through Morrowind and read about the events beyond Vvardenfell.... get to Oblivion and here almost nothing about their exploits or the aftermath of Red Mountain and the Dagoth Ur? Absolute total bullshit. That's just a couple of examples.

To all that have said it before me...I agree 100 percent Morrowind is beTtteeEEEer....

/end rant

Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.

Oh man. What I wouldn't do for an official version of this.

sir_carrot

I can see we are in a difference of opinion here. I personally think that while Morrowind looks pretty dated now, the character design was much better than all the stupid looking dimwits that populate Oblivion. But whatever, This mod looks awesome!

HepCat

This project was killed by Bethesda at one point, interesting to see it come back. I wonder what changed? (Their forums are borked 12 ways to Sunday right now, so I can't read them to see what the deal is).

A forum post on another site back when the original mod was killed:
[thenexusforums.com]

NateN

@Coquiton:

Bah, I was wrong. Apparently, this is a mod for Oblivion. It adds a ship in Anvil that takes you to Morrowind's map.

And, as was mentioned above, they're still working on actually adding stuff to do, right now all you can do is look around.

But the gameplay is still Oblivion's.
:(

Coquiton

Wait a few months, then start dancing again.

That's the meaning of work in progress - it implies a finished product in the future.

omicron1

Oooh interesting. I think there was also a mod that gave Baldur's Gate 2 graphics into Baldur's Gate 1. I know there wasn't much(or maybe none) of a graphical leap between the two but it was still welcomed.

LHJ

You all DO realize that this is NOT a completed project. All you can do is walk around Morrowind pretty much. No quests or dialog or "playing Morrowind" to be had at all.

Its a cool project to be sure, and one I will be watching, but the Kotaku article is misleading. You won't be playing Morrowind through the oblivion engine any time soon.

sigma7

Kotaku: We hold the life of your website in our hands.

Oyn

@thenino85: I agree completely. In terms of land size, and the varying area (and the fact that there were more than 7 main cities) pushed Morrowind over Oblivion. The combat sucked though. Half the time I attacked, my sword would never hit the damn enemy, even if I was close enough to rip his head off.

Amazon_Chris

@glibby:

The site loads just fine for me.

@CYG: - "You cant play trough the entire game, you can only visit the cities and see the land, there are no scripts, dialogs, etc."

Well that's a bummer!

dead_red_eyes

@TetraNitroCubane: While the phrasing was a little ambiguous, i don't think you've probably missed the point a little.

This looks to be a really impressive piece of work, it also serves to remind me how long i've been waiting for the Half-life to source engine conversion mod.

Still, it's all gonna be free. Can't complain!

qizarate

@CYG: You just ruined my jazz hands/victory dance. I am not pleased.

TheLegendof_Erick

Report your findings back here people!

dead_red_eyes

@Kenny: It's dead now.

glibby

Man, I wish I had a better rig so I could do this. Morrowind was SO MUCH FUN. Maybe I'll have to dig out the old disks and play the non eye candy version.

Telecinision

Holy shit this is great! Morrowind was great but i agree with you on the ugly art direction. You just made my day.

paeper

You cant play trough the entire game, you can only visit the cities and see the land, there are no scripts, dialogs, etc.

Still, its something worth checking...

CYG

I'm going to have to repeat Amazon_Chris' question. Did they fix Morrowind's combat? Oh, and the map system. Don't have the time to install it and try it out right now.

I've always been of the opinion that Morrowind was a superior game to Oblivion in almost all aspects except the combat. Which is a big enough deal to make Oblivion the better game overall. Until now.....

thenino85

@mva5580:

One of the few things that consoles hold over PCs is that you don't need to continually pay for more hardware to play new games with ungodly high amounts of graphic pull on your computer. Oblivion was easier on my 360 than my PC, and looked better because I wasn't playing with half my options on Low.

In regards to this, though, looks like they finally did it. Time to get back into Oblivion again.

wandererwillow

You're gonna crash their site Mike. When I first went there they had 150 guests, now they have around 500 and the article has only been up 15 mins.

Kenny

Reason #835,321 why consoles can never hope to compare to PC's.

And like others have said, there goes my weekend. Morrowind Game of the Year Edition, come on down!

mva5580

"... The prospect of playing through Morrowind in its entirety on the PC seems a lot more appealing."

Uh. Morrowind was on the PC to begin with.

I can understand the allure of playing through Morrowind with a graphical upgrade, though.

TetraNitroCubane

Maybe I'll actually play Morrowind now. Did they fix the broken combat with this mod?

Amazon_Chris

@Tyheam: It's the first I've heard about it, and I'm the one writing the story, so there. :)

Mike Fahey

Whoa, wait, wait....

You're telling me, they've made a way to make Morrowind's graphics into Oblivion's, but still have Morrowind's gameplay??

Hot diggity, this is amazing, it's everying I wanted from Oblivion!

I hate you Kotaku. You've just sent me back into Morrowind. I hope you you're happy, you probably wont see me again for years now.

Coquiton

Morrowind was a much better game than Oblivion, the level scaling in that ruined it.
I loved getting in over my head in Morrowind and having to retreat knowing that I'm giving up some good loot and that someday, somehow I'll come back.

McGaveson

dang, now i gotta buy tribunal and bloodmoon... grr

excaleranth

It's more like "You got ridiculous amounts of bloom in my Morrowind".

Oyn

Old news. :D

Anyways it's nothing new, just all the content converted for the Oblivion engine. So creatures and models are mostly the same.

Tyheam

Tell me about it. I just ruined MY productive weekend.

Mike Fahey

Never underestimate fan motivation.

Quicksilver4648

Shit Mike,

You just ruined my going-to-be-productive weekend.

NerD!!!

I think I just shat bricks and came all at the same time

0_0

BlackMage66652

Best download this fast. Bethsoft have explicitly stated that exactly this is a no-no.

Mister Adequate

Hot diggety dog.

Artaxerxes

I hope you realize that this isn't completely finished yet; a quick glance at the forum shows this just converts most of Morrowind's landscapes, NPC's, and items. But, there are no quests, etc. Essentially, right now, all this mod enables you to do is explore the land of Morrowind in the Oblivion engine. Everything else remains Oblivion-ish.

September

After I played Oblivion I had to try Morrowind. What a disappointment in the combat system. I couldn't into it after the beginning where you make your way to the first town. I loved swatting at a rat 10,000 times while somehow being unable to hit it. After getting killed by this rat two or three times I just decided to run. Then, as I run into the town, a guard runs up and kills it with one whack. I have to assume at some point in the game you can hurt enemies, but I guess I didn't make it that far.

Messer

well sumabisch that sounds amazing. I never finished morrowind cus I was too depressed with all the muddy textures ... the game at that time was ahead of its time why with all that brown and grey it would actually do well in todays gaming life.

lilaliendog

I despised the art direction.

Are you sure you don't mean "polycount"?

tybeet

@mariospants

reason = fallout3 ;)

not to mention they are hopefully working on TES5

grimdeath9740

Well. Wow. Color me impressed... why couldn't Bethesda do this officially and make some extra dough? Reason #eleventybillion why online content sales are key, even on the PC.

mariospants

ha, i just uninstalled oblivion this past weekend. this is super interesting, but it looks theres no quests or anything. this makes me feel like i need to go back and beat morrowind since i never did, i wish they'd port it to the psp or something.

pandafresh

Thats it,
I have survived without any PC gaming for over 3 years...
consoles were enough to fulfil my gaming cravings

NOW I need a new rig...

Mr.Monkey

For some reason, the only part that I didn't hate about Morrowind was the stealing, which, inexplicably, was really fun. I would just sneak around stealing every random item in every crate and on every shelf. Nearly every other aspect of the game disgusted me. Oblivion's stealing wasn't nearly as fun for some reason, and though the game was a massive improvement otherwise, I still disliked it. I never understood what everyone saw in the games, as I always thought they were very poorly made. But, I guess I'm in the minority.

Placentasaurus

Wow, this will be cool if it gets finished...Morrowind is better then oblivion in almost everyway.
Has for the combat system, seriously the mobs in Oblivion piss me off...you just can't be that aggressive, you almost gotta wait and block first every single fight.
Oh and, Morrowind had some pretty neat graphics when it first came out. The water amazed me first time I played.

GodKiller0

Its a shame they used several resources from my mod without giving credit as required in the readme for it :/ Lore Creature Expansion:

[morroblivion.com]

Hopefully it was a accident they hope to fix!

grimdeath9740

@Synthemesc:

BGTutu was quite simple of a conversion (not really, but compared to Morrowind/Oblivion it is), since graphically the engine did not change all that much. It still used the Infinity Engine to run the game, so conversion wasn't all that difficult. With the Morrowind and Oblivion they have completely different game engines, so conversion requires remapping, and recoding quite a bit more.

KevanB

@Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.:

I totally agree with everything you just said! It's like, after playing Morrowind, you really can't go to Oblivion...it's just so much shittier in many ways (aside from combat, graphics...that's about it).

I'm in the process of picking out mods for Morrowind right now, some of the texture mods make it look pretty damn good for how old it is! Check this site out for Morro-Mods:

[www.mwmythicmods.com]

KevanB

I was wondering if anyone would try and take the BG Tutu concept and work it into Oblivion at some point, but thought it would require too much work. Kudos for getting part way there.

Synthemesc

I never finished either Morrowind or Oblivion. Too many cool mods always comming out that made me start my games over, and over, and over. That and even on today's best machines Oblivion is still too much game to run at full beauty without clippy frame rate issues.

The Best mod for Oblivion was Obscuro's total Oblivion overhaul which made it go from luke-warm to steaming hawt.

I hope they are able to populate the Island with all the Morrowind content.

Anaxymander

Not sure I understand why people despised the art direction (sorry to call you out on this one Mike). Almost every town/city/village looks exactly the same in Oblivion, while each town/city/village in Morrowind had a distinct architectural style that was unique. To be honest that's what i dug about it, every place you went felt new and exciting while with Oblivion i always thought "wasn't i just here?"

For its time, Morrowind was pretty damn good looking, but i digress... I <3 Elder Scrolls. Period.

UncleScrotar

I don't know how I could miss this till now. This is so great =)

demod

I was hooked on Morrowind big time, played all the way through the main story.

Oblivion never hooked me, I messed around for a while but ended up just moving on to other stuff...

I think this might be just the thing to tide me over until Fallout comes back to me.

jiffy

@Tsalagi: You cannot rest here, enemies are nearby.

@Striderhayasa - Phillyyakk on PSN and Live.: Agreed, I found Morrowind much more enjoyable than Oblivion, and the beginning isn't that bad if you actually use a weapon type you specialise in and not run around everywhere wasting your stamina.
Though in Oblivion they meantion "Even St. Jiub, who drove the cliff racers from Vvardenfell fell to the Daedra hordes."

Sziphix

PS. You should Digg it while you're at it...

[digg.com]

/shameless

SubKamran

"couldn't get into Morrowind"

I am holding back extreme amounts of nerd rage now.

mattmoto

Morrowind coerced me into buying a Geforce 3. It holds a dear place in my heart.

Mod is full of win, as long as I can still sling shot across the continent.

PsycheE

Nice! I sent this in too and told my friend Sonya to send it too.

We did it :D

@Deviation59: You do have to use the Morroblivion Expansion mod to actually play, and that is still in its basic stages... but it does work, which is the coolest part.

SubKamran

The article got me insanely hyped up... too bad it was misleading. There's no actual playing of Morrowind with this mod.

Deviation59

Morrowind pwns oblivion... I liked oblivion but it's nothing when comparing it to morrowind..

foxhound009

Oh sweet! An excuse to go back playing Oblivion again!

mikes_stalker

Dang, now I have to go find my Morrowind discs... I always thought that Oblivion was a watered down version of Morrowind, just prettier.

Ajey

@tybeet: Agreed. Oblivion may have had better graphics in a technical sense, but Morrowind had better art direction by a mile. Oblivion's environments have very little variation and what is there is very generic and sterile. In my opinion Oblivion had better combat and a bit more user friendliness, but in almost every other way Morrowind is the better game.

MattB

I actually found Morrowind's art direction more enjoyable and less typically blandly fantastic. Which is half of why I'm still super excited for Fallout 3, because it looks like it takes some of the best elements of both games in terms of art and gameplay and then gives you a gun and VATS.

Obliquity

*Jaw-Drop*

This one of those wishes where I desired it with all my being, but never thought it would ever happen in my wildest dreams.

JAcK0R

The awesome art direction of Morrowind >x10 Oblivions crappy generic medieval art direction. I am baffled by the statements of this article. :0

Yin

I played Morrowind for 200 hours...Oblivion for barely 40. It just never held my interest like Morrowind did. Being weak was so much fun in the beginning...how everyone disrespected and called you outsider. It was more fun than being the hero as soon as you closed the Kvatch gate.

LORDofDANCE

I agree with UncleScrotar and MattB above--Morrowind was the more artistic game.
When you traveled across the continent in Morrowind, you felt like you were actually travelling a long distance...across grasslands, deserts, mountains, swamps.
In Oblivion, they figured out how to make forests look really pretty so every area became a forest.

DSDan

@grimdeath9740:

Wow that really sucks that they used your stuff without asking for permission.

dead_red_eyes

Just when I thought I was out, Oblivion sucks me right the fuck back in. I only wish I still had my copy of Morrowind (and save files).

Strangelove

@Yin: i think its just that people hate brown/dark colours. i'll agree the colors in morrowind a lot of the time were muddy, but i understand thats how the world is supposed to look, and i think it worked well. oblivion was nice and bright, but like others pointed out, the cities weren't as varied. i still loved the game though

pandafresh

The major problem that I had with Morrowind over Oblivion is that navigating the world was a major pain in the ass. With running reducing your fatigue, lack of a good map, and the fact that figuring out the right direction to go in to find the path to your destination was frequently an exercise in frustation involving backtracking to find the right path. The one thing that Oblivion did truly well is streamline a lot of the playing experience and remove a lot of the needless frustration that Morrowind possessed.

Powerlurker

So what exactly can you do in it if you can't play the morrowind quests?

londonlad

The picture just reminded me of Asheron's Call.

I wonder if anyone even knows what that is

WasabiJoe

That's fantastic work on behalf of the modding community - bit too late for mine - I am working on D2 at the moment.

I really didn't like the art direction in Morrowind either but it didn't stop me from spending around 80 hours loving the game!

I didn't enjoy Oblivion on the other hand, I found the story very bland, whether that makes "das oldskoolen" or just a "whiny bitch" remains to be seen.

syl1985

This has been out for a while now and I thought mod sites cracked down on him and took the mod off their sites and discussion about it on the Bethesda forums wasn't allowed.

@Scuba Steve: Huwha? Oblivion still looks friggen fantastic, I have no idea what you are talking about.

I sorta want to try this out, but lately my will to play Oblivion has been dying off (for about the sixth time, at least I didnt need to reinstall it and my mods this time) and Ive been getting hooked on Diablo II (playing in preparation for Diablo III since I had never played anything in the series before). I tried Morrowind after having played Oblivion and I absolutely could not get in to it, for as short of time b/w the release of it and Oblivion, Morrowind looks like liquid dog shit and plays ten million times clunkier than Oblivion did.

I wish I could see the videos that one guy made of Oblivion assets in the Crysis mod thing, too bad not long after it was posted on Kotaku that the thread got locked and the videos taken down since it was attracting attention to the site ><.

Rajolae

oblivion still looks really nice...whatcha talkin bout boy

pandafresh

Funny thing about Oblivion.. the graphics are pretty damn dated...

Sure, not as much as Morrowind, but it's gonna get there pretty fast.

Scuba Steve

Yeahhhh I got all excited, then saw that the quests and scripts haven't been converted...Not yet, at least. Ah well, maybe eventually.

TheCakeIsALie

You should probably remove this article before Bethedsa gets into this, they have deleted it on both FileFront and FilePlanet due to it infringes their copyright laws.
Thought I should warn you guys.

Floreum

@Floreum: News about video games infringes upon Bethesda's copyrights?

Sorry, but I don't buy that argument. It's not like Kotaku is hosting the mods, only discussing them.

Sorry, but news is news, and I'm pretty sure there are laws about free speech and stuff like that.

Salen