In the graphic below, you an see Vvardenfell in the upper center of the map. But the original goal of the game was to create something far larger that what was eventually shipped.Īs the Tamriel Rebuilt team’s about page explains, the goal was for the landmass of Morrowind to include a massive U-shaped chunk of land surrounding the central island of Vvardenfell. Thanks to the efforts of this dedicated team, more than 16 years after the original title there’s more adventures to be had than ever before.įans may know Morrowind as a game that takes place on Vvardenfell, an exotic volcanic island filled with warriors clad in bone armor, massive insects that ferry commuters around, and reclusive wizards who make their homes inside giant mushrooms. The mod, called Tamriel Rebuilt, seeks to recreate the original design first envisioned by the team at Bethesda Softworks. One effort, which began before the game was even released in May 2002, just issued a major new update. The Xbox One backwards compatibility programme has thrown up plenty of surprises so far, but this one really is quite remarkable - Microsoft's enhanced version of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is one of the best examples of the boost to image quality and performance that today's hardware delivers when running yesterday's games.The legendary open-world role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, is still being updated by fans.
Helmed by the immortal Todd Howard, Morrowind is an important title in the history of The Elder Scrolls series. Beyond the quality of the game itself, this is the first time a large scale, PC-style RPG would be realised on console hardware.
It's also is the game which helped pave the way for the likes of Skyrim and many other titles. With its built-in hard drive and PC-like hardware, the Xbox made a lot of sense as a target for a vast Elder Scrolls experience - at least on paper. You see, as ambitious as it was for the time, the problem is that Morrowind just doesn't run very well on the original Xbox. Out of the box, it's not great, but as the hours of play mount up, Morrowind's performance and loading times gradually degrade. With the game's early hours at least, Microsoft's backwards compatibility technology can make all the difference. We've examined Xbox 360 games running on Xbox One, but original Xbox games receive an even greater boost - something which is immediately apparent when you first fire up Morrowind on Xbox One X.
The leap in visual quality is impressive, but nothing stands out more than performance. Morrowind runs at a reasonably stable 60 frames per second on Xbox One X, meaning that the least performant console Elder Scrolls game is now the fastest. So how is this possible and just how stable is it? To answer that question, we need to revisit the OG Xbox title and get a handle on its performance profile - what is it that makes it feel so sub-optimal? Using our modern analysis tools we can see that Morrowind operates with an uncapped frame-rate, with a wide performance delta and lots of short, sharp stutter as new data is streamed in. Back in the day, I didn't fully grasp why Morrowind on Xbox appeared so choppy in motion, but the frame-times reveal all.