Morrowind is getting neither a remaster nor a remake, Todd Howard says
Morrowind remastered would not be Morrowind anymore – says Todd Howard, the man behind The Elder Scrolls series (including Skyrim), and as of recent – Fallout 76. And yet modders, with many fans among them, call bullcrap.
Remasters and remakes are springing up from the damp autumn floor like mushrooms, always raising a question, “Does the new old game do justice to the old masterpiece?” And also, “Should every game – especially considering the technology gap between the old and the new titles – be remade?”
For everybody’s favorite Todd Howard from Bethesda, the answer is clear. When it comes to remasters or remakes, it’s a “yes” for Skyrim and a “no” for Morrowind. He doesn't consider the latter to be remake-needy, especially since, unlike Skyrim, there exists a huge gap between the technology fueling Morrowind and the technology behind today’s games.
It’s all about nostalgia
Howard thinks that Vvardenfell is a dangerous place, and as such, it should feel difficult to navigate through. It should also be a challenging, old-school experience to explore it. For Howard, a remaster would kill the nostalgic vibe Morrowind is giving off right now. The only way to enjoy TES III on modern hardware while maintaining its vintage feeling is backwards compatibility:
I'm happy that you can play Morrowind now on an Xbox One, as it's backwards compatible. I actually prefer that over remasters […]. I'd rather you play Morrowind the way it was […]. I think the age is part of its identity. Skyrim was already pretty visually close. But for something like Morrowind, my personal preference is not to remaster it.
According to Howard, the same applies to Fallout and Fallout 2. In the man’s words:
If you have a PC you can play Fallout the way it was. I think that's how it should be.
But as the old saying goes, “If it’s not done by the devs, it’s done by the modders.” And it checks out, as both Morrowind and Oblivion (a legendary installment as well) are to be brought into the modern age with the help of various community-produced tweaks and modifications.
So you know, perhaps we just should keep our fingers crossed for an official TES III VR edition.
