Monthly Modder: Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind

One of the most exciting modding trends of the moment is recreating older, beloved games, a trend that can be seen industry-wide.

These mods are also incredibly involved and ambitious, as the team behind Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind has discovered in their years long collaborative effort. They’ve recently released the Bonemold Weapon Pack (PC, Xbox, Nexus) to give players a taste of the level of detail and craftsmanship they can expect in every aspect of their loving recreation of Vvardenfell when Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind – The New North releases.

The Beyond Skyrim project is itself a collaboration of several large collaborative projects to recreate lands from prior Elder Scrolls games and DLC, as well as some merely mentioned, in TES V. For those locations visited in prior games, they are evolved to the “present day” of TES V, often several hundred years past the games that inspired them. Members of the Beyond Skyrim: Morrowind team include Meglos, who serves as Writing/Art Director, Mia Cain, the 3D Lead, Kothri, the Exterior Level Design Lead, and Larrian, the Design Director. They tell us what drew them to Morrowind first as players and then as modders, and how they have collaborated on this massive effort.

Morrowind is such an important, foundational game to BGS’ development as a studio. What is it about Morrowind that initially impressed you as a player, and how has it influenced your own approach to modding and development?

Meglos: Its aesthetic, its weirdness, and the specificity of that weirdness were what stood out to me the most in the beginning. It was one of the first times I'd experienced a truly well-realized fantasy setting that didn't draw from the standard Middle-Ages England tropes - and more importantly, everything in the setting felt like it stood up under its own logic. There were no NPCs to hold your hand and explain everything to you; you had to develop your own understanding of the setting and your place within it. The atmosphere, and the feeling of immersion in a completely alien environment are some of the things I hope to bring from it to my future work.

How have you approached the challenge of bringing the lands of Morrowind to the time period in which TES V: Skyrim takes place?

Meglos: The obvious elephant in the room is Red Mountain, of course, and the eruption that took place between then and now in the timeline. A lot of the early discussions we had around the team's formation revolved around how much to include from that game and how we could make it work. But by far the more interesting task ended up being working out the politics of the mainland and who the big factions were going to be, whether they were returning from earlier games, only mentioned in lore, or completely of our own invention.

Larrian: I think the biggest challenge to Skyrim’s time frame is communicating just how long 200 years really is! It can seem to some like the Red Year and the invasions from Black Marsh happened only a decade or two ago, but the reality is that most who lived through those events are now dead, and while the repercussions of those events were colossal, Morrowind has largely recovered. I think a big part of BS: Morrowind’s creative philosophy comes from seeing Morrowind as a new nation free from the shackles of its past, affected by the disasters of the last two centuries, but not destroyed.

What do you hope players get out of exploring your version of Morrowind in TES V?

Kothri: I’m hoping for a renewed sense of wonder players got when first stepping off the boat in TESIII, but fresh- something we haven’t seen before out of Morrowind, while retaining the core of what made it so awe-striking to begin with. We’re not as limited with the Creation Engine as with TESIII’s Gamebryo, and are therefore able to bring a new level of detail.
I’m also looking forward to the potential to tell new stories. Morrowind has changed a lot since the last times we’ve seen it, and we’re not looking to retread Dagoth or the Nerevarine Prophecy. That story’s been told, and I’m very excited about the direction we’re taking for Morrowind and the New North.

Larrian: I want players to get that feeling of ‘oh, that’s familiar, but new!’ as often as possible. Seeing locations and even objects like plants and bowls and weapons reimagined and updated technologically, but still in a familiar way, I think is a very important part of making our version of Morrowind feel like a legitimate continuation of TES3’s.

Is there any added pressure from the expectations of the player in recreating this world in which they might have their own unique emotional attachment?

Mia: Yes, absolutely. Many of the things players loved about Morrowind - both in lore and gameplay - have changed drastically over the past twenty years, and finding ways to create a new and different look at the same setting is a unique challenge. I do hope it'll get people as excited as I am!

Kothri: Creating Sheogorad has been a particularly fun challenge, it’s one of the more familiar regions to players’ memories. While working on it, I launch the TESIII Construction Set alongside the Skyrim Creation Kit, taking inspiration from TESIII’s original layouts but bringing it up to both the level of detail expected from TESV, and to the time of TESV. The result is an interesting balance of familiar and new, and I’m excited to see the impression it makes!

Recreating or updating classic or older games is one of the most popular modding categories, and that’s hardly unique to BGS games. Why do you think that is?

Larrian: I think the reasons are twofold - the first is obvious, the demand for seeing the same places players and modders have an emotional attachment to is much bigger than seeing newer places. As a modder you feel like you’re able to contribute to something you have a deep attachment to, and as a player, seeing that place with new technology and a refreshed creative vision is fulfilling. The second reason I’d say is that, at least for me personally, adapting and matching idiosyncrasies from older or different games into one cohesive setting is one of the most enjoyable parts of working on a project like this. Trying to account for the inconsistencies and making everything fit together is a very interesting creative process!

This is obviously such a massive effort that’s highly collaborative, both the Morrowind and larger Beyond Skyrim initiatives, that’s taken a lot of time. How has that collaborative process been and what have you gotten out of it as individual developers and creators?

Mia: It's not always smooth sailing. Being entirely online and voluntary, it's a given some people will drop out over time; but fresh faces always cycle in. Me, personally, I've learnt most of what I know about 3D art during my stay at BS:MW, especially in collaboration with the other artists. More than that, I've made some incredible friends here. When my laptop broke in 2020, some of them even pooled together to buy me a new one! BS has changed my life for the better in many ways, and I'll never regret any of it, even the rough spots.

Kothri: I’ve been with the Morrowind team for about six years now, having seen through the transition to the Star-Wounded East. I’m very proud to see how far along the project has come in that time, and I’ve learned a lot from getting the chance to collaborate across diverse areas of expertise on the team. A volunteer project like this is driven by a passion shared by all who contribute, and it’s led to close-knit friendships I’m very grateful for. The nature of this project also means progress cycles with the flexibility of free time. We always emphasize that life and health are first priority, and there’s bound to be points in which progress slows, but we’re always forging on.

Meglos: Me, I'm just in it for the money, the fame, and the heartfelt appreciation of all that we labour lovingly away for, release date in sight or not.
I'm kidding, of course. Nobody's offered to pay us (yet).