Skywind – change to The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, whose authors want to ‘transfer’ Morrowind to the Skyrim engine, updating the graphics and gameplay. They recently shared new screenshots and videos showing several updated locations. We decided to gather all the information about the mod and find out why Skywind has been in development for over a decade.
Bethesda has always had a special conversation with customizations. Thanks to the handy Creation Kit tools, tens of thousands of mods have been released for The Elder Scrolls and Fallout series.
On Nexusmods, the largest resource for game modifications, the top five spots in terms of downloads are occupied by Bethesda games, and mods for TES: Skyrim SE has been downloaded 3.3 billion times.
Additionally, some changes to Skyrim have been turned into independent games released on Steam. This happened, for example, with projects The Forgotten City and Enderal: Forgotten Stories.
In many ways, it is thanks to the huge community of moderators and therefore the huge number of people who enjoy installing mods, that a project like Skywind has been able to survive for so long and gather such a large community around it.
Do you install mods on Skyrim?
How it all started
Work on Skywind began in 2012 and the announcement of the change was positively received by fans. By that time, the authors, the TESRenewal team, had already established themselves by porting Morrowind to the engine of another part of the series – The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and the release of Morroblivion.
The task for the mudders was not easy. The fact is that Bethesda prohibits the use of models from some of its games in others, so enthusiasts had to “recreate” all the models again, literally repeating the developers’ path from scratch and releasing the game with all add-ons at once.
Moreover, the team promised to transfer not only the graphics, but also the game mechanics to another engine: a separate armor system, polearms and magic. They wanted to supplement all this with ‘lore’ content, promising to expand Morrowind’s main location – the islands of Vvanderfell – and create underwater cities of the dreughs, a port in Vivika. Overall, there were a lot of promises.
Gradually, in 2013-2014, more and more news sources began to cover the project and the team of enthusiasts began to grow. During those years, TESRenewall actively asked for help, invited 3D and 2D artists, programmers, voice actors and other specialists, and also shared concept art, screenshots and video reports. However, they still ‘invite’ people to this day.
Everything seemed to be going well, but around 2016 the news flow started to thin out and players started noticing inconsistencies. The ‘split armor’ mechanic disappeared somewhere and no add-ons were worked on. It was around this point that things “didn’t go according to plan.”
Welcome to long-term construction
One of the first novelties was the Bone Lord model. Beautiful and detailed. It was shown in 2016. But the “renewed” character was shown almost five years ago, at the very beginning of the adaptation’s development.
And this is not the only case. Models of armor and weapons, as well as some characters, were updated almost five times. The only thing they didn’t touch was the landscape, because it was, as they say, fixed and forgotten.
The Skywind team even claimed copyright on their own work, but from a legal point of view everything here is quite unclear. The original models are of course from Bethesda. Updated versions – for their authors and, according to TESRenewal, for the Skywind developers. But whether this is legal is an open question.
In 2016, some players began suggesting that Skywind was a huge ‘kickstart’ for aspiring professionals heading straight into the gaming industry.
Artists, programmers, voice actors – they all came to the project, performed various tasks (voicing characters, creating models), and then proudly added the line to their resume: “Worked as part of a large team on Skywind.” At the same time, you ‘take’ the created model with you in your portfolio when applying for a job.
Of course, we won’t know the entire inner workings, but the current situation with Skywind, as well as the stories of some modders, eloquently points us to such a development of events. For example, a 3D designer nicknamed Ravanna has created a large portfolio for himself thanks to the mod.
Another problem faced by the core of the team was employee turnover and instability of progress. Lovers come and go, rarely does anyone stay long. In addition, many team members work in their spare time “for the hobby”, devoting a few hours per week to the process. Hence the impossibility of saying when the change will be released, because tracking the “progress” in this case is virtually impossible.
What’s ready yet?
A lot, actually. The developers share news and show video reports, albeit with much less frequency. Not so long ago, a twenty-minute gameplay video for the necromancer was released.
In it we saw the interface, various “transferred” items, locations, a system of quests and dialogues, battles and magic. And a few years ago, in the sixth developer diary, the authors “summarized” the progress, which then looked like this:
- The basic concept art is done, 2D artists are busy creating textures and loading screens;
- Vivec is finished and much of the armor, clothing and small items are ready;
- As of 2021, over 100 dungeons and locations have been created, as well as almost all of the ancestral tombs;
- Work on attributes and skills was almost complete, and interaction with NPCs was also actively being worked on;
- The sounds and weather were almost complete and the animators were actively creating new sets of animations;
- More than 35,000 lines of dialogue have been recorded, but some characters are still silent.
A year later, the authors posted another video called “Skywind Review: What’s New,” showing even more gameplay footage and discussing progress. But the team still refuses to mention the overall development progress and even the estimated release date. And the question of “When is it coming out” has long been in bad taste in the Discord community.
We are shown individual quests, individual mechanics and locations, but it is difficult to judge how complete the work is on the project as a whole. And the plan to fully voice Morrowind even now seems insane – there’s too much text in this game.
When will Skywind be released?
Over time, every development diary and post on social networks began to be accompanied by one question: when will the game be released? Some no longer believe in the release and are now simply trolling fans of the change in the comments, others do not lose hope, but have come to terms with the idea that the mod is constantly evolving. Experienced team members, despite all the skepticism of the gaming community, have absolute confidence in the release of the mod.
I have been participating in the project for ten and a half years and am confident that it will come true. People just don’t seem to understand how big Morrowind is and how much work a project like this takes, especially when it comes to people working with volunteers in their spare time and using the tools we have.
But such confidence in an accurate release is no longer very compelling. Especially considering that the developers themselves no longer set time limits.
The reason we don’t specify a release period is because we don’t have a release period, even within a team. Thank you for being with us all these years! I’m looking forward to it too. And of course, you can always help speed up the process by volunteering.
Based on the example of other long-term construction projects, including at major game studios, we know that the lack of a roadmap, specific release dates, employee turnover, and confusion within departments significantly reduce the likelihood of a given project seeing the light of day. day, even though the authors of the mod try to remind yourself with the help of video.
And while we really hope that Skywind will really come out and gain popularity among fans, the question hangs more and more clearly in the air every year and with every release from Bethesda: is it time to wrap up the project and start porting an even more relevant studio game to the engine? Should we wait for Starwind or perhaps the release of a change to the engine of the sixth, yet unreleased part of The Elder Scrolls?
What do you think of such a “long-term construction”?
Source: VG Times