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Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Morrowind Mod Madness

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition is currently discounted on Steam and I decided to induct it into my Game Library yesterday. I have played the game before on the X-Box and though I have the GotY X-Box edition, I have never played the expanded contents of the game. I did play through the original content with the vanilla Morrowind and when the GotY version came out, I gave that original version away to a friend of mine to justify the purchase of the GotY. I know that the mod community for the Personal Computer version has worked very, very hard ever since the game's release to improve upon the graphics of the game so I know that I would be in for a treat with this PC version. As soon as the game has been installed by the Steam client, I immediately went to the Morrowind Overhaul website which houses what many say is the best mod compilation for the game. Basically, the 1.58GB file that you download from this site - that is one a half times larger than the actual game - contains the community's best mods, packaged as one, and everything even comes with an easy to follow instruction as well as an easier to execute installation process. I will let the result speak for itself. These are screenshots taken from the very familiar starting area of the game:

It looks like a recently released title.

I can't wait to explore Morrowind again!

I must add that with the new incredible graphical enhancements, the game is running very smoothly on my PC. The most exciting prospect to this is that I can now explore the game's expansions with better a visual presentation. I really helps that the game will at least look new when I am exploring the original content. Note that I didn't have any gameplay alterations enabled with the included mods except for the user interface changes because I don't bellieve in those. I just want the graphical improvement but not gameplay deviations. If I want to make the game easier, well, I may as well just play The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, right? There is one annoying thing about the Morrowind Overhaul however: you must disable Window's User Account Control for it to be able to work its magic with the game. I am a control freak and that of course bothers me. It's a good trade off but if only it could be remedied somehow, then everything would be utterly perfect.


Update Note: 09/02/2014 - I have learned last week that on Windows 8, I don't even have to turn off UAC to get this beauty working so I re-installed the game plus the mod and everything ran perfectly! So those who are interested in getting this mod but is unwilling to risk potential PC damage can now enjoy this major graphical overhaul for the game and partake in the fun!

3 comments:

Chalgyr said...

Interesting - I didn't see Morrowind on sale with Steam - and I never played it. Oblivion was my introduction to the series. disabling UAC would make me twitchy as well I suspect. :P It doesn't help to right-click and run the game/steam as Admin?

Nice to see your pc specs in that link - my first question in my mind was: does it work okay w/ Win 7 - since that's what I'm running.

Loner Gamer said...

It wasn't advertised on the front page of the Steam client for some weird reason but yes, it's still has a 50% discount at the moment.

Running the game as admin doesn't work unfortunately. I understand that UAC is just a thin layer of protection but I just don't like losing any if possible. The annoying thing is that turning it on and off does require a reboot which can be a pain. It's worth it to see the game looking so beautiful though.

And yes, the game runs fine on Windows 7 with or without the Morrowind Overhaul.

Chalgyr said...

Yeah, Steam sometimes gets me on those - because I generally hit their page and look for the low-hanging fruit of whatever's splashed across there, when I know I miss deals by just doing that. Good information about Win 7 - bummer on run as admin/UAC being stubborn because yeah, the reboot, while only a whole 45 seconds out of our lives, is still annoying to deal with, lol