One of my favorite games of all time, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, was maybe the first immersive open-world game I ever played. It really made me branch out from my “Nintendo kid” games and enjoy other genres. Now I’m a lifelong fan of Bethesda’s games (We won’t talk about Elder Scrolls Online). Sure, Morrowind had its problems. The combat was pretty stagnant, there was a lack of a fast-travel system, and most interaction with NPCs was text based. There was a lot of reading, and 12-year-olds do not like to read.

There is a group of developers that are rebuilding the world of Morrowind, but with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim engine. It’s called the TES Renewal Project, “a community about merging the amazing worlds of The Elder Scrolls video games into more modern game engines.” To Elder Scrolls fans, this sounds incredible! Morrowind is a game that has the story content and huge questlines in place. A graphics update, along with volunteer voice acting for every NPC in the game and the improved play style from Skyrim would make Skywind a remarkable game.

This “the making of” video, gives you a sense of the massive scale of the project. At first I thought they were applying the Skyrim engine to the Morrowind game. They’re composing and recording a soundtrack and creating new 3D models and animations. That is a big, big job. /u/Ravanna7 is on the Skywind staff and talks about what the team is up against:

“[Bethesda] had 80 people working on Skyrim for three years. I’ve been at Skywind for 16 months and there are/were only 3-4 people who could be considered “full time.” We do have a couple of professionals in coders and 3D…it’s a full game. It takes time.”

They’ve had help from volunteers but it seems that most of the useful people don’t stick around long because of the lack of pay. Being a fan-made game from the ground up, there is speculation that the project may get shelved and never released. However, the constant updates from the team show that things are moving. The only thing in question is when? In the YouTube video above, the narrator mentions that they “don’t know when it will ever be released.” That’s a little discouraging, right?

If you personally love Elder Scrolls games and have experience in 3D modeling and animation, they surely wouldn’t turn you away. The more professional help they have, the faster the game will get done. They also have jobs for all of you talentless peons. In order to play Skywind, you will need legitimate copies of both Skyrim and Morrowind on PC. I bought both of them basically just for this.