When was morrowind made




















And rightly so, this is a colonial occupation and the fractures formed among the indigenous population are only further highlighted here, with new ones forming daily. Most NPCs encountered in Vvardenfell are on edge, which only serves to be even more destabilizing to the player.

But even with their occupation, Men meaning not Mer are much less common here. Red eyes will glare out unblinking at the player for the majority of this game. Morrowind is a daring and ambitious game, with choices more convoluted and complex than the binary of Paragon or Renegade, and conversations that understand that most people know the same little bit about the world they live in.

I know, you wanted more. You wanted to only have questions that would elicit new and real answers show up in the UI. Those are later games that are streamlined and made to be easily engaged with. We can never go back to the overwhelming cantons of Vivec. We encountered the weirdness of Morrowind , and it changed us and our expectations. The very gnawing want we experience is testament to that fact. Our explorations, our mastery of Vvardenfell is over. The meteor finally fell on Vivec. The Red Mountain erupted.

And the Dunmer either died or fled. Todd Howard knows that there will never be another Morrowind. We are familiar with Morrowind. Overly familiar. This time next year it turns What was once magic about this place lies only in our minds now. As a result, reviewers were generally impressed with the game-world's variety, as this maintained the perception of an "enormous" game-world.

The game area expands to Mournhold on Morrowind's mainland in the Tribunal expansion, and to the island of Solstheim to the northwest of Vvardenfell in the Bloodmoon expansion. Morrowind 's developers, rather than developing the common Medieval European setting of fantasy games, chose a more eclectic route, taking elements from Egyptian , early Japanese , and Middle Eastern cultures, with Middle Eastern architecture cited in particular for its major influence on Balmora's Hlaalu architecture.

Executive Producer Todd Howard felt that the use of Morrowind as a backdrop was integral in the development of the game's style. While admixing some elements of the partially medieval Imperial culture more typical of fantasy to retain familiarity with the earlier installments of the series, Morrowind 's dark elven setting "opened huge new avenues for creating cultures and sites that are not traditionally seen in a fantasy setting". The development team also gave particular credit to the Ridley Scott film Gladiator , high fantasy , The Dark Crystal , and Conan the Barbarian as influences.

The game has over books not counting scrolls. One particular compilation of the text was 1, sheets of 8. PC Gamer weighted the in-game text as equal to 6 standard-size novels. Many of these books provide long, serial stories, and provide hints as to the background and history of the game. One critic in particular, Phillip Scuderi, remembered Morrowind for its great literary richness. To him, the in-game literature and its integration within the game was Morrowind 's "most original and lasting contribution to the history of games", one that would place it beside Planescape: Torment as one of the most important games of all time.

Such themes are echoed in other responses to the game, such as that of RPGamer 's Joseph Witham, who found a story "discreet" in its progression, with a dungeon-crawling feel, standing alongside a "whole world of unique history" with books forming the greater part of the player's interaction with that world. Most of the books were reused in Oblivion. A third title in the Elder Scrolls series was first conceived during the development of Daggerfall , though it was originally to be set in the Summerset Isles and called Tribunal.

The game was "much closer to Daggerfall in scope", encompassing the whole province of Morrowind, rather than the isle of Vvardenfell, and allowing the player to join all five Dunmer Great Houses. The blight was conceived as a dynamic force, progressively expanding and destroying cities in its wake.

It was finally decided that the scope of the original design was too grand given the technology current at the time. The project was put on hold in , as Bethesda went on to develop Redguard and Battlespire , though the project remained in the back of the developers minds throughout this period. The completion of Redguard in led to a return to the Morrowind project, as the developers felt a yearning in their audience to return to the classically epic forms of the earlier titles.

Finding that the gaps between their own technical capacities and those of rival companies had grown in the interim, Bethesda sought to revitalize itself and return to the forefront of the industry, an effort spearheaded by project leader Todd Howard. The XnGine was scrapped and replaced with a Direct3D powered engine, with transform and lighting capacity, bit textures and skeletal animation. During their promotional campaign, Bethesda deliberately paralleled their screenshot releases with the announcement of NVIDIA 's GeForce 4 , as "being indicative of the outstanding water effects the technology is capable of".

The scale of the game was much reduced from the earlier concept, focusing primarily on Dagoth Ur and a smaller area of land. It was decided that the game world would be populated using the methods the team had developed in Redguard ; that is, the game objects would be crafted by hand, rather than generated using the random algorithmic methods of Arena and Daggerfall. By , Morrowind was to be unequivocally a single-player game, with no chance of multiplayer extension. Not on release, not three months after, no no no.

According to the team's reasonings, the endeavor took "close to man-years to create". To accomplish this feat, Bethesda tripled their staff and spent their first year of development on The Elder Scrolls Construction Set , allowing the game staff to easily balance the game and to modify it in small increments rather than large. According to project leader Todd Howard, the Construction Set came as the result of a communal yearning to develop a "role-playing operating system", capable of extension and modification, rather than a particular type of game.

Despite the additional staff, designer Ken Rolston would later state that, compared to Oblivion , Morrowind had a small design team. In May , Bethesda set the first expected PC release date in late On May 5, , Bethesda announced the development of an additional Morrowind release for Microsoft's Xbox. The project was, according to the same release, something that Bethesda had been working on with Microsoft since they had first known of the console.

Morrowind had an impressive showing at E3 , demonstrating a beta build to the public. The same beta build was demonstrated to the staff of PC Gamer for another preview, and was kept around the office as late as June 19 as the subject of later previews, while another test build was developed alongside. Later order forms, such as those by Electronics Boutique , set the date in November. On October 10, , GameSpot reported that Morrowind 's release date had been set back to March On October 12, a press release from Bethesda gave the date of "Spring ", confirming GameSpot's supposition of delay without agreeing on the more specific date of "March".

Though no rationale behind the delay was given at the time, developer Pete Hines later attributed the delay to a need for game testing and balancing.

Although the PC version of Morrowind had gone gold by April 23, , and was released on May 1 in North America, the Xbox release was delayed further. On April 15, GameSpot suggested a Xbox release date sometime in May and a scheduled "going gold" date for the Xbox version in the first week of the same month.

On January 3, , Bethesda announced that game publisher Ubisoft would take control of the European distribution of Morrowind and eight other Bethesda games. Under Ubisoft's supervision, Morrowind 's European release took place in two stages. A "semilocalized" version of the game was released in May, containing a translated manual but leaving the game's text in untranslated English.

A fully localized version of the game, with translated versions of both, was released in August. Ubisoft group brand manager Thomas Petersen described the difficulties of translating a "universe featuring more than a million words" as "quite a task".

In a break from standard industry practice, Bethesda decided to publish their strategy guide in-house, rather than contracting it out to a third party publisher like BradyGames or Prima Games. The decision resulted from a belief among Bethesda staff that they believed in and understood Morrowind more than any external agency, and deserved more royalties than were commonly rewarded.

Bethesda hired Peter Olafson, a noted game journalist and friend of the company, and they began work on the guide in January , four months prior to release. The resulting product, Morrowind Prophecies Strategy Guide , sold over , copies as of September 24, Morrowind 's soundtrack was composed by Jeremy Soule , a video game composer whose previous soundtracks for Total Annihilation and Icewind Dale had earned some acclaim from the gaming press. In a Bethesda press release, Soule stated that the "epic quality" of the Elder Scrolls series was "particularly compatible with the grand, orchestral style of music" that Soule enjoys composing "the most".

Outside Bethesda press releases, some have criticized Morrowind 's soundtrack. In their reviews of the game, both GameSpot and GameSpy criticized the length of the game's soundtrack and praised its general production quality.

In the words of GameSpot's Greg Kasavin : "The very first time you boot up Morrowind, you'll be treated to a memorable, stirring theme filled with soaring strings and booming percussion. You'll proceed to hear it literally every five minutes or so during play. In a feature for Gamasutra, Scott B. Morton, although praising the music itself, declared that Morrowind 's soundtrack did not work effectively with the game's gameplay, accomplishing little as an emotional device.

Morrowind 's soundtrack is ambient, with cues only for battle encounters. In Morton's view, the lack of variation, of response to the game's action, and of length— Morrowind 's soundtrack is only 30 minutes long—leaves players detached from the game world.

Alexander Brandon, in another Gamasutra feature, praised Morrowind 's soundtrack for its innovative instrumentation.

In Brandon's opinion, its use of orchestral elements in conjunction with synthesized ones, and the use of what Brandon termed "the ' Bolero ' approach", left the game's soundtrack feeling "incredibly dramatic". Morrowind also contained a fair bit of voiced dialogue; an aspect somewhat better received by the gaming press. Of note is Lynda Carter , television's Wonder Woman , promoted by Bethesda for her role in voicing the Nordic race in the game.

Morrowind 's race-specific voice acting received praise from some reviewers, though was met with disdain from others, who disliked the discord between a culturally inflected voice spoken in an alien dialect and the grammatically flawless dialogue printed in the dialogue boxes.

It was congratulated most frequently for its breadth of scope, the richness of its visuals, and the freedom it worked into its design. Alongside the compliments, however, came criticism that the game designers had overstretched themselves, leaving glitches in various spots, and made a game too taxing to be run on an average machine.

One reviewer concluded that Morrowind was "a resource pig". In spite of this, reviewers generally felt that the drawbacks of the game were minor in comparison to its strengths. IGN concluded that "Morrowind isn't perfect and its system requirements are huge; but its accomplishments outweigh any reservations. But they're all generally minor enough that most anyone should be able to look past them They'll otherwise find that Morrowind fulfills its many ambitious intentions.

It's a beautiful-looking, sprawling, and completely open-ended game that allows you to play pretty much however you like". Xbox Nation commended the game for its "sheer scope", and credited that aspect as the game's "biggest selling point", though it criticized the slowdowns, travel times and questing complexities that resulted from it. In contrast to the "generic" nature of Daggerfall 's design, reviewers found Morrowind 's design spectacular, varied, and stunning.

And there are fast parts and slow parts to discs. We were learning it all the hard way. We were really unsure about the Xbox. And someone bet me that the Xbox [edition] would outsell it, which it did.

The Xbox version was extremely difficult. We had never done a console game — even though the original Xbox was very PC-like. Microsoft was a great partner; they believed in the game and helped us quite a bit. But we had so many issues trying to get that kind of game in a system that had so little memory. You could do a trick on the original Xbox, which was that you could reboot it during a load screen.

Your Xbox is actually rebooting the game. And it actually worked really, really well. That was one of our final tricks. Our Hail Mary. Towards the point where I started thinking about leaving, it was becoming very obvious that the game was going to take a lot more effort.

And Morrowind became this project that sort of hoovered up all available nearby resources. The tech team, which had been an independent team, all got recruited to work on Morrowind — primarily to help with the Xbox port. Originally, we were going to be a PC-only title, but Todd wanted really, really badly to get Morrowind on the Xbox.

He talked with Microsoft all the time, and flew out there a couple of times. He worked very hard on that. And that was kind of a rough time, because the whole company was experiencing sort of its own little dot-com crash. ZeniMax, as a whole, saw that Bethesda was one of the divisions that it had that was going to make money, and it was going to be difficult to make money with several of the other divisions, and the money was running out.

So there was some downsizing. That was about the time I decided that I needed to get out. I started my career working on Madden Football — Madden And that is a planned death march. You do , , hundred-hour weeks, and they just plan for that. So I looked for other work. So there was a lot of pressure. What Todd did is, he had a meeting set up in the hotel next door. So we all left the office for the afternoon. The whole dev team — like some people — showed up in a big meeting room, and no one really knew what was happening.

And he made new business cards for everybody that were whatever you wanted them to be. The game was running late.

And we were crunching really hard; Morrowind was a very difficult crunch. Because it was kind of our last shot and our first shot , if that makes sense. But the team was under immense pressure from the outside to get the game done, and I had felt this huge morale drop.

People were worried about their jobs, too. Are we gonna lose our jobs? But my plan all along was: I printed business cards with that as their title, and I called an off-site meeting.

I did the meeting in another building, so I think a lot of people thought they were fired, or being laid off. People outside the team have told us what to do to get this done. But the only way this game actually gets done the way we want is if we all come together and do what we think is right. The team has been through a lot. It feels like we were working hours a week for about a year. The only real challenge was not killing each other.

After long hours, you started to get a little bit of cabin fever. Sometimes we all hated each other by the end of the day. That was more fun, I guess. It was mostly a good time. The way we were making the game was really just the same way that anyone does a plug-in: with the Construction Set. But what would happen is someone would check something out, and someone else would check something out, and they would just overwrite each other. It was happening a lot.

And you kind of learn to not do that. We were doing things in ways that, now, no sane company would do — without all the QA, without any asset-management software, without level designers, without UI people. People just did stuff, and it was this amazing bit of luck and serendipity that it all came together and ever made it out the door. Taking something like that on, and managing to survive and ship it and have it be good?

But we got through certification the first time [we submitted the game]. That makes no sense. That sounds just unfathomable. We did have testers; there was an outside company at the time called Absolute Quality, and we used them a little bit.

But it was — it was so big, it was almost impossible to test it. But, yeah, God. It passed cert on the first time? That whole time is a complete, hazy blur. It does sound familiar that we passed cert on the first try. It was just unbridled chaos. Well, how can you tell when unbridled chaos is working as intended?

We wanted to say yes to the player so much that, in Morrowind , we let you break your game. Is that OK? Who does that? Morrowind lets you break your character and your progression — and people really cling to that. His voice is terrible , and the idea was that you should not do that. In breaking that tradition, he allowed a whole new class of singer-songwriters to evolve who were able to personalize the experience of their songs to the user, and in many ways Bethsoft has been visionary about that.

Maybe the only other game companies that are that kind of visionary are all the indies. High polish is the standard. If you make an open-world game, you have to ship it broken.

But we were cheerful and positive about being able to get out alive when you start on something like that.

I give Todd a lot of credit for the unanalyzable skill of hitting the sweet spot for delivering, just at the last moment in your schedule, what you said you were going to develop. We just cut corners on quality wherever possible.

But on Morrowind , we had to. Bethesda Softworks launched Morrowind on May 1, The game was an overwhelming success, first on Windows PC and then on the Xbox the following month. Bethesda released a pair of expansions — Tribunal and Bloodmoon — in November and June , respectively. We were about to start on Tribunal , and everybody was pretty fried. We had really been working crazy hours, and no one knew if the game was going to be a success.

We just had no idea. This whole RPG-on-a-console thing was a stupid idea, right? Everybody thought that was gonna be dumb — except Todd, who was right. At that point, it was Ken, it was me, and it was Doug Goodall. But it just became this really contentious meeting with Doug and Ken.

Ken wanted to do some stuff, and Ken is perverse. He wanted to have like weird Amazons who are stealing your shit, and it was all horrible. I have no design department. Which had the good and the bad side of family.

Because it was passionate. Everyone on that team was invested, and even if you disagreed, you knew that it never came from a point of laziness or carelessness. Everything was equally important. It was a hard time. There [were] long hours. People put everything into that. And it was definitely worth it.

Like all things, the good stuff — the important stuff — always stays to the forefront, and anything that was causing you frustration kind of fades away, just disappears in the background. We would often have a lot of late nights, and we were all just out of our minds. I remember a night where we were all getting a little goofy, and someone had — you know those bug zappers that are shaped like tennis rackets?

Someone had one of those at his desk, and for some reason everyone was picking on Ken, and someone had taken his shoes and hidden them, and then somebody walked up behind Ken and was holding this thing over his head. And it arced. There were a lot of nice moments like that. But there were also weird times, like people quitting in the middle of meetings. I remember having this day with layoffs where no one knew what was going on, and everyone thought the whole company was closing down.

The roots are always more humble, so to speak, and simpler, than how things grow over time. Watching each successive game come out, knowing the strands of DNA that were there all along, and seeing the reception and the number of folks that were able to play and experience these, it was always surprising.

How are we gonna top this next time? And the depth that it had, the agency the players had — that still resonates with people. But the exotic nature of the world, and your ability to find your own way in it, absolutely holds up for me.

The way the dialogue works, too — that nested, kind of hyperlinked system — we spent a long time designing that, and I really like that system. Morrowind is a very text-heavy game. I used to have the numbers memorized for how many lines of [spoken] dialogue were in each of our games, because I was fairly involved in that process.

I wanna say Morrowind had maybe 5, lines of dialogue. We went through and recorded intros; we wanted to make sure that everyone had something to say when you walked up to them. Even though we had the rich dialogue trees and the hyperlinked text in the game, we wanted to make sure that each of the races and the sexes had a distinct voice, as well. That was the beginning of having [original Wonder Woman actress] Lynda Carter record voice-over for our games.

It was like a time portal. They had really done a fabulous job with it. I think every game is partly that. And Morrowind embraces that in a really nice way. It was just us kind of laying the foundation for how we make an Elder Scrolls game. How do we make all the areas we need to make? It went with Oblivion.

Oblivion was rad. Working on Oblivion was more pleasant, but at the same time, because I had less control over the authorship, I was less invested. I certainly did the job that I needed to do, but it was not as important to me as Morrowind was. I want it to look like it has the same content, but I want you to change all the elements in it. I want you to make it whatever you want to make it. I worked on things in the background; I worked on the non-quest dialogue so that it made the world more colorful.

But I did not enjoy making the main quest for Oblivion. It was a great spectacle, but very generic and very accessible to users. And so there was sort of a loss of investment on my part. It made it a lot better on console. But, my God, we were dumbing down RPGs. We were ruining RPGs forever. And that was a lot of the beauty of Morrowind. You could just wander and come across these random little things.

Now I appreciate those conveniences we find in a lot of the more modern games. I love hearing that people still care. Video games are such this weird, ephemeral art form. They will never be seen by another human ever again. And that sucks. Oblivion is better software. Combat and achievement are broken in Morrowind.

So it is not as much fun. It also is much less fun in the beginning, because the evolution that occurred in Oblivion — of having the character creation in the middle of the action as opposed to just a walking-around exploration thing — changed it radically.

And of course Skyrim iterated on that. And, again, I hold Todd responsible for solving these problems in Oblivion. The idea of missing in tabletop things has always been part of it. But the point is, in a video game, the user experience is better if you hit and have some feedback. Also, leveling? You take a look at Oblivion , and it solved the problem in the most brilliant way possible by using rubberbanding, which of course has its limitations.

And the challenges seemed fair and balanced in some way, even if stupidly balanced. With Morrowind , we were lucky to get a game out without testing it. We had no way to test a game like that — to play it over and over again. So we made it easy. That was the right choice. But that is the consequence of it being an almost two-decades-old experience. It was at a sweet spot in the industry. Out of all the wide-eyed, more idealistically designed PC RPGs, it really maintained the core of tabletop role-playing.

And it was a seminal game in terms of laying the foundation for these huge, sprawling open-world games like Red Dead Redemption and The Witcher 3. It really laid the groundwork for Oblivion and what that was able to do, and then, subsequently, Skyrim.

All of those things, collectively, had a role in changing how people viewed open worlds and player choice. Morrowind was the one that really started everything on that course, moving it from what Arena and Daggerfall had accomplished, which was cool and impressive — but, to be honest with you, just not on the same scale, and certainly not with the console aspect.

I think that Morrowind was, frankly, revolutionary. If you squint hard enough, you can see bits of it in Daggerfall , because you could still go anywhere and do anything. I think it did shape that whole open-world genre.

And there are a lot of open-world games these days. And it always brings me back to when we were working on Morrowind. We were in the basement, it was totally dark everywhere, and it would be really quiet.

Nowadays, I have a Spotify playlist, but I used to have the MP3s burned to a disc that I would play in my car, or at home, and every subsequent Elder Scrolls game, I would just keep reburning that disc and adding more music to it. There are a couple of tracks in Morrowind that are some of my favorite pieces of music of all time. Morrowind is a story that you can opt into. You can leave the main quest behind and never finish it. Everything orbits around that character.

So that helps make it feel real. And people remember their game — their story they made with it. I still love hearing anecdotes from that.

Seventeenth-century Chinese novels used to be published, and only about 25 percent of the book was a novel, and the other 75 percent were commentaries by other people responding to it. So the experience was not just the text; it was how people reacted to it. Because seeing how people express themselves, and how people play them, reflects the greatest virtues of the games — that they can be played and experienced in completely different ways.

I was adamant to put out this editor we had built, The Elder Scrolls Construction Set , because I wanted people to create their own modules. I thought that would give it this life , and it did somewhat, but that laid the groundwork for us doing it in Oblivion and Fallout 3 and Skyrim and Fallout 4.

We gave [PC players] the raw textures and the raw meshes on the second disc, so we basically opened up the archives and let you do whatever you want. We wanted you to create content. One of my favorite modules was — fans really wanted mounted combat. They wanted horses in the game. So they took pants, they reshaped them, and created a horse out of pants.

And they would wear this pair of pants around and pretend that they were riding a horse. I love it. Would you rather work on a game that no one cared about? Because it could always be better. I guess people expect me to be angry or jealous that my original thing got changed, but that world is a living, breathing organism. So it opened my eyes up.

From March 25 to March 31, Bethesda is offering Morrowind for free. Check out more details here. Cookie banner We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Filed under: Cover Story. Reddit Pocket Flipboard Email. That speech, one source says, probably saved the company. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer It all started with a floppy disk. Noah Berry environment artist It was a very lucky break. Mark Bullock environment artist [My job at] Leaping Lizard was actually maybe a mile away from Bethesda.

Ken Rolston lead designer I was really valuable for Bethsoft, and for Morrowind , before the tools were ready. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer There were like nine people there, dude. Erik Parker programmer To my knowledge, I was the first programmer hired to work on the project.

Noah Berry environment artist The first thing I remember is walking in the door to the basement, and seeing some guy to my right who was ultimately not part of the Bethesda team but under some other arm of the company. Mark Nelson writer and quest designer It was bizarre. It was a heck of a lot of fun, quite honestly.

Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer The game was originally set in the Summerset Isles. Noah Berry environment artist We always started with key phrases or ideas like that, and then branched out from there. Matt Carofano lead artist Michael is an awesome guy. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer The concept art came very early. Pete Hines director of PR and marketing Morrowind , I think, achieved this level of weirdness and diversity that is pretty unique for a [Bethesda Game Studios] title.

Mark Nelson writer and quest designer I was always on the fence about [Vvardenfell]. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer Because the world was just getting stranger and stranger, we wrote a whole bunch of stuff that definitely got refined over time, and went in different directions. That sounds wise. That helped a lot. Ken Rolston lead designer I was a serene beacon of confidence and competence, at least from their point of view.

Todd Howard project leader It was one of those projects that got talked about and worked on a little bit in spurts over a period of time. We aimed very, very high with what we wanted the game to be.

Ken Rolston lead designer Neverwinter Nights was in development at the same time. Todd Howard project leader That time was not just about getting Morrowind done; it was the recreation of Bethesda. Noah Berry environment artist [The job] was brand-new for me, so I was already kind of enthralled by that. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer The premise of the game came from Kurt and me — the idea that you were a reincarnation of somebody.

Todd Howard project leader I love Arena and Daggerfall. Ken Rolston lead designer Everybody else who came from paper-and-pencil game design had a much different experience. Ken Rolston lead designer I reinforced every impulse that the community had, and I had probably more experience and therefore had the authority — when I was saying something was good — to sound like I knew what I was doing.

Noah Berry environment artist Personally speaking, I like a low-key environment; down-to-earth folk; honest, fun-loving folk. Erik Parker programmer My desk was in exactly the wrong place. Mark Bullock environment artist In the old days of Bethesda, when you finished making the product, you then went to the packing floor and you boxed it up. Noah Berry environment artist We were kind of these misfit miscreants — the little goblins in the corner.

Mark Bullock environment artist We were all in one great big room, and it was just end-to-end tables. Ashley Cheng associate producer A lot of people will say that Mike Lipari is the most important person in the building, and he really was. Ken Rolston lead designer We were raised by wolves. Mark Bullock environment artist There are lessons that I learned at Bethesda, developing Morrowind , I try to take with me everywhere: ease of use and immediate accessibility.

Mark Bullock environment artist From studio to studio, the definition and responsibilities of a world designer are always slightly different. Noah Berry environment artist Morrowind was a broader reach in terms of what environment art meant. Erik Parker programmer The artists would come back with assets, and Todd would always push for more detail. Mark Bullock environment artist I saw this image once, of a lighthouse, and that really struck me. Ashley Cheng associate producer My earliest memory of the game is walking around that first town, when you get off the boat.

Noah Berry environment artist Seyda Neen gives the player a little bit of familiarity before the world unveils itself and gets crazy. Mark Bullock environment artist An artist had basically a month to take some of the loose concepts that we had, refine them a little bit, model them out — interior sets, exterior sets — and then build a sample of each of those. Matt Carofano lead artist All the objects were real objects you could pick up, and they were maybe just worth some gold.

Noah Berry environment artist Because our team was so small, we all sort of dabbled in everything. Matt Carofano lead artist Noah and I worked on everything together.

Mark Bullock environment artist We were building this world, and making this game, and it was almost for ourselves. Noah Berry environment artist Even the folks like Todd Howard were still trying to understand it: How can we possibly do this, tech-wise?

Mark Bullock environment artist It was a huge challenge, but everybody was totally invested. Mark Nelson writer and quest designer I love Todd. Erik Parker programmer You could definitely tell that Ken came from a pen-and-paper background, because he had these ideas that would work great for a pen-and-paper game.

Mark Nelson writer and quest designer Todd and I once got into a minute-long screaming match about how high werewolves should jump. Todd Howard project leader It was a very heated discussion. Mark Nelson writer and quest designer That may have been the one argument I ever won with Todd.

Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer Todd was a great leader, even then. Ken Rolston lead designer Todd Howard was the real visionary and architect of Morrowind and of Oblivion. Noah Berry environment artist There were definitely flare-ups. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer Ken wrote reams of text. Mark Bullock environment artist You leveraged anything that you felt was empowering the player. Michael Kirkbride concept artist and writer Morrowind was a big jazz band, you know?



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