The team behind Skywind, the massive project to remake/reimagine The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind in The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, has just unveiled 20 minutes of new gameplay on YouTube, as well as a development progress update.
The video shows off the Imperial Legion quest, Rescue Joncis Dalomax, as well as how the west-central, Bitter Coast region is shaping up. The most impressive changes coming to Skywind might be in the audio department: The mod boasts a new interpretation and recording of the original game's score, something the official Oblivion Remaster didn't even attempt. Skyblivion, for its part, is expanding the original soundtrack with new additions.
What's truly ambitious is the team's effort to fully voice Morrowind's previously quiet cast. Aside from combat barks and greetings, it was all walls of text in the '02 original.
A truly wonderful, unexpected joy from this is hearing the poor VOs having to say Vvardenfell place names like "Ashurnibibi." Do any Morrowind NPCs directly mention the nearby "Ashalmimikala," or, even better, "Addadshashanammu?" God, I hope so.
I also dig the way Skywind is blending both games' mechanics and user interfaces. The dialogue screen is a great combo of Skyrim and Morrowind, while I was chuffed to see the player whip out the Mark and Recall spells through Skyrim's favorites menu, dual wielded with a silver longsword. No fast travel here, only magic or taking the Bug Bus.
Ashurnibibi itself really impressed me visually: It felt like a culmination, a perfecting of the visual identity in Morrowind's original Daedric ruins, one of the strangest dungeon types Bethesda's ever made.
They're all purple stone, spikes, and weird angles—mostly alien, but also evoking something familiar and impossibly ancient. The new details and lighting of Skywind make Ashurnibibi come alive.
Skywind looks like it's coming along nicely, but it's still far away from release—based on the progress breakdown the team provided at the end of the video compared to similar progress updates from Skyblivion, I'd guess 2027 at the earliest.
If you'd like to pitch in, Skywind is looking for 3D artists and localizers, as well as less-specialized, beginner-friendly roles like navmesh builders and audio QA.
The Elder Scrolls 6: We Still Don't Know Where This One's Set likely won't be gracing our PCs until the 2030s, but it still feels like a weirdly good time to be an Elder Scrolls fan right now.
We just got Oblivion Remastered, Micky D and Bacon_ are uploading videos again, Skyblivion is on its way, and even The Elder Scrolls 1: Arena is getting a mod-friendly engine port to finally free it from DOS hell.
