Prerelease:The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

This page details prerelease information and/or media for The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

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Development

Morrowind was originally conceived during development of Daggerfall. It was to be called Tribunal and set in Summerset Isle. It was then redesigned after Daggerfall to use a new SVGA version of the XnGine (later used in Battlespire) and feature the entire province of Morrowind, not just the subsection of Vvardenfell where the final game actually takes place. The original story featured all 5 houses of the Dark Elves, including your ability to join House Indoril and House Dres. The original design also featured the progressive expansion of the Blight, cities being destroyed, armies marching, along with the return of Dagoth-Ur. Overall, it was much closer to Daggerfall in scope, setup, and gameplay style. We decided it was simply too much to create and that the technology was too akin to Daggerfall, so the project was put on hold in 1997.

With the completion of Redguard at the end of 1998, it was clear to us that we needed to return to Morrowind, and that our audience wanted the grandeur and scope of the main Elder Scrolls' chapters. It had been several years since we had developed one of our big RPGs, and technology and gameplay in the market had grown by leaps and bounds with the arrival of 3D acceleration and the proliferation of first-person games. We knew we had to exceed the visual polish of the other games on the market, and we made it our goal to put The Elder Scrolls back into the forefront of game innovation.

We immediately focused the game on the story of Dagoth-Ur's return and on a much smaller land area than the original design. We had the goal of creating it all by hand, using similar techniques that we used on Redguard, which most of the team had just finished. Both Arena and Daggerfall had been created using algorithms that randomly built the world's areas. Doing this by hand was an enormous task that took us close to 100 man-years to create. Two things were needed to accomplish this.

First, we tripled our staff by hiring many new faces. Morrowind for us was not just about building a game, but building a new development team. Second, we spent the first full year of the project creating The Elder Scrolls Construction Set. It's often said amongst our team that The Construction Set is the best product we ever made, and it just may be. This tool made Morrowind possible, not just for creating it, but playing and modifying it. The file system, which stores any change to the game in small plug-ins, allowed us to rebalance the game and really make it fun. The Construction Set shipped with the PC version of Morrowind and has spawned thousands of mods and millions of plug-in downloads -- giving Morrowind never-ending life.

Morrowind also marked our first major foray into the world of console games, as we also developed it for the Xbox. We saw Xbox as a great opportunity for us to bring our style of RPG to an even bigger audience. It also spawned two expansion packs, Bloodmoon and Tribunal. These were released separately on the PC and put together with the original to be sold on Xbox as Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition.

— An article on the old Elderscrolls.com website, celebrating 10 years of Elder Scrolls

(Source: https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Elderscrolls.com_Archive/The_Elder_Scrolls_-_10th_Anniversary)

Concept map.

This concept map was also shown alongside the above text. It is dated 12/19/1996 and features both the Morrowind mainland and the island of Vvardenfell, as well as another island with a city by the name of "Port Telvannis". It shows the types of environments, scale, locations of big and small cities, as well as who holds said cities. Places such as Firewatch, Helnim Wall, Greenheights, Necrom, Old Keep, Narsis, Heimlyn Keep, Ebonheart, Riverbridge, Stonefalls, Silgrad Tower, Kragenmoor and Blacklight were directly carried over from Arena.

Other places were seemingly created from tweaking existing places from Arena. A settlement called "Veranis Hall" appears on the map where a settlement called "Verarchen Hall" appeared in Arena. A settlement called "Llothanis Heights" roughly appears where a settlement known as "Karththor Heights" appeared in Arena. "Darvonis Watch" (or "Daryonis Watch") replaces "Darnim Watch", "Salen Vulgate" replaces "Sailen Vulgate, "Silnion Vale" replaces "Silnim Dale" and "Cormaris View" replaces "Cormar View". The Arena town of "Stoneforest" had become "Stonewood" by now, but it would get renamed to "Balmora" for the final release. Balmora meaning "Stoneforest" in Dunmeris.

Original places would also receive some name changes such as "Aldrun" becoming "Ald'ruhn". The name "Aldrun" may come from the Arena location "Old Run" which was located on Vvardenfell, but wasn't in the same location. "Sadrith Forest" became "Sadrith Mora", which means "Mushroom Forest" in Dunmeris. An early name for the city of Vivec can also be seen seen, although it isn't fully legible.

And finally, there are also a multitude of other original settlements that don't appear in the final game. These include "Selethis", "Omaynia", "Andrethis", "Othrenis", "Rathendis Falls", "Draloris, "Velothis Haven" and the aforementioned "Port Telvannis". Of all these places, Velothis Haven would be the only one to even get a single reference in the final game. Sotha Sil and Almalexia (the cities, not the gods) would later make appearances in Morrowind's Tribunal DLC. Underneath the city of Almalexia, there appears to be another original settlement on the map, although its name isn't legible.

In the game's credits, three people get credited under "Writing & Quest Design": Douglas Goodall, Mark E. Nelson and Ken Rolston. Another five get credited under "Additional Writing & Quest Design": Bill Burcham, Todd Howard, Michael Kirkbride, Ted Peterson, and Todd Vaughn. Goodall worked on quests for House Redoran, House Hlaalu, House Telvanni, the Mages Guild, the Fighters Guild, the Thieves Guild, the Imperial Legion, the Tribunal Temple, the Morag Tong, "and a couple of random things here and there". Ken Rolston worked worked on the main quest, Imperial Cult quests and other random things as well. Mark Nelson worked on most of the non-faction quests, as well as the Quarra, Aundae and Berne vampire clans. Todd Howard took over the Imperial Legion quests from Goodall after he got behind on schedule due to the amount of factions he was working on. Most of the quests were already written and put into the editor, but Todd "added a lot of detail to the Imperial Legion". A note by Todd, confirming his involvement, is still attached to the Imperial Legion quest "Talos Cult Conspiracy" in the Construction Set. Bill Burcham also helped Goodall with his quests, particularly with testing. Burcham is responsible for the Fighters Guild quest "Battle at Nchurdamz". It's not clearly known as to what exactly the members of the additional contributed, and some minor contributers might not have been named. In an interview, Goodall stated that "Lots of people worked in more areas than the credits suggest, and there's no way I could remember all the details now."

(Source: https://archive.md/3XEQV#selection-333.75-333.132)

Concept Art

To do: Add the concept art from the artbook. Add the concept art from Michael Kirkbride's Tumblr, compare the two where possible. Some in-game assets use concept art on them, place them here and compare to their original art as well.

A lot of different concept art was created for Morrowind, and a large amount of it would get published in an art book, known as The Art of Morrowind. Said book opens up with this informative quote:

In January of 1997, four artists locked themselves in a room to lay the foundation for the third chapter in the Elder Scrolls series. Knowing that the game would be set in the dark and exotic land of Morrowind, they set out to discover what a Dark Elf would look like. The initial Dark Elf look emerged over the next month, and the project was put on hold due to its massive scope. In January of 1999, the staff once again met in this room, which had become known as "The War Room." This was the place where the entire team would meet through the next year to discuss what the game was going to be, how it was going to play, and what it would look like. The walls slowly filled with exotic imagery of the land of Morrowind, its peoples, and places. Through this special book, we hope to share with you the images that lined our walls and defined our game. We strove to create another world that would come alive on the screen, another world for you to live and lose yourself in.

— Todd Howard, Project Leader

While some of the concepts shown made it into the game unaltered, some designs were altered or scrapped completely by the time of release. Nix-Hounds and Scribs had their designs changed, for example, while Sloads were cut altogether.

Prototype Movie

In the artbook, there are 5 small screenshots shown that apparently came from a "prototype movie created to capture the look of the game and the movement of the interface." The images include an early HUD and many early assets, date back to at least March 2000. The video hasn't been known to survive to present day and doesn't seem to have ever been released publicly.

Initial Screenshots

Also in the artbook, there are 8 sketches shown that would get turned into "initial screenshots". These were likely the first screenshots made of the game and they all looked quite different from later screenshots.

Pre-release Screenshots

Bethesda released numerous screenshots throughout Morrowind's development of both the game and the game's accompanying Construction Set.

May 2001

Early	Final

• The trama shrubs to the left of the staircase are missing.
• The plants on the upper level were originally higher.
• There's no NPC in the area matching the appearance of the NPC from the early screenshot.

Early	Final

• The texture on the back of the Imperial Shield was changed and the handle re-modeled for the final.
• The NPC on the left is wearing a different pair of pants.
• The merchant NPCs are completely different.

Early	Final

• The shadow no longer shows the skirt in the final. It may be that the Realistic Actor Shadows setting in Morrowind.ini is enabled. It is disabled by default in the final due to it being quite buggy and resulting in things such as floating heads on the shadow models or even slowing down the game.

Early	Final

• The crates under the awning on the left are replaced with jars.
• The NPCs have different clothing and appearances compared to their final versions.

Early	Final

• The editor's user interface has various differences in terms of available tabs and buttons.
• The preview window is rendered much darker in the final.
• The leveled items listed are almost completely different between the early and final versions.
• The NPCs in the early version appear to have generic "Bandit" names whereas the final uses individually named NPCs.
• The placements and types of static objects in the cave were significantly revised for the final, although the general dungeon layout remains the same.
• The cell "Zaradalk" listed in the early screenshot does not exist in the final.
• The cells for "Zaintiraris" do not appear to exist yet in the early screenshot.
• NPC previews did not show equipment.

Early	Final

• A banner was added.

Early Flame Atronach

This was taken from a video clip found on Nvidia's website and features a Flame Atronach using the Frost Atronach's model with unique textures. Clearly this was most likely a placeholder model for the Flame Atronach. As for the rest of the things shown in the video, the only notable difference is the name display for when the cross hairs are pointed over an object being different (also in the video).