I will never tire of saying that Morrowind is my favorite game. Incredible desert landscapes and the rumbling of Silt Striders are more than just a set of pixels and sounds for me. Even though I don’t return to it every month, it is forever entrenched in a special place in my heart.
It is a great merit that the fire of love still burns Morrowind Screenshots or abbreviated as mwscr, which has been publishing daily the beauties of games dear to me for several years now. At first I was subscribed to him in the bangram, and recently moved to Telegram. But mwscr is more than an account with beautiful photographs – it is a unique project where fans of the “third scrolls” can share their creativity.
When I was planning this blog, I didn’t even think that it and its creator had a huge and interesting story. I contacted Anton aka dehero – the author of mwscr and asked about his creative path, and I think we had a fantastic conversation.
What makes Morrowind your favorite game??
Morrowind – it’s atmosphere, immersion and freedom. Other parts The Elder Scrolls, although they have their own recognizable atmosphere and are no less immersive, they are inferior in freedom of movement and cut down on some mechanics. And other role-playing games that I know simply don’t provide a similar experience – you still look at what’s happening from the outside, and don’t immerse yourself in the game.
In terms of atmosphere Morrowind is an unsolved mystery. The game developers were not afraid to cover most of the territory with ash, plant them with giant mushrooms, invent a fauna based on insects, dinosaurs and jellyfish, settle the inhabitants in petrified shells, giant mushroom cities and huge ziggurats. There are practically no template fantasy elements in it, but crazy ideas look very organic together.
The culture of the red-eyed Dunmer and other races of Tamriel is beautiful, where a large number of references to world culture are mixed. The history and lore of the game are revealed reluctantly – all the more interesting it is to study them. There are mysterious books scattered around the world that are not afraid to remain misunderstood, and the player is led by a serious plot full of omissions.
Music in Morrowind I still think it’s the best in the series. It is full of light sadness and ideally dissolves in the atmosphere of the game, breathing soul into everything that happens. The impression is complemented by the booming screams of Silt Striders echoing throughout the area.
Proven formula ensures immersion The Elder Scrolls – “be who you want and do what you want”. Oddly enough, the static nature of the game world also works for immersion. The game does not have physics of the surrounding world and advanced AI in the modern sense. NPCs are always more or less in the same location. If you put an object down, it will stay there no matter what happens. Therefore, the game world truly belongs to the player in full, creating a feeling of home.
And freedom is the absence of quest markers, invisible walls on the borders of the world and around cities, levitation working almost everywhere. The game does not lead the main character by the hand and generally treats him at first as a stranger who must make his way through difficulties. But the player is in no way limited in the means by which he will achieve his goals, so every achievement, discovery and find brings sincere joy.
How do you think the beauty of Morrowind stacks up against modern games?? What is her strength after so many years??
Because of its strange and unique atmosphere Morrowind looks unusual even now. Muted colors, balanced proportions – all this adds realism to the game world. The angularity of the models, caused by technical limitations, is combined with the strange angular shapes of the world itself.
The main beauty of graphics Morrowind — in how perfectly the game conveys its atmosphere despite all the technical limitations of its time. All this would not shine so brightly now if it weren’t for the enthusiasm of the game’s fans. Created by them Morrowind Graphics Extender (MGE) And OpenMW allow modern players to enjoy the beauty of the game in all its possible splendor.
Although I am not a supporter of graphic mods and all kinds of shaders, one cannot help but admit that this area is very developed, and if you wish, you can make the game look no worse than modern games with advanced graphics. Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the popularity of the game years later.
And also in Morrowind the most beautiful night sky in the series The Elder Scrolls, and among all the games I’ve seen.
Are there details or elements in the game that go unnoticed by most players, but that you consider key to the atmosphere??
Such an element can be called the ubiquitous fog that hides the loading of locations. It is also called Fog of War. That’s not to say that players don’t notice it, but many may not realize how important it is to the atmosphere of the game.
The need for fog grew among the developers due to technical limitations, because only a few cells of the game world can be loaded at the same time, and old machines simply could not achieve a greater drawing range. This is not uncommon for older games, but, for example, in the same Gothic, released at the same time as Morrowind, the problem of drawing distant plans has been largely solved. And in the next parts The Elder Scrolls this problem was also solved, which, of course, is associated with an increase in the performance of gaming systems.
But the developers Morrowind went the other way, and in the end the fog turned into an advantage of the game. It divides the picture into plans: far, middle, near, envelops the entire surrounding space, making the search for the right place more interesting, and the journey itself more mysterious. The very change of plans as you travel is fascinating, strange forms of trees, mushrooms, stones, cities and ruins appearing from the fog and disappearing in it.
Many players are trying to correct the situation with the help of modifications: greatly increase the draw distance, add Distant Land. But this completely ruins the whole atmosphere of the game: the background becomes too detailed, and the mystery disappears. Of course, it’s interesting to see the same Red Mountain or Vivec with the moon hovering above it from afar, but there are many more disadvantages to this.
Do you know how much time you’ve already spent in the game??
I can’t even imagine. But I can answer this: I’ve been in the game since I first met it to this day. And it’s not that I play it all the time – that’s not true. Rather, the fact is that a piece of this world remains forever in the soul.
How has your perception of Morrowind changed since your first playthrough?? Do you discover anything new in the game after years??
I really regret that I can’t erase my memory and again experience the same delight from my first playthroughs Morrowind. Knowledge of the technical structure of the game can’t be thrown away either – it makes everything a little more prosaic. But searching for screenshots for the channel still allows us to discover unusual things both in well-trodden locations and in new corners of the game world.
And human memory is imperfect. Even if you have already been somewhere before, after a while you can again experience the feelings of a discoverer.
How do you feel when you https://winzinocasino.uk/login/ return to familiar locations after many years?? What it’s like to explore them again?
Imagine that all your life you looked at the world through a small window covered with a pixel grid, and then suddenly you went outside. This is exactly the feeling I had from my first visits to locations in high resolution, with anti-aliasing and rendering distance turned up to the maximum, years after the first playthrough.
Nowadays, high quality graphics have become more commonplace, but the joy and nostalgia of visiting your favorite locations always remains.
If you could change or improve one thing in Morrowind, what would it be and why??
Here you can separate the game engine from the game world itself. If something else in the engine can be improved, corrected and improved, just go to the Issues section of the OpenMW repository to be convinced of this, then in the gaming world I would not improve anything. I don’t think so Morrowind ideal in everything, but all his shortcomings are inseparable from his advantages and are part of the general love for the game.
At what point did you start taking screenshots?? What prompted you to take up virtual photography in the first place??
CD with pencil mark Morrowind came to me quite by accident in 2003, among a stack of other discs. At first, the loading screens gave the impression that this was a game about fighting monsters. I wanted to press “Exit”, but there was something in the main musical theme… At that time I did not yet know about the existence of the RPG genre, and, naturally, from the very first playthrough, the game completely captured my mind and turned all my ideas about what computer games are like. I can’t remember what was in the first screenshots, but there was definitely a back of a Breton of the “Battle Mage” class with his hair in a ponytail.
With addons Tribunal And Bloodmoon and with the discovery of TES Construction Set, I realized that games can be supplemented, and with my own hands. I started making mods to expand game regions, add settlements, and studied how existing regions and settlements were made. At this time, the first understanding came of how fragile the atmosphere of the game is and how to act carefully to preserve it.
In 2009, I needed to make a short article with a retrospective of my unfinished add-on, and screenshots of locations became illustrations for this article. This was the first experience of purposefully photographing the game world Morrowind for later publication. That same year I opened a VK channel dedicated to Jeremy Soulu, author of music from numbered parts The Elder Scrolls. Later the first subscribers Morrowind Screenshots they came from there.
At one time it seemed that with the release of the following parts of the scrolls – Oblivion, and then Skyrim, Morrowind will lose relevance, but its inviolability only grew. I think the authors of the project agree with me in this assessment OpenMW, who did a phenomenal job rewriting the engine Morrowind completely from scratch, giving it better performance, high-resolution support, screen anti-aliasing, beautiful water effect, fixing some problems with textures and lighting. The engine continues to improve, for example, recently the fog effect has become even more picturesque.
In 2016, when OpenMW has already acquired the status of a fully playable engine, I wanted to try to play through the entire game on it. During the playthrough, I admired how carefully the new engine recreates all the graphical features Morrowind. With minor visual improvements, the atmosphere of the game not only did not suffer, but also sparkled with new shades. The hand itself reached out to the PrintScreen button to capture this beauty. Later I learned that this is called virtual photography.
At first I was completely sure that someone on Instagram* had already noticed how great the game looked now. I went looking for a channel there with similar screenshots, but nothing was found. As is the case with the pro channel Jeremy Soula, I had to create this channel myself. I chose a simple name – Morrowind Screenshots, abbreviated – mwscr.
From the very beginning, I made it a rule not to use mods, except for official addons and mods that make shooting easier, not to apply color filters to screenshots, as was fashionable on Instagram at that time, and be sure to hide interface elements when shooting. Everything – to convey as accurately as possible the atmosphere that I remembered and loved when I first played through the game.
Almost immediately my screenshots began to resonate with subscribers. It turned out that this approach is close to other people as well. Over time, the number of subscribers grew, channel branches appeared on YouTube, VK and Telegram. The project recently got its own website.
Which locations in the game most inspire you to take screenshots??
At first, I wanted to capture the most picturesque areas and settlements: the Ascadian Islands, the Bitter Coast, Seyda Neen, Balmora, Vivec, Ald’ruhn, Sadrith Moru, Dunmer villages, the main settlements of the Great Houses, Dwemer ruins, Daedric sanctuaries..
The Ashland Expanse and other areas to the north and northeast seemed more boring at first, the caves not very photogenic. But over time, every corner of the game revealed itself in a new way. Sometimes the simplest shapes and objects, given the right lighting and angle, take on a special look. Beauty can be found absolutely everywhere.
At the same time Morrowind does not strive to be beautiful in everything. Its beauty is hidden and often does not catch the eye. When viewed from the wrong angle, textures can appear ugly, lighting can appear flat, and space can appear quite empty. But when you find the right moment and point to shoot, it’s mesmerizing.
How do you approach taking screenshots?? Do you have any special techniques or ideas that help convey the feel of Morrowind?? Maybe a special angle or composition?
Screenshots on the channel were always published once a day. It is absolutely impossible to stumble upon suitable frames every day during the game, so you have to specifically look for them. As a rule, I load the game, enter a few console commands to make shooting easier, and begin to chaotically travel around the world, trying to find a new angle, take a fresh look at the familiar.
The main character cannot sit, lie down or press against the wall, which is available to the photographer in the real world, so collisions with the surrounding space are disabled during filming. The player can’t move slow enough to get the angle right, so their speed has to be reduced to zero. When photographing, there is no time to be distracted by battles (unless, of course, this applies to photographing battles), so the aggressiveness of all creatures is turned to a minimum, which works as a kind of camouflage when photographing wildlife.
In order to take more objects into the frame or, conversely, to make distant objects appear closer, it is convenient to use the focal length setting. But it’s better not to go too far with it, so that the game world continues to look familiar and natural. You can also change the drawing distance in the settings, and with it the density of the fog, in order to further separate or bring together the distant and near plans.
Working with lighting and weather is important. If necessary, you can highlight the background with a torch or lamp. In the exterior, sometimes you have to change the time of day or wait for the right weather to make the scene look better. And sometimes lighting and weather come together in a random, unique combination that you want to capture on its own.
When choosing a perspective, the compositional technique of balancing the big with the small works great. Point light sources or some silhouette in the distance often help balance the frame. If you need a dynamic shot, you can use a distant perspective. And if you need to reliably balance the composition when other techniques do not work, symmetry will do. In general, the choice of angle is intuitive.
The most important technique when preparing material for a channel is personnel selection. You need to constantly try different angles and press the shooting button as often as possible. Then it’s better to let the frames cool a little so that you can look at them with fresh eyes later. If I look at a frame and the feeling “there’s something in this” arises, it goes to work, even if it’s difficult for me to explain what exactly is in it. Out of 150 screenshots taken in one shooting session, about 30 will end up in drafts, and only 5 of them will be published.
As you can see, the shooting technique involves working with a console, which is not very compatible with fair gameplay. And although in general I avoid staged screenshots or situations that are unlikely or impossible in a real game, there is still a lack of real gameplay in my shots. Nowadays the frames are mostly static, and there is clearly room for improvement.
Do you have any favorite moments in the game that you would especially like to capture in screenshots??
In some of my screenshots I tried to convey the feeling of visiting iconic places for the first time, meeting iconic characters. From Jiuba, which wakes up the protagonist in the hold of the Imperial ship, to the point of being a ghost Azuras, who gives the Nerevarine a ring upon completion of the main quest. From the Ministry of Truth, looming majestically over the Temple Quarter Viveca, to the Skaal village, where the main character gets only in the add-on Bloodmoon.
There were also experiments with video sketches. For example, “Journey from Seida Neen to Balmora” conveys my impressions of my first journey through the Ascadian Islands region at the very beginning of the game.
A lot of screenshots have been taken, but even more places, situations and sensations are not covered. It seems like you can shoot forever.
Do you photograph other games??
Sometimes yes, but only as a simple player. To seriously photograph a game, you need to feel like you can convey something special with your shots. It will also be useful to understand the technical aspects of the game. In this regard, I am only close to Morrowind.
When did the idea to create the mwscr website come about??
Website Morrowind Screenshots appeared in 2024, much later than the channel itself with screenshots appeared. During the existence of the channel, subscribers have repeatedly made it clear that these screenshots are valuable to them, sometimes asking to share the originals. Sometimes I also needed to look for old footage to make a selection, or check what footage already exists in a certain location, so as not to repeat too much. But since 2016, a large catalog of screenshots has accumulated, where it has become difficult to search for something.
The idea came to make an online catalog of all posts on the channel in the style of the interface Morrowind. This is how this site appeared. It is not tied to any social network, although it collects reactions to posts from them. In addition to posts, it has a section with drafts, where screenshots live before publication, a trash can where rejected drafts go, a page with project participants, and information about the project in the style of a dialogue window from the game. The site is still young and will gradually improve.
My special pride is the interactive map of Vvardenfell, which you can click on and see screenshots from specific locations. Unfortunately, many old posts are not yet marked with locations, but anyone can use a button on the site to suggest where the corresponding frame could have been filmed.
What do you want to convey to your subscribers through Morrowind screenshots?? Does your content have a mission or purpose??
Channel Morrowind Screenshots explores one aspect of why this game is still with us. It celebrates visual aesthetics Morrowind, shows how beautiful his game world is even after years. The age of the game does not affect anything, and the pursuit of the most modern, sophisticated, hyper-realistic graphics is worth nothing if there is no soul and taste in it. IN Morrowind there is both. This is a wonderful, sometimes harsh virtual world that you can simply admire, like a Japanese admires Mount Fuji.
Computer games have long deserved to be treated as another form of art, perhaps more expressive than any other form of art. In one form or another they contain manifestations of cinema, music, painting, literature, architecture. I think classic games that have stood the test of time should stay with us, just like other classics. Morrowind – from among such games. I want it not to be forgotten, to be rediscovered, played, nostalgic, admired, even if you are far from computer games. He deserves it.
Another small goal is to contribute to the popularity of the OpenMW engine, on which almost all screenshots were taken. This is a great example of what people united by a common love for a classic game can do.
How does the Morrowind community react to your work?? Is there feedback that inspires you to continue??
It’s unlikely that I’ll ever get used to the fact that by taking screenshots I bring joy to someone. But apparently that’s the case. Subscribers often write thanks for individual shots and for the channel as a whole, saying that this is the best channel in the world, asking not to stop doing it. Other channels share my screenshots. Jokes and memes are born in the comments to posts. It’s not uncommon to see messages like “To hell with everything, I’m off to install it.” Morrowind». If you remember the goals of the project, at such moments it achieves its goal. The most unusual confession is when digital artists redraw screenshots from the channel, turning them into paintings. There are several posts with such works.
Of course, a lot of this love has to do with how great the game is Morrowind. The channel only conveys the beauty that exists without it. But the support of subscribers, without any doubt, plays a big role in the fact that the project continues to exist and develop.
Some subscribers complain about the lack of mods. And if graphic mods, in principle, fall out of the project concept, I generally do not completely reject content mods. For example, many people ask to film Tamriel Rebuild. It is possible that exceptions will be made for individual projects in the future.
How new authors appear in the state?
Although the channel was originally an author’s one, there are people who want to share their works within it. I am all in favor of having as many authors in the project as possible. It’s always interesting to see a new perspective on familiar things. But it is important that the channel maintains its face, so all the works of other authors undergo the same selection as my own.
There is a whole guide for those who want to offer their work. But not everyone who had the desire to take screenshots for the channel was able to overcome the technical barrier and editing. Sometimes they send very interesting works, but they are not suitable because they were shot in JPEG or without screen smoothing. In other cases, the work is technically suitable, but simply does not stand out in any way. If you remember how many of my screenshots I have thrown into the trash during the entire existence of the channel, other people’s works are rejected without much regret.
Now there are only a few people whose works have been published on the channel. But I’m always open to new authors. You can submit your work in different ways – by mail or via GitHub. There is even a Telegram bot that allows you to send screenshots directly to project drafts. He goes online about once an hour, so he doesn’t respond right away.
I hope you caught at least a piece of the love put into Anton’s work. Once again I express my gratitude to him for his creativity. All photos in the blog are taken from the Morrowind Screenshots website. Urgently I recommend checking it out, this is only a small part of the beauty that is hidden in it.
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