Having booted up the original Oblivion only a week or so ago and realizing just how playable that 20-year-old game still is out of the box despite the recent release of an official remaster, it got me wondering about earlier Elder Scrolls games. Can I just load up Morrowind and play that too? The answer is: sort of. But there’s another option that’s so much better.
The truth is, yes, remarkably you can buy Morrowind on Steam or GOG, click play, and run the game. It’s just, it’s not a brilliant experience. With Oblivion, I swear the vanilla, unmodded released version is absolutely fine. (OK, I’m not delusional, I recognize that it’s vastly improved by an array of mods which can not only fix its abysmal UI but also address all manner of significant bugs before you even get started on the asset packs, extra quests, better dialogue, and so on—but I maintain, you don’t have to use them.)
However, when I ran Morrowind straight from Steam, I had the game in a 4:3 aspect ratio, stuck to the far left of my 21:9 monitor in an immovable window, and things were obviously low-res. This is a game that was originally released 24 years ago, and unlike Oblivion, it was just on the wrong side of a big step forward in gaming fidelity. Yet you can absolutely play the game like this, and honestly, after a few minutes I was just happy to keep going.
Things are even better if you play it via GOG. GOG has the game in its Preservation Program, meaning there’s a commitment to keep the version sold in a form that runs straight away. It helps that GOG’s version also has the Construction Set—the modding software created by Bethesda, which is missing from the Steam version—pre-installed. However, both will only load the game in a 4:3 aspect ratio, and will really require some hefty modding before you get going.
For many, modding an older game is second nature. For those unfamiliar, however, understanding modding is about as fun as trying to build Ikea furniture underwater, with half the pieces missing and no instructions. Modders come from the same philosophical school as Linux developers, who believe all guides must be written exclusively for people who already know how to do the described task. Everything is assumed, download links are hidden amidst pages of indecipherable update notes, and the correct build you need is listed in such a way as to ensure anyone who isn’t intimately familiar with their operating system just has to guess. Woo.
If that’s the path you want to go down, I recommend getting Vortex, Nexus Mods’ equivalent of an app, which will go some way to helping you manage your mods found on Nexus—the simplest of a very un-simple selection of options. It’s still colossally annoying, unable to run a web browser within itself, meaning it endlessly throws you out to your browser when you’re trying to use it. But hey-ho, it’s progress toward accessibility. And in there, it automatically detected all games it can manage that are installed on my PC, and is able to show me which Morrowind mods I have installed in one neat place. That doesn’t mean I can necessarily figure out how to make them work, but it’s a start.
However, there’s a far better and easier option! It’s called OpenMW, and it’s by far the best way to play Morrowind in 2025. OpenMW is an open source engine that reinterprets the original Morrowind code. It’s not a mod in any sense, but rather a new housing in which to run the game, and as such, to use it you’ll need a legitimate installed copy of Morrowind on your PC. And unlike mods, getting it set up is a cinch.
Downloading it is still the usual bullshit, as you need to get it via GitHub. (People familiar with GitHub and the like will balk at this very suggestion, sneering indignantly at the utter ignorance on display, but as someone who has managed to keep a leg in both camps, I can assure them it’s not intuitive to newcomers in any way.) So let’s make that simple: to get it, click this link, and look at the bottom under “Assets.” In there you’ll see “OpenMW-0.49.0-RC6-win64.exe,” which is the version you’ll need to run the engine on any modern Windows PC. (The version ending “.tar.gz” is for Linux, while .dmg is for Mac.)
Left-click on it, and it’ll pop up a save window. Download it, then run the .exe, which will bring up a window that asks you to point it toward your current Morrowind install. So now find where you installed that. For Steam, a useful tip is to right-click the game’s name in your Steam library, choose “Manage” and then “Browse local files.” This will open a file explorer window that will show you where the “Morrowind.exe” file is located—you want to point the OpenMW installer to that.
After that, everything’s so much simpler! Just load the game and then the in-game options are replete with everything you could hope for. I’ve got it running in 3440:1440 and it’s looking glorious. The in-game menus are easily rescaled and the game looks fantastic with its original 2002 assets and art. You can just play the classic game for the next seven billion hours with no issues at all.
One quick tip that caught me out in this modern era: The game defaults to having Jump on E, Activate on Space, and Use on Mouse 1. That’s bonkers, and you’ll likely want to rearrange them. But take note that “Activate” is the option that opens doors and the like, not “Use.” Use is in fact mostly “Attack,” so leave that on Mouse 1!
So, you enjoy that, I’m going to work out how easily I can play Daggerfall.
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