Todd made fun of me for doing most of Redguard, and even the beginnings of Morrowind, in Deluxe Paint II. I will say that I did that for an embarrassingly long time.
#MORROWIND CONCEPT ART HOW TO#
That was how I learned how to create levels, and actually not do all the textures in Deluxe Paint II anymore. I guess someone left, and Todd was like, “Hey, wanna learn 3D?” And I just screamed: “Yes!” Because my computer at home never did that it wasn’t that powerful. So I thought, “Oh, God, I’m gonna screw this up.”īut I didn’t screw it up, and then about three weeks later I was in a U-Haul going up there. And the fact that he had a British accent was, like, alien. Mind you, I grew up in Alabama, so someone flying me anywhere was pretty fucking crazy. Sure enough, within like two weeks, Mark Jones, who was the art lead over there, wanted me for an interview. So I just sent off a bunch of shit I did on the side, art-wise, in Deluxe Paint II. And at the back of NextGen was this really pixelated ad for Bethesda. I’d been doing some small video game shit with some friends that I went to college with, and that just kinda taught me Photoshop, because that game wasn’t going anywhere. I saw an ad in this old gaming magazine called Next Generation. We discussed the very conception of Vvardenfell, the strangest bits of Elder Scrolls lore and the “shits-and-giggles” philosophy that informed them, and what it means to build a game world that withstands the test of time. Over the last year, we tracked down 10 former Morrowind team members, including Howard, concept artist Michael Kirkbride, and lead designer Ken Rolston.
That speech, one source says, probably saved the company. There, Howard rallied the developers’ spirits, handed out personalized business cards, and assured them it would all work out, as long as they were willing to keep going. In the darkest of moments, when it seemed the writing was on the wall for Bethesda, project leader Todd Howard took the team to a nearby hotel for a private meeting. Whatever the company’s fate, it seemed the game was destined to find an audience. But the island of Vvardenfell, and its unique pantheon of gods and demons, seemed to exist independent of the concerns upstairs. A vast ashen landscape teeming with psychedelic flora and fauna - equal parts Jim Henson and George Lucas, with a dash of Tolkien - here was a game that resembled no other.įor the people who made it, Morrowind was the product of tough crunch, a pressure-cooker basement environment, and constant uncertainty about the company they worked for - which many felt could have shut down any day. It was an artistic and technical leap forward for mainstream role-playing games in the summer of 2002, and, for many, a beautiful and novel experience.
#MORROWIND CONCEPT ART SERIES#
While hardly the first open-world game of its kind, the third numbered entry in Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series cemented a formula and a set of expectations that are still alive and well today in games like Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3. Maybe you used a mouse and keyboard, or the Xbox “Duke” controller, to visit it. It’s like something out of a dream, only you’ve actually been there.
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