Morrowind lives on with a major new OpenMW release out

Morrowind is a much loved RPG classic and thanks to open source it continues living on modern platforms with OpenMW. The team behind OpenMW just release version 0.46 and it's one of the biggest updates ever.

We've been waiting on this one for what feels like forever, especially as it finally brings in real-time shadows making it look a whole lot better. There's plenty of other changes both big and small and it continues be a very impressive game engine recreation. Modding even got improvements to the point that some previously unplayable mods should now work.

Check out the release video:

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Major new features:

• Improved navigation mesh-based AI pathfinding system
• Native weapon and shield sheathing support
• Support for NiPalette, NiRollController, NiTriStrips and NiSwitchNode NIF records
• Native seamless container open/close animations support
• Real-time shadows
• Support for loading the compressed BSA format from Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas and 2011 Skyrim games
• Native graphic herbalism support
• Support for custom attachment bones for different weapon types and custom bones in general
• Support for unique animations for different weapon types
• Environment-mapped bump-mapping support

Masses of improvements elsewhere too. Gamepad input should feel better and it by default matches the Xbox version of Morrowind, sensible default config values to get going quicker, multiple projectiles can be enchanted at once, you can invert the X axis if needed now, tons of UI improvements, enchanted arrows correctly glow now, distant terrain settings and much more.

As you do need the Morrowind data files to play it, you do need a copy. You can pick up a copy of Morrowind easily from GOG.com.

For OpenMW itself you can grab it from the official site.