Finally, after 21 years, Morrowind meets my exacting standards of realism and immersion with this mod that adds footprints

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When there was but one set of footprints in the sand, that was Dagoth Ur carrying you.

Despite being a game full of chunky, blank-faced weirdos with awful hair that makes you swing at an enemy 20 times before you can land a single hit, Morrowind is an incredibly immersive game, sucking you into Vvardenfel and making you feel like part of its world. Modder abot over on the Morrowind Nexus has now, finally, torn down that last barrier between Morrowind and a perfect simulation of reality: with abot's new mod, the Nerevarine leaves behind footprints as they walk.

Okay, maybe a little silly, but it's such a great idea⁠—just one of those little details you forget about while running up your eighteenth snowdrift in Solstheim with a train of awful little max-level goblin men chasing you down. And really, obsessive detail like this absolutely fits in a game that actively drains your stamina while you slowly jog around its alien moonscapes.

I also love how abot got this mod to work. They utilize the Morrowind Script Extender to detect that whenever that distinctive clop clop clop sound effect of a Morrowind character's footsteps plays, and spawns in the footprint texture accordingly. Abot also includes a helpful menu to adjust who leaves footprints (ranging from just the PC to all creatures), how frequently they spawn in, and how far away they remain visible.

Abot has an extensive selection of other Morrowind bug and immersion fixes on their Nexus Mods author page as well. Amazing things continue to happen in the Morrowind modding community after all these years, with recent projects adding AI-generated voice acting, Oblivion crossover fights, and, of course, McDonald's. That's not to mention the colossally ambitious Tamriel Rebuilt, whose team continues to chug away at effectively building another Elder Scrolls game inside Morrowind.

Ted Litchfield
Associate Editor

Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.