The Elders Scroll III Morrowind is an open world action role playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios in 2002 for the Original Xbox. In a recent podcast Todd Howard claimed – “In Morrowind, If you’re running low on memory you can reboot the Original Xbox and the user cant tell”.
Of course I had to investigate these claims and see if its indeed true. In this episode we take a closer look at The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind and understand how it came with unique memory management.
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► Source – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI2IPeocbAA&t=518s
► Music Credit : The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind/Composer – Jeremy Soule
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#Morrowind #OGXbox #Reboot
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36 comments
how come emulators dont have save states for ps2/xbox but here were being told it morrowind did a save state for the reboot?
Atleast 2 of this people are known liars and all of them professional bullshitters.
Ugh, Todd Howard. Ugh.
i miss when bethesda made good games
1:38 don't jitter click bro its not skyrim. The longer you hold your weapon the more damage it does and the more likely you are to hit
What's funny is that the original (non-New) 3DS has a system-level function that kinda resembles this. The New 3DS has an extended memory mode which allows a game to use its enhanced resources to their fullest, and many games which use this simply require that model or else they won't run. Super Smash Bros is one exception, using a version of extended memory mode which is compatible with the old 3DS as well! The way the old model handles this, since it has less memory than extended memory mode was designed for, is by rebooting itself as soon as part of launching such a game, running a slimmer version of the system software which seems to have to load in the Home Menu from scratch each time you pull it up (it also can't launch the top-row applets in this state), and rebooting back into its normal state upon closing the game. I think the most visible difference here is that the 3DS system software, while not outright stating what it's doing, is much more open than Morrowind about the fact that something's happening.
It just works!
Microsoft could have extended the lifespan and quality of the games by adding a simple notebook dimm memory slot accessible from the bottom of the console, just like there was for the Nintendo 64. This would have allowed the user to add another 64mb of memory ( or perhaps even more) and would be the beginning of the PRO versions of the consoles, this simple decision would also have allowed increasing vram, loading larger textures, higher resolution, greater stability and more frames per second. At the cost of a simple slot on the motherboard, and a plastic cover under the console.
Unfortunately, innovative ideas take time to come to fruition due to risk (in the eyes of shareholders). In 2004 Sony launched the PS2 Slim, Microsoft was just watching (maybe they were only focused on the 360) but in my opinion, they could have added more spice to the Xbox Classic at that time, since all the media was focused on Sony and its launch, Microsoft could have launched a simple model with a colorful case series to stay in the spotlight…
The fact that this could be done on 64Mb is insane
If I recall correctly, this wasn't unique to Morrowind either for "big" releases. Deus Ex Invisible War allegedly did the same and even retained this hacky fix for its PC release. I guess it's not stupid if it works, right?
Despite turning 35 … literally tomorrow… Xbox Morrowind was my first experience in a completely alternate universe. Other games were immersive, for sure, but Morrowind… it changed everything I thought about video games up to that point. Morrowind made it feel like ANYTHING was possible. Though, depending on how much you messed with stat exploits and spellmaking, you really could pretty much do anything.
"It's called memory management"
Aussie?
Crash Bandicoot and other games on the PS1 overwrote in RAM parts of the PS1 API libraries that were loaded from ROM, replacing it with more efficient versions and such.
I wonder what they did with Oblivion on the 360 because I vividly remember having a load screen that lasted over 40 minutes (I left and came back several times)
And yet they can't even make the Fallout 4 overhaul work properly.
I believe that Spongebob Revange of the flying dutchmann did the same thing on PS2
0:58 This is why gaming peaked in the OG Xbox/360 era. Devs stopped pushing the limits of hardware to make their projects happen. Everything is visual overload and no horsepower.
On ps3 oblivion very occassionally you had a load screen that was wicked long aswell and then after that the game would load places within seconds again. I wonder if they did the same thing on the ps3? not sure about xbox 360 though
It seems like that Restart on New game function is just to make sure that even if you have a new game active that if you were to have a memory leak and the xbox needed to reboot itself that it doesnt have the previous save state from a previous save loaded into it and effectively ruining your brand new game.
You can just decompile software with tools and just show it?
It just works!
I am just happy that I finally know why some of the loading screens were much longer than others. I had always assumed it was loading in chunks of the world.
An RPG That just would not have worked on any other console at the time.
Man, back then engineers could work some real magic due to limitations, and now they got so lazy with optimization that games take up over 100 gig and run like shit most of the time just to have some usuless reflections or extra strands of hair or grass. I think Nintendo is the only company that still optimizes their games well to run perfectly on something as weak as Nintendo Switch
I've never played Morrowind, but listening to the music throughout this video had me going "man, this music sounds a lot like Knights of the Old Republic…" which made me look up Jeremy Soule… and turns out he did the soundtrack for both games. He must have used the exact same orchestral library because the timbre is basically identical.
Please make more videos like this!
It Just Works
I freakin' hate when developers use negative names and intentions for booleans. Like tell us if something is enabled or not, not if it's disabled. "No Reboot on Blah" could have just as easily been "Reboot on Blah" — you're asking the humans to do their own internal negation of the value before thinking about it when it comes to logic and implementation. — It's just ugly code and it's unprofessional. — Though I guess, that's exactly the type of coding you can expect from a group who is willing to secretly reboot the machine instead of tracking down and fixing their own memory leaks. 🙄
A loot bag used to appear in the house you were using once you placed too many items down, after this loot bag would appear, even after picking everything up, the loot bag would eat anything you put down. To avoid this, you needed to save your game without leaving the area, reboot-load, then continue, then the infernal loot bag would not appear. Also this game ran the XBOX hot so if it was not in a well ventilated space, it would overheat and lockup. (I was an interior decorator once, then I took a…nvm)
not surprised morrowind always loaded super slow
so funny
I wonder how this works in the background with the emulated version on one x and series x 🤔
Bethesda 🤝 Homebrew Scene
Relying on wonky
workarounds to work
Mark Darrah corroborates this story of silent rebooting the Xbox on Jade Empire in his memories & lessons video https://youtu.be/FSreyldvpVA?t=797
Wasn't expecting to find a video on this topic. Glad i did, because this is the type of bts content i love when it comes to games. Especially games that i really love like the Elder Scrolls games or any star wars game 😅
Epic Quake 2 port! some tricks are timeless
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