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The Renewal Project began with Morroblivion, a Morrowind remaster on the 2006 The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion engine, prior to Skyrim's release. Coordinated through the Morroblivion website's forums,[1] the game mod was publicly available on the team's website in 2008.[2] In 2012, after the release of Skyrim, forum members began work on Skywind, intending to begin the same result in the Skyrim engine.[3] Also in 2012, Zilav, a modder within the Renawal Project, attempted to portOblivion's assets into the Creation Engine. In 2014, Zilav was joined by modder Monocleus, and they released a stable yet incomplete version of the project that would serve as the basis for further development.[4][5]
Skywind is a recreation of Morrowind (2002) in the Skyrim – Special Editiongame engine (2016).[6] All original game assets, including textures, music, quests and gameplay, were planned to be redesigned.[7] The project began in 2012 with about eight modders, and expanded by January 2014 to 70 volunteers. Since then, the game remastering team came to involve over 70 volunteers in artist, composer, designer, developer, and voice acting roles who released several videos highlighting their development progress. In 2012, the first videos and screenshots of an early version of a Skywind mod to port Morrowind into the Skyrim engine were released. Earlier, a mod was being developed to port Morrowing into the Oblivion engine as part of the Morroblivion project.[8] On January 4, 2014, the team released on YouTube their first development video.[9]
In November 2014, the team reported to have finished half of the remaster's environment, over 10,000 new dialogue lines, and three hours of series-inspired soundtrack. Players were able to download and play an unfinished version of the release until late 2014, when the volunteer team chose to divert assets to development instead of user support. A March 2015 update showed updated levels. The developers wrote that they were not close to a release despite technical indications from their project's software versioning.[10] In mid-2015, the team released its public alpha, an unfinished test version; it was soon withdrawn due to its "very alpha state".[11] After a year, the project team released its fourth update, which was designed to solicit volunteers for the remaining work.[12] In October 2018, a further major trailer was released,[13] and another in July 2019 and January 2020.[14]
In May 2023, the 21st anniversary of Morrowind's release, the Skywind team released a 21-minute video of gameplay footage. In the video, the narrator stated that the team was "finalizing major game elements".[15] By May 2024, after nearly thirteen years of development, level design was estimated to be 70 percent complete, while voice acting was 80 percent done, with nearly all the quests written. Additionally, in contrast to the base game of Skyrim and its about 1,100 non-playable characters voiced by 70 actors, Skywind has over 3,000 different characters voiced by around 300 performers, three times as many as Skyrim; the significant amount of work required to rebuilt Morrowind, itself a very large world despite its age, explains the long development.[16]
Skyblivion is a recreation of Oblivion (2006) within the engine for Skyrim – Special Edition (2016).[17] Like its sister project Skywind, it began by another volunteer team within the Renewal Project in 2012,[18] and involves an overhaul of most aspects of the original game, including landscaping, weapons, and armors.[19] As of mid-2014, the project sought outside help from visual artists and declined voice actors, as Oblivion already featured a full voice cast.[20] The team released a development trailer in May 2014 that showed the remaster in early development.[21] This was followed in July 2015 by a 45-minute gameplay trailer. At that time, the game lacked navmesh, a mechanism by which non-player characters wander an environment without becoming lost in other assets.[22] Since 2016, the team released several trailers, including "Skyblivion – Return To Cyrodiil",[23] "The Elder Scrolls: Skyblivion – Teaser Trailer",[24] and "Official Release Year Announcement Trailer",[25] the latest of which set a release date of 2025,[26][27][28] or 2025 "at the latest".[29]
In November 2016, the project lead K Rebel (also known as Rebelzize) started to send out invites on Nexus Mods in the hope of attracting more volunteers. More people joined and the "Skyblivion – Return To Cyrodiil" trailer was published in December 2016, resulting in an influx of new volunteers.[23][30] Rebelzize also hosts livestreams on his channel, showing the development process of the game and answering questions from the viewers.[23] By August 2019, the project started to near its completion, with the exterior map in its final stages of development, 3D computer graphics assets being implemented at a rapid rate, and debugging being done for the quests.[31] In 2020, the team launched the Developer Diary Series, showing the game development.[32][33]
In January 2023, the team announced that the game was scheduled to be released by 2025.[34] Throughout 2023 and 2024, roadmap updates were given by the development team,[35][36][37] further cementing the 2025 release window.[38][39] In April 2025, when The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered was officially announced and released, Bethesda Game Studios affirmed support for community efforts, and the Skyblivion team confirmed they would continue development.[40] The entire Skyblivion team was gifted by Bethesda free keys to Oblivion Remastered.[41]
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