Here’s some Steam Deck news for anyone who has tried Morrowind on a handheld and bounced off the menus. Steam lists The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition as Playable on Steam Deck, and the same Playable rating applies on Steam Machine, but Valve’s report still flags the default controller setup as not fully functional. The world runs fine. The interface was built for a mouse and a keyboard.
Modern Morrow is a free, open-source fork of OpenMW that replaces that whole interface with full-screen, controller-friendly menus made for handhelds and TVs. The gameplay and the look of the world stay largely the same. The first public build, v0.1.0, is marked as a pre-release on GitHub, and the developer, u/durham_g, shared it on r/SteamDeck. Credit to them, and to the r/SteamDeck community, for surfacing it.
What Modern Morrow actually is
It is a fork of OpenMW, the open-source Morrowind engine, rather than a plugin. The developer says they talked with the OpenMW team about doing this as an extension, but OpenMW’s APIs cannot fully replace the user interface yet. The plan is to rework it as a mod once that Lua work is finished. For now, the new screens are drawn on top of OpenMW’s own windows, which stay hidden and keep handling the game’s rules.
The developer designed the interface and says the code was written with Claude. It is an early experiment, not reviewed by the OpenMW developers, so expect rough edges. Bugs from this fork should go to the Modern Morrow repo, not to official OpenMW.
The new menus
The old item grid is gone. In its place you get lists and tabs, larger text, and screens you can work through with a pad:
- Inventory uses tabs and lists, with an equipment overview of each body area and clearer item stats.
- The local map is a 3D view of the world you can pan, zoom and pin.
- The journal is a sortable list of quests, grouped as pinned, in progress or finished, instead of a book.
- Dialogue topics are sorted, with new topics first, and the conversation text is larger.
- Quick keys sit on the d-pad: tap a direction for one slot, or hold it for another, for eight bindings in total.
Trading, looting, magic, alchemy, character creation, rest and the rest of the game get matching controller screens. The HUD also hides when you do not need it.
How to try it on Steam Deck or Steam Machine
You need your own copy of Morrowind. The Linux AppImage runs natively on SteamOS, without Proton, and the same steps apply on a Steam Deck and a Steam Machine.
From the GitHub releases page, download either the AutoUpdate script, which checks for a newer AppImage each time you start, or the AppImage itself if you prefer to update by hand. Make the file executable, add it to Steam as a non-Steam game, and start it once in Desktop Mode so the setup wizard can find your Morrowind folder. After that, launch it from Game Mode. Start it from Steam rather than from the Dolphin file manager, which can refuse to open some AppImages.
Modern Morrow keeps its settings and saves separate from OpenMW. You can import an OpenMW save from the Load menu if you want to bring a character across.
Other controller options
This is not the only way to play Morrowind with a pad. OpenMW 0.50 added optional Controller Menus, which keep the familiar layout and let you navigate it with the d-pad and buttons instead of an emulated mouse. There is also the OpenMW Xbox UI Overhaul, a separate fork that ports the original Xbox interface. Modern Morrow is the more thoroughly redesigned option, built around lists, bigger text and a 3D map rather than a recreation of an older layout.
If you already own Morrowind and want something that reads clearly on a Steam Deck screen, or sits comfortably under a TV on a Steam Machine, v0.1.0 is on the GitHub releases page.
