Denina's Morrowind Forums

[Denina]

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Description from Planet Elder Scrolls:

This mod combines every head and hair plugin that I am aware of that existed prior to 12/01/2003 into a single structured plugin.

This adds the faces and hairs for player use only, it does not change anything in the game.

The only thing in this mod made by me is the hair from my hair packs, everything else here is the property of the awesome artists listed in the credits.

Update 1.2: Changes the female Khajiit faces that were set to male back to female. It includes all the fixes from 1.1. This update was not done by Gorg, it's a fan update. Bother Hechicera if the female Khajiit faces are still wrong - not Gorg please.

[Denina]

Before moving on to the review, I just want to say that I am no artist myself and my review is based mostly on the aesthetics of the heads/hair themselves and not so much on the more subtle points. The few things I can point out were only recognized after hanging out with AlienSlof and Kikaimegami, two fine artists who I have listened to discuss art work on numerous occasions and did learn a thing or two. I still can't draw a straight line without making it jagged though. That's just not one of my talents.

That said, now for the review...

Concept: Superb - Most of the original Bethesda heads/hair are well...to put it nicely, not as well done as they could have been. These are a vast improvement.

Lore Accuracy: Not applicable as far as I'm concerned.

Design: Excellent. This mod adds tons of playable heads and hair to the game but does not change existing NPC heads/hair. It is designed to give players more options.

Attention to Detail: Ranges from fair to excellent. Some of the heads are better quality than others. Perhaps I was just spoiled by AlienSlof and Sorcha Ravenlock's high quality faces, but some of these are very well done and others could have used more attention to detail. However, if you put any of them up against the original heads, I think the originals would lose 9/10. The selection of hair styles and color options is one of the best I've seen on any head pack mod and I use the mod just for the hairs alone, though I do like many of the faces as well.

Technical Achievement: Having worked with body parts a bit in the CS, I know first hand how frustrating it can be getting started learning how to make the heads/hair show up in game until you get the hang of how it works. Gorg went through and combined multiple mods into one working .esm file.

As for the art work technical achievement, overall, I would say Excellent. A lot of artists poured blood, sweat and tears into this work. Again, some of them could use a little more attention to detail as in some cases, the eyes were drawn uneven, or the lips were too pale or the shadows of the faces did not blend in what would appear a natural way. But in my opinion, almost all of them are a vast improvement on the originals.

Additional Comments:

There are no screenshots available at the PES download site. This mod was released in 2005 and if I remember correctly, it wasn't until late 2005 that there were so many more choices as far as head/hair that screenshots practically became a necessity but really weren't prior to that. I don't know if Gorg is still active in the Elder Scrolls community, so asking for screenshots may be a waste of time. I do feel that most of the heads are worth the large download. Most of the time, they are better seen at character select than in a grainy online picture anyway.

While writing this review, I realized just how difficult it is to review texture replacers objectively since there's nothing objective about it. It's all a matter of, "I like it." or "I don't like it." Regardless of personal preferences to the individual heads/hair, I am grateful for the effort and time artists and modders put in to make the game enjoyable in their own small way.