Accidentally thrusting Morrowind to death just got more difficult, thanks to engine reimplemention OpenMW's chunky new update

You can finally trust your attack-happy actors

We've all done it. One moment, you're playing The Elder Scrolls 3. Then, boom, you pass the thrust and everything implodes. Thankfully, the latest update to OpenMW - the open source engine reimplementation that's one of the the best ways to play Morrowind on modern hardware - includes measures to stop this thrusting from accidentally breaking the game.

Seriously. "Passing a thrust attack to actor controls no longer breaks the game," reads one of the notes in the scripting section of OpenMW's freshly released 0.51.0 update. The days of fearing that your decision to try and assign a sword poke to a character who isn't you will undo the world are over. Phew.

While that might be the inclusion which has drawn my immature eye, the update includes a myriad of other additions to and fixes for the now 24 year old RPG. As shown off in the the release announcement video below, modders can now create magic effects through OpenMW's scripting API, making it possible to get some fancy-looking spells developed for massive Morrowind mods Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel up and running in OpenMW.

Meanwhile, the ability to cast enchantments is no longer limited to characters who can equip items. "While it might seem dubious for a pack rat to eat your scrolls, hostile creatures can now be much more dangerous," the video's narrator Gitshiver said of this change. I for one look forward to having my soul trapped by a Cliff Racer. Beyond that, the update should make it easier for modders to smooth out the jagged bits of Morrowind's textures and make OpenMW easier to install by improving its wizard's auto-detection of existing Morrowind installations even if you've not run the game through them yet. Plus "many Lua-related crashes" and "a few minor annoyances with gamepad menu navigation introduced in the previous release" have been dealt with.

All in all, it's the perfect excuse to head off and roam Vvardenfell if you've been looking for one lately. No matter what sort of tinkering's required to set it up, at least now you don't have to fear the potential consequences of any thrusting you make Dagoth Ur do.