Off Topic: Morrowind, the best Elder Scrolls game, is free until March 31

I said what I said.

I’ll admit some of that may be colored by nostalgia, but at the same time it’s also colored by the time when Morrowind was released. As with nearly every game released at some point in the past, the graphics at the time were amazingly good though in hindsight the models seem a bit blocky. This game was released two years before World of Warcraft hit the scene so viewed alongside the models we’ll see again in WoW Classic, Morrowind is a tour de force.

Morrowind also came out six months after Grand Theft Auto III, issuing in the era of vast open-world RPGs. Though some games, like Ocarina of Time, allowed you to traipse around the world at your leisure, Morrowind allowed you to wander a huge world full of secrets with almost no real guidance, and interact with nearly anything in 3D. For me, this led to a continent-wide murder spree — once you killed someone you basically got to keep their house as your own — and hours upon hours of arranging books, soul shards, and various artifacts just so to decorate my ill-gotten real estate.

Oddly, my personal favorite thing in Morrowind — besides the decor and incidental murder — was the Alchemy system. Each potential component has a maximum of four potential alchemical properties. Combine like with like, using tools like mortars and pestles, to get a potion. At a baseline, you had no idea what each component could do — as you increased your Alchemy skill, some of them would be learned by default. As you started the game, the best way to figure out what each ingredient could be used for was to eat it. I mean, naturally I’m going to go wandering through this wonderland sandbox licking mammals and eating dubious mushrooms. Wouldn’t you?

To celebrate 25 years of the classic Elder Scrolls franchise, Bethesda is letting anyone who wants it get Morrowind for free until March 31. Originally, the promotion only extended for a single day on the 25th, but Bethesda’s servers were having a time of it managing the load. Just log in to your Bethesda account — or create one — then enter the code TES25TH-MORROWIND to embark on this epic adventure.