Update: Some users were apparently having issues with logging into the website and/or redeeming the free Morrowind code. Those problems appear to have been resolved, and Bethesda has extended the free offer through the weekend.

Orginal story:

The Elder Scrolls: Arena is 25 years old today, and to celebrate the big birthday Bethesda is giving away The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Just pop over to bethesda.net, log in to the site (or sign up if you need to) and then—wait!—do not hit the "Redeem Now" button yet!

I know, that seems like the obvious thing to do but first you want to take note of, or perhaps even select and copy, the "TES25TH-MORROWIND" code, without the quotes. Now hit the redemption button, put the code into the field, click where you're told, and the game will be added to your account, accessible through the Bethesda launcher.   

The previous Elder Scrolls games, Arena and Daggerfall, are also free (and have been for awhile now), but Morrowind is the one that put the series, and Bethesda, on the map. It's big, bold, and beautiful, unconstrained by the bug-ridden wonkery of the games that came before it or the comfortable conventions of the ones that followed, and it is free. Today only, though, so get on with it. 

This is not the only thing Bethesda is doing to mark the 25th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls: There's also a free-play event coming this weekend to The Elder Scrolls Online, some anniversary loot in The Elder Scrolls Legends card game, and new in-game content for The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim. 

Great moments in PC gaming are short, bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.    

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game (I'd briefly tried to play Morrowind on the Xbox but it just didn't take), and I didn't know much of anything about the series before I started playing. Most importantly, it never occurred to me that the Elder Scrolls were actually a thing. It just seemed like a good name for a fantasy game. Elder gods, old paper, yada yada. I get it. So there I was, deeply absorbed in Oblivion and taking orders directly from the Gray Fox, the mysterious leader of the Thieves Guild, when I'm told I need to steal a damn Elder Scroll. From the Imperial Palace. It's that moment when a character in a movie says the title, except instead of groaning (The World is Not Enough) I was full-on, hell yeah into it (Snakes on a Plane). It's really all in the execution. 

It felt like I was about to steal the original Ten Commandments tablets or something, a holy object I had previously assumed was pure allegory. The timing was also perfect. This was my first guild, I was still fairly low-level, and the stakes of this mission conveyed that anything-is-possible sensation we're always chasing in new, still-mysterious game worlds when we haven't found the edges of what you can do. And it was intense as hell, because the Imperial guards could still absolutely wreck me if I got caught.

The thing that really cemented it for me was that I did get caught—or, rather, spotted, which meant I was running in terror from a small army of Imperial guards, the most treasured relic of the Empire tucked away in my inventory. I couldn't stop moving or I was dead. Somehow I made it to the secret chute in the fireplace and survived the massive fall with the special boots I was given for just this occasion. I made it!

There are many ways that mission can go, and it won't impress as much if you can sneak past the guards with ease or survive a huge fall with a shrug. But if you do it early in the game, by the skin of your teeth, it's a thrilling heist and one of Oblivion's most memorable moments.

After writing about the latest update for the excellent Morrowind: Rebirth mod yesterday, the allure of the best Elder Scrolls game was strong. But I can’t just reinstall Morrowind; at the very least I need to spend a couple of days finding more mods, like Morrowind Enhanced Textures. It might not have a flashy name, but it sure is pretty. 

HD texture mods often look strange and out of place, especially in older games like Morrowind, but this appears to be one of the exceptions. Don’t expect it to suddenly look as good as new, but there are places where it looks not far off Skyrim. The character models still look goofy as heck, but that’s The Elder Scrolls for you. 

The technique used to enhance the textures is called Enhanced Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks (ESRGAN), and gosh people need to do a better job of naming things. It’s an AI upscaling method that generates realistic textures without the artifacts that you get from plain old Super-Resolution Generative Adversarial Networks.

Modder DassiD says they made several passes with the tool and upscaled the textures by four times Morrowind’s original resolution. They’ve included some comparison screenshots on Nexus, where you can also download the mod. It looks impressive, though it’s worth noting that a few other mods have been used in the screenshots to make them look even lovelier.