Morrowind GOTY: the island that splits its own fans down the middle

The complete edition stacks two expansions onto an island that was born prickly toward newcomers — and not even the oldest fans agree on whether that's the appeal or the flaw.

An island that won't let go of anyone's hand

One of the most-read write-ups from people who've played it insists that no Elder Scrolls game is as divisive as this one: step onto this island and you land on one side or the other, with almost no middle ground. The premise explains part of that. Your character arrives alone, gets a single lead to start with — track down someone in a nearby town — and finds out, within the first few minutes, that following it is optional: you can ignore that lead and build your own story while a supernatural blight eats away at the land around you.

The GOTY edition, released on August 26, 2015, piles both full expansions onto that foundation. Tribunal sends your character to the region's capital, Mournhold, to meet two of the local god-kings, Almalexia and Sotha Sil, and to descend through the dungeons of the Clockwork City against goblins, lich lords and the enigmatic Fabricants. Bloodmoon moves that same story to the frozen island of Solstheim, where ice trolls and wolves share the ground with a mining colony you can protect — or walk away from entirely to become a werewolf and hunt from the wrong side of the fence. Together, the two expansions promise up to 80 hours of new content, with Nordic armor and ice blades among the gear that comes along for the ride.

Anyone who already owned the original Morrowind doesn't start over: character and save file carry across to this edition, and the reputation and inventory built on the first island come ashore on the second. Behind all of it is Bethesda Softworks, which authored the world and also handles distribution through Bethesda Softworks LLC.

Mods of this game on Clairo

• OpenMW

Each of them requires this game, according to the store itself.

The ones who love it change their lives over it

The praise that keeps coming up isn't about the graphics or the quest log: it's about what this island lets you turn into. One player, writing on August 29, 2015, recalls seeing the game for the first time still riddled with bugs, on a friend's computer; years later he taught himself to model 3D scenery just to rebuild that world, and more than a decade after that it became his job, not a hobby. Another fan, at the same GOTY launch, calls the result a flawed piece of work that Bethesda itself seems to have forgotten how to repeat: the chosen-one cliché is right there, yet the story never settles whether the character really is the reincarnation of general Nerevar or merely a political tool, because every faction tells the battle of Red Mountain a different way.

A fan who has bought the GOTY edition twice recommends installing the community-made add-ons first — he rattles off the ones called Ornithopter Overhaul and Tamriel Rebuilt from memory — and even defends the shaky aim of the early fights: swing and miss with a sword you just picked up, he says, and that's on you, not the game. The freedom in building a character earns the same kind of praise — you can be good at combat, stealth and magic all at once, and craft your own spells — though the same fan admits that, near the end, that character grows too powerful for any enemy to be a threat.

Among the ones handing out top marks there's also a message for the store: Russian speakers demand, in no gentle terms, a version translated into their own language, and a 2019 review credits that same language with an older, fonder memory — of having watched the game run at a friend's house before he even owned a computer that could run it. The attachment holds up even without a single line of the game written in these players' language.

The gripe is about the text box, not the island

The one dissenting voice turns up on March 29, 2019, with a score of 1, and it says nothing about clumsy combat or a thin story: it's about the language. You buy two games from the same store — one arrives fully translated, the other doesn't come anywhere near your language — and it's out of that contrast that the complaint grows: the writer points to another title in that same store, Etherlords II, already available in Polish, and finds it odd that this edition of Morrowind was left off the list. Even while complaining, the review never once questions what the island holds inside — only what's printed on the box.

Which side of this island you land on

The split that opens this piece gets less abstract once you look at who settles in on this island and who walks out slamming the door. It's for the player who likes deciding alone whether their character is the chosen one of a prophecy or just a political plaything, without the game settling that answer for them. It's for the player who swings and misses with a freshly picked-up sword and reads that as consistency rather than a broken system. It's not for anyone who wants to feel a character growing all the way to the end: by the accounts of those who finished both expansions, that peak of power arrives well before the finale, right when the story is asking for the most tension. And it's not for anyone who depends on playing in their own language: Russian and Polish speakers each logged, in separate reviews, requests for a translation that the accounts give no sign was ever answered. The island decides plenty on its own; the one thing it never decides is whether you deserve to be on it.