Skyrim changed my life. Before Skyrim, I viewed video games as not much more than a way to spend time with my middle school friends, when Call of Duty and Battlefield were what my concept of gaming was. After exploring the vast frozen tundras of Skyrim, delving into the countless draugr caves, and slaying dozens of dragons, I was transformed. I saw how massive games could be, how immersive they could be, and how much time could be lost playing. Skyrim opened my mind and heart to what would become my biggest passion. After Skyrim, I was desperate for another experience like it. I wanted another game that could continue that awe and wonder I had experienced playing Skyrim for the first time. What better way to recapture the magic of my first Elder Scrolls experience than to play the predecessor to Skyrim?
Perhaps it was how dated the graphics were, how stiff the controls and combat felt, how awful the third-person controls were, or how awkward NPC dialogue could be. Whatever the case, Oblivion could not hold my attention. I’ve since given it another try multiple times over the years, amassing over a hundred hours (perhaps even more) in my many attempts but never making it very far. I desperately want to like Oblivion, to see what others who played the game at launch see, to experience the awe they experienced because it reminds me so much of how I viewed Skyrim. It just wasn’t working. Then, the rumors of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered began circulating, leaks poured out, release dates and shadow drops were proposed, and finally, it became real. This was it. This would be my last opportunity to see if Oblivion could finally draw me in and give me that transcendent experience I had been looking for all those years ago.
Oblivion Remastered is everything I wanted it to be. It is an example all future remasters should strive toward. It preserves the core of what makes Oblivion special in the eyes of its long-time fans while upgrading and modernizing it just enough so that it feels fresh and in-line with modern sensibilities. The original Oblivion is likely best-known for its goofy visuals, with NPCs often compared to potatoes. The world of the original lacks detail but makes up for it with bright colors and a hazy bloom which gives it a dream-like quality that imbues you with the feeling that you’re exploring the world of a fantasy book. Oblivion Remastered retains the atmosphere of the original and upgrades the visuals for modern audiences in a way not before seen in a remaster.
Rebuilding Cyrodiil
Oblivion running in Unreal Engine 5 is stunning. The lead developer on this remaster, Virtuos, did an excellent job at rebuilding all of Cyrodiil and its inhabitants to fit a detailed, ultra-high definition style while still retaining the fantastical dream-like style of the original. Virtous rebuilt the cracked cobblestones of ruins, rough walls of caves, and the shimmering towering spires of the Imperial City from the ground up within UE5. Characters have more detail in their skin than ever thought possible back in 2006, but their features remain exaggerated in a style so iconic to the original experience. The world is vibrant and full of color. A brilliant new lighting system begs you to pause and gawk when the sun breaks for dawn or sets for night. Every step in Oblivion Remastered could be framed and put onto a wall for proud display.
Tagging along with these massive visual upgrades come rough performance issues. Upon original release, Oblivion also struggled to run on contemporary systems. Bethesda titles are no stranger to bugs, glitches, and performance issues and the remaster is no different. Inside buildings and dungeons all runs smooth as butter. As soon as you step into a busy city or out into the open world, performance tanks. Stutters, hitching, frame drops, texture pop-in, and lighting errors are common. After some tweaking and utilizing various AI upscaling features Oblivion Remastered reached a stable, playable, and mostly smooth state on my current PC rig. For those with older or weaker systems, performance will likely be much worse and will need to evaluate their capabilities and tolerance for performance before picking up this demanding remaster.
The original Oblivion is stiff and unwieldy. That was part of its charm in 2006 that doesn’t hold up to modern scrutiny. The level-up system was the most egregious requiring counter-intuitive decision making during character creation that, if done incorrectly, would result in failed characters. Combat was serviceable at best with weapons and magic that lacked any impact. Third-person view was out of the question as they controlled like a puppet on strings. Adjustments to these systems has been the greatest boon given by the remaster. An overhaul to the leveling system enables all players to build their characters how they wish without having to select random skills that are out of place for their character. Enemies now react when hit with a weapon adding real impact to combat. Third-person has been completely overhauled bringing it more in-line with Skyrim’s third-person control scheme. These changes have fixed much of what made Oblivion cumbersome for modern players to enjoy, allowing for more freedom in character building and more engaging moment-to-moment gameplay.
Closing Shut the Jaws of Oblivion
Walking around the densely packed cities around Cyrodil, talking to the colorful NPCS, completing quests with interesting storylines, getting side tracked by random events, and hoarding all the loot you can hold all feel just as good today as it did back in 2006. Quests are the greatest strength of Oblivion. Bethesda did a fantastic job in 2006 of crafting some of the most intriguing and compelling quests out there. From a murder mansion mystery, to a magical painting holding a secret world, to walking among someone’s dreams to save them from being trapped in a nightmare, the quests in Oblivion capture the imagination and beg to be completed. These quests still hold up today and keep Oblivion: Remastered on-par with the great RPGs of today despite its ancient bones. It is a reminder of the magic Bethesda games have and how engaging their worlds can be when crafted with love and care by a team who dedicate themselves to the art form. The brilliance of this remaster is in how much of what made the original Oblivion great is left untouched and preserved. However, with that also comes the snags which hold Oblivion back.
Dungeons and Oblivion Gates are just as repetitive and tiresome as in the original. There are only so many times one can delve into the same looking Ayleid ruins or hike up the long corridors of an Oblivion tower before they all start blending together and becoming a disengaging nightmare. There comes a point in every Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion: Remastered included, in which all things become trivial. Your character becomes so powerful that nothing becomes a challenge anymore. Your armor has reached its peak, your enchantments have made you a god, your weapons are instant-death machines, nothing can stand in your path. This is part of the fun of Bethesda games with some players living for the thrill of breaking their character. Unlike in the original, due to how the leveling system has been overhauled, you reach this peak a lot faster meaning you’ll be faced with the decision to break your character or add self-imposed rules to your character a lot sooner than normal. This could usually be solved by increasing the difficulty. Unfortunately, the remaster has adjusted the difficulty of Oblivion to its detriment. In the original title, there were up to nine different difficulty levels depending on where you placed the slider and would increase or decrease the damage you dealt to enemies and the damage they dealt to you. This has been replaced with five simplistic Skyrim difficulty options: Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master. Novice is brain-numbingly easy while Expert and Master are absurdly difficult. My advice would be to stick with Adept for a few levels. It begins easy and progressively balances out as stronger enemies appear. Whatever the case, the loss of the difficulty slider is a detriment to the experience for hardcore fans.
What’s Old Made New Again
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered builds off of a nearly 20-year-old system to create an experience that challenges modern RPGs. All of what made the original special is retained in the remaster. The land of Cyrodiil has never looked better to explore, quests still hold up today as some of the best in RPGs, looting anything and everything is still just as addicting as it was in 2006. With the remaster comes improvements to combat, the broken leveling system, overhauled visuals, and more engaging combat. Alongside the charm of the original and the benefits of the remaster come warts both old and new. Oblivion Gates and many dungeons are repetitive (albeit mostly optional) slogs, your character progresses much too fast with the new leveling system, difficulty options have been streamlined to a point in which only one is realistically playable, and performance issues will plague many players even on powerful systems. There is always potential that some of these issues can be ironed out over the course of a few updates and, to my estimation, do not deter from the overall experience to a significant degree. Oblivion Remastered is an example all other remasters should strive to emulate and an experience that, at its core, is a 20-year-old experience that still holds up to this day.
The Review
Superb
