Oblivion and I have a troubled history. I clocked it thoroughly at launch and always wished to return to it over the decades, but an emotional wound prevented me. You see, in mid-2007, some colossal a-hole broke into my home, stole an Xbox 360, and the 120+-hour life of Druss the Nordic Barbarian Legend was…lost.
My burly companion and I never got to meet the Knights of the Nine together. Neither one of us set foot on The Shivering Isles, either. I’ll be honest with you, friend—I still grieve Druss to this very day. If you’re reading this and you were a burglar in Austinmer, NSW, around then, kindly go bugger yourself off a cliff with a parking cone.
I still grieve Druss to this very day.
Anyway, when Bethesda decided to shadow drop Oblivion Remastered, I in turn decided to drop the shadow of my long bereavement. With hopeful nostalgia beating in my heart, I created a much better-looking Druss Jr. (or “DroJu,” as close friends call him), and we both set about reclaiming our destiny in Cyrodiil.
A Very (Very) Brief History of the Series
Back in 2006, Bethesda unleashed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the world, and it was a revelation of true HD open-world gaming. This was the game that taught us the value of lockpicking persistence, the existential dread of a broken NPC pathing routine (and multiple save discipline), and the sheer joy of discovering a daedric shrine in some forgotten cave.
Fast-forward to today: Bethesda has tasked Virtuous with porting this troubled yet important masterpiece into Unreal Engine 5. The goal? Keep the original “bones,” but give the flesh a modern sheen. Casuals called it a remaster; tech nerds called it “Unreal-ification.” I call it an upgrade that’s a damn sight better than my low-set Skyrim: Anniversary Edition expectations.
Back Up to Speed With Cyrodiil
If you’re somehow new to the series, here’s the TL;DR: You’re a prisoner who’s somehow thrown into the path of Emperor Uriel Septim and lethal Daedra (think interdimensional gremlins), and it’s your job to stop the latter’s Oblivion gates from tearing the land of Tamriel asunder. Rollicking stuff that re-dug its claws into me quicker than a khajiit unsuccessfully pickpocketed.
In Remastered land, the bones of that narrative are intact—yes, the awkward escort quest to Kvatch remains a rite of passage—but the game spruces up the trip. Conversation lipsync feels a little less like a marionette show. Armour gleams under Lumen-powered global lighting. And yes, the loading screens flit by instead of giving you a window to go make another coffee.
loading screens flit by instead of giving you a window to go make another coffee.
Sprinting Through the Upgrades List
On the movement front, you’ve got a proper sprint button (The Nine be praised!). and a more responsive camera that doesn’t feel like it’s dragging a dead mammoth behind it. Levelling has been tweaked some, though a bunch of the old min-maxing cheese strats still work. The new locomotion system smooths out animation jank a tad; no more leg-kicking-armour-whoops when you turn.
Does it feel “new-gen”? For the most part, yeah, kinda. But definitely go in thinking that most of Virtuos’ work has been on eye-candy (and a much appreciated improvement of the UI). At the time of writing, I’m experiencing dungeons at 60 FPS with the odd shudder (presumably as new catacomb pieces load). However, those bona fide open-world areas seem to stoop to 40–50 FPS to my eye. And the word is it’s rendering at 900p on my base PS5, which will only be acceptable as a stopgap until a patch arrives to provide Xbox Series X parity.
Moon Sugary Audio / Visual Improvements
That being said, the dev team must’ve downed ten Red Bulls before tackling Oblivion’s visuals. Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen lighting bathes cities in realistic shadows and reflections (sweeping water in the Imperial City practically begged me to cannonball in). Character models get a facelift: gone are the 2006 polygons that looked like paperclips, replaced with faces that have been upgraded to “still not attractive,” up from “pug fugly.”
They definitely pass for more real Tamrielic denizens (though some still look perpetually surprised). Meanwhile, textures pop on armour, rocks, and leaf litter, but every once in a while you’ll spot a mossy log that still reads like a 480p meme.
faces that have been upgraded to “still not attractive,” up from “pug fugly.”
On the audio end, the orchestral score hits those nostalgic heartstrings, but you’ll notice the ambient soundscapes (forest chirps, smithy clangs) feel richer and sell the illusion all the more. NPCs actually mouth words that match the voiceovers more often. Still, that infamous guard voice crack (“Stop right tHere!”) remains gloriously intact.
Does Oblivion Remastered fix every creaky bone of the original? Not by a long shot. Will you still encounter physics gremlins and stutter-glitches? Yup. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t warn you newcomers about the least beloved thing about this game: Level Scaling.
The system is nothing new to us modern gamers, on paper; Oblivion was designed to keep gameplay challenging by adjusting enemy levels to match the player’s. That said, it’s poorly implemented into immersion-breaking scenarios here, such as encountering bandits equipped with high-tier gear, undermining the sense of progression and realism.
The persistence of that system in this remaster, virtually unchanged, means you’re going to have to make sensible decisions and keep a slew of secondary save games on hand. Those common sense precautions used and aside, if you’re longing for a return to Cyrodiil’s rolling hills, heroic shenanigans, and the thrill of that first daedric artifact find, this remaster is still a mostly satisfying trip down memory lane.
Oblivion Remastered is like a trusty steed; sometimes a bit rickety, but once you get back in that golden saddle (which, incidentally, started the microtransaction dystopia we now find ourselves in), you’ll be carried through a timelessly enchanting world with some of the best quest scripts in the series.
I say become the Champion of Cyrodiil at your earliest convenience. You may need to squint a little and be ready to forgive here and there, particularly if you weren’t raised on the original. But this is still one elderly scroll worth unfurling.
