With The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, so much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same. Is it perhaps too faithful a remaster? As some NPCs would say: “What’s this about?” Keep reading to find out. For immediate clarity, and following a look at the PC version, this review mainly evaluates the quality of the remaster, not the original game, which would score higher.
First up, the changes. For one, the leveling system has been overhauled. In the original Oblivion, attributes such as Endurance were raised by using certain skills, such as Armorer and Heavy Armor. In turn, Endurance determined how much the health stat increased per level-up. This means that if the player didn’t raise Endurance-based skills much, health could be seriously stunted. Using one skill a lot could leave certain attributes to suffer. Now the player can choose attributes to increase by way of ‘Virtues’ (attribute points). This strengthens the role-playing factor and doesn’t punish players. It’s a welcome change.
Other positive changes include improved archery and stamina. You slow down when scaling mountains, and spamming the jump button doesn’t work very well anymore. The menus are sleeker. There are even one or two added quests. For instance, Ilav Dralgoner used to be a useless NPC, but always had meaning ascribed to him. Now, he actually gives you a quest befitting his doom-and-gloom theme, and rewards with holy gear.
Who could forget the most readily apparent change, namely the new Unreal Engine character models? Most of these look very good and seem like fitting updates of the original models. Some standouts include the excellent Uriel Septim and Martin Septim models, which greatly resemble Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean this time around.
However, some models look a bit…off. There have been plenty of times where there was excitement at seeing a character’s new look, only to find that he now sports luscious Fabio hair and looks simultaneously fifteen and fifty years old. Edgar Vautrine comes to mind, who now looks like a grey-haired twenty-five-year-old. The most egregious example might be Vicente Valtieri – he used to look like a middle-aged rogue but now he’s a dorky-looking weakling with thick skin under his bottom lip, which a YouTube commenter described as ‘tumours’. Reportedly, his hair occasionally disappears too, which doesn’t help at all.
There’s also a strange choice to replace the body type descriptors male and female with ‘type 1’ and ‘type 2’. Females and males no longer have their own stat bonuses and stat reductions. Are we expected to ignore the biological reality that human beings, and even this game’s characters, are sexually dimorphic? Is being different a bad thing? Why insert political ideology in the first place?
Now for the things that have stayed the same. Stagnation is the name of the game. Old glitches have returned, such as the game conking out for no apparent reason every few hours. Making matters worse, there’s a new bug in the form of a memory leak, which worsens the more playtime you rack up. Rebooting the game helps, albeit temporarily. Thankfully, this issue hasn’t reared its hideous Valtieri head when playing on Performance mode – but then, who wants to play Unreal Engine games sans the maximum graphical fidelity? Putting the performance issues aside, the Shivering Isles expansion exhibits its own faults. Here’s one: the Replete Shambles enemy regularly T-poses when struck.
It’s not all doom and gloom, though – let’s not be an Irritating Ilav. The developers clearly took care to retain good aspects, even down to the respawning repair hammers in the crates and barrels of the Imperial City Market District. While some exploits like spam-jump are gone, you can still use untargeted, usually ‘on self’ spells to level up relatively quickly.
Improvements and stagnation aren’t all there is to discuss – the presentation deserves mention. The graphics are downright impressive, even on consoles. While 2006 Oblivion‘s nighttime cities occasionally felt a little dull, the remaster is more dynamic, owing to the lighting effects added to the windows of buildings and chapels. In fact, lighting effects in general have been vastly improved – many areas now look properly dark and feature nice lighting gradients. Exiting the cave in the quest to retrieve your personal mages’ staff and finding a creepily dark grove with inky figures standing around is almost jaw-dropping.
Some players have taken issue with Oblivion Remastered’s contrast, saying it is too low or that everything looks hazy or foggy, but that hasn’t been noticed on a personal level. Without trying to sound condescending, here’s some advice: set the game’s in-built brightness slider to 0 or minus 1, and make sure to set the TV’s gamma to BT1886 or 2.4 when playing in a very dark room. For moderately bright rooms, 2.2 might be required. Let it be said, however, that the new graphics can take some getting used to. Fault can be found with the way fire effects light up caves, which can look slightly pink. Maybe that could’ve been amended by getting rid of the fog or mist effect inside caves. It is suspected that this is an Unreal Engine 5 feature, though.
The textures have all been redone but still feel surprisingly faithful to the classic Oblivion. The armour redesigns, while sometimes minimal, are gorgeous. The developers clearly knew what they were doing. Given that fact, it raises the question why some monsters have been heavily redesigned. Trolls used to have three big eyes, but now the third eye is barely visible, and the troll looks more like an ape. Flame atronachs now float instead of walk to bring their design in line with Skyrim. Why would animals and monsters all look exactly the same regardless of the environment and time period they evolved in, though? Whereas Scamps used to look suitably goofy or mostly harmless as their name suggests, their facial scariness factor has been upped, too. Most of the other enemies are intact, though.
Presentation includes the soundtrack: it remains a masterpiece. It can be soothing, bombastic, adventurous, and mystical – and with depth to it. Jeremy Soule captured the feeling of “there’s more to life than meets the eye”. This man is a legend. The sound effects Virtuos added for the extra weapon combos are acceptable, if a bit anaemic.
One well-done change is the bigger voice cast. Many Bretons and others are voiced by new talent, and most Dark Elves are voiced by Keith Szarabajka, also known as Joshua Graham from Fallout: New Vegas. While it feels as though most Dark Elves are one and the same, he probably received little direction, so he did well. What is irksome is that some of Wes Johnson’s more unique characters like Herdir and Hirrus Clutumnus were redone by a different actor. Therefore the acting is another “mostly positive mixed bag”.
The great thing about Oblivion is that despite the alterations and bugs, its foundation is Ayleid-rock-solid. Its sidequest variety is unmatched, and the guild quests are extensive, with excellent climaxes. They’re masterfully done. From the Dark Brotherhood with different ways of dispatching your enemies and getting properly rewarded for it, to the awesome moodiness and diversity of the Mages Guild quests, to the playful but somehow sad Thieves’ Guild, to the dark turns of the Fighters Guild, they’re better than any guild quests Skyrim offered. The main quest remains suitably epic and its sub-quests multifarious, from retrieving a Daedric artifact to closing Oblivion gates. While it could have contained more intrigue and drags a bit near the end, it gets the job done.
In the end, much has stayed the same, now with an improved and glossy coating. Old bugs have reappeared, like the game erroneously believing the player is being followed by an enemy, making it impossible to fast travel, wait, and sleep. Sometimes, a water bubble effect lingers after leaving the water. NPCs still have ridiculous conversations, responding with a non-sequitur “No doubt” or a snort. The memes will keep coming, and players will love that.
Isn’t that the thing, though? Oblivion deserves better than to be remembered as a janky meme. By leaving all of the original’s faults intact (even adding bugs), Virtuos and Bethesda can claim to have listened to the fans and gain goodwill. In reality, they could’ve done better. When redoing the game in UE5, why not go the extra mile? Add things that the developers wanted to add, but which 2006 PC memory couldn’t handle. At least remove the original bugs and don’t add new ones. Release regular updates. Make the new character models less weird. Add one or two interesting dialogue options to flesh out the lore. Of course, the developers deserve credit for redoing equipment and character models, adding weapon combos, adding voice actors, and overhauling the levelling system. This is no small feat. Still, the unrealised potential remains.
