Nearly two decades after Bethesda unleashed Oblivion onto the world and tasked millions of players around the globe with shutting the gates, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered gives the massive RPG a fresh coat of paint and some under-the-hood changes. Most importantly, this impressive remake retains the original game’s charming jankiness. Absolutely no other game could be remade in 2025 and get away with deliberately failing to fix problems, and yet if the team at Virtous had tried, the Oblivion fans would have revolted.
First, we need to tackle the name. Whatever might be printed on the box, this is far more than a mere remaster. Sure, the visual upgrade is not to be ignored – this is one hell of an illusion spell that has been cast over the game – but there are a bunch of gameplay tweaks that have been made too. The end result is something that’s halfway between a remaster and a remake, but definitely sneaking closer to the latter. There’s been enough work here to easily justify the £50 asking price.
Available On: PC, Xbox, PlayStation
Reviewed On: PS5
Developed By: Virtous, Bethesda
Published By: BethesdaReview key provided by #keymailer
Let’s talk about the most obvious change first, shall we? Even in 2006, Oblivion was not the best looking game out there, although it’s bright colours and insane level of bloom effect gave it a very distinctive look. Now, though, Virtous has rebuilt the game’s graphics in Unreal Engine 5 and the results are impressive. This is what I remember Oblivion looking like in my nostalgia-tinted memories; lush countryside, gorgeous vistas, and sunlight streaming over the hills as I battle mud crabs. The new lighting is a particular highlight, especially when you encounter Oblivion gates and the red light creeps through the environment. Character models also look terrific, as does their armour and weapons which I could spend far too long admiring, although their faces still have a dopey, potato quality to them.
All that beauty comes at a price, though, because performance isn’t as good as it should be. Back in 2006, Oblivion was in rough shape on consoles. The remaster isn’t as bad, but I really wasn’t expecting a remaster of a 20-year-old game to be so inconsistent with its framerate. The game targets 60FPS but frequently misses that on PS5, and its quite variable depending on where you are in the game world. It never got unplayable in my experience, but I still expected more. Hopefully, some updates will help.
Now, while I mentioned that the game’s graphics are being handled by Unreal Engine 5, that doesn’t mean the Creation Engine is absent – quite the opposite, it’s the beating heart. This black magic engine layering that Bethesda has performed means that underneath all the beautifully detailed armour and enchanting lighting lies classic Oblivion in its dopey, janky glory. That means you still have the baffling conversations between AI, the many weird glitches, odd behaviours, wonky combat AI, and all the other jank that has somehow over the years become not only part of the game’s charm, but central to its identity. Changes have been made in a few places, sure, but this is still Oblivion for better or for worse. Often, both.
The list of changes is actually quite big so I’m not going to go over them all. Let’s just pick a few and go from there. You can sprint now, a massive change that makes getting around Cyrodil easier than ever, and it even contributes to your athletics skill. The third-person camera has been repositioned and has a crosshair now, making it much easier to play Oblivion as a third-person action game. Sneaking has been updated so it’s now clearer when you are hidden from sight. There’s a bunch of new voice actors and lines of dialogue, adding some much-needed variety.
The skill system and levelling up have been given a substantial overhaul so that it now resembles a mixture of Oblivion and Skyrim. Back in 2006, you were encouraged to level up slowly by avoiding actually using your main skills, and if you approached the system in the wrong way the game could become an absolutely pain in the arse, especially if you didn’t sink points into endurance early enough.
Now, every skill you improve counts toward levelling up, although minor skills contribute less than major ones. And once you level up, you are given 12 Virtue points to sink into any three attributes of your choice. This makes the system much simpler to understand and cuts down the risk of becoming a useless blob in the late game.
The system ain’t perfect, though. As you level up, the game scales with you, a divisive feature of the Elder Scrolls. Virtous decided to tackle this as well, making some changes to the difficulty system and how levelling is handled. I can say that it’s certainly an improvement over the original, but it’s still not great, which is a bit frustrating when modders have managed to balance everything quite well. The big issue here is that there’s a hell of a difference between the “adept” and “expert”. The former is far too easy, while the latter kicks up the challenge way too much.
Combat still boils down to hammering the attack button like it owes you money or until your stamina tanks – whichever comes first. But Virtous have thrown in a few nice additions, namely enemies now react to being hit, and there’s even a bit of blood splatter. This makes it so you don’t feel like you’re just swinging at an imaginary foe. Stamina no longers effects damage, either, which is nice, and your health regenerates outside of combat. You also can’t get knocked down now, unless you block with zero stamina.
Are these changes enough to make the combat good? No, not really. The truth is the combat is still quite simplistic and button-mashy, but it’s also a decent step up from 2006 Oblivion, so that’s cool. Truthfully, without completely rebuilding the combat, there’s very little Virtous could have done to make it much better. Of course, being Oblivion you can always avoid melee combat altogether by building yourself as a sneaky archer or a powerful magic-wielding mage.
Naturally, there are a lot of areas where Oblivion shows its nearly 2 decades of age. Quests are mechanically fairly bland, for instance, and there’s a lot of exploring of dull caves/dungeons/forts. In 2006, Bethesda had not adopted the art of ensuring dungeons looped back on themselves so that you didn’t have to run back through, and the remaster does nothing to remedy that. I would have loved a teleport option or something when you reach the end of a dungeon, but alas, that’s probably asking a bit much.
But then, what do you expect from a nearly 20-year-old game? Oblivion is not a deep RPG by today’s standards. It doesn’t matter, though, because what Oblivion might lack in quest design, it makes up for in other ways and variety. One minute you’re a hitman murdering people in the name of the Dark Brotherhood, the next you’re helping a paranoid dude figure out if the entire city really is out to get him. You’ll advance through the ranks of the Mage’s Guild, become a vampire by accident, get sucked into a magic painting and encounter a town of invisible people. Oblivion contains its fair share of darker quest lines and world saving nonsense, but it also has a lot of wacky stories, too, that make it a joy to explore, something which Skyrim lost a little of.
And that’s not mentioning the fact that Oblivion Remastered contains all the extra content that was launched, from the player houses to the excellent Shivering Isles expansion. And yes, the infamous horse-armour is here, too. That’s a lot of bang for your $50.
Somewhere along the way, you might even remember that there’s an actual main quest and narrative to chase. Something about Oblivion gates opening up across the land, a dead emperor and a long-lost son? That can probably wait, though, right?
There is a final question we need to answer; what about new players? What about the people who never experienced Oblivion and are approaching this as a brand-new game in 2025? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a question I can answer. I’m too wrapped up in Oblivion. It’s a game I adore, one which soaked up hundreds of hours back in the day. It’s difficult for me to shove that aside and imagine what it would be like to play Oblivion in 2025 for the first time and how well it would hold up. I’ll give it a go, though: if you can remember that the game is nearly two decades old and laugh at the absurdity of its many glitches (holding a casual conversation with someone burning to death in lava, for example) then I believe Oblivion is absolutely worth experiencing for new players.
In Conclusion…
As a remaster/remake, Oblivion Remastered is about the best possible package I could have imagined, outside actually rebuilding the entire game. Of course, that would have probably ruined the whole thing because what even is Oblivion without its charmingly deranged jank. No, Bethesda and Virtous made the right choices by keeping the core of Oblivion intact while encasing it in a new suit of shiny armour. The gameplay tweaks here and there help smooth over some of its wrinkles, and the graphical overhaul is gorgeous. Now go and give Fallout 3 the same treatment, you cowards. As for me, I have some Oblivion gates to close.
*strolls off whistling the main menu music*
