Todd Howard’s Skyrim production line has broken down – and instead of a new edition of the fifth Scrolls game, we have a re-release of the fourth: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Nearly nineteen years have passed since the release of the original, and the game has become both technically and morally outdated – so remastering Oblivion is easily the right decision.
The important thing to realise here is this: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion caused quite a bit of controversy in its time. It was loved, it was hated, it was constantly compared to the third Gothic (which wasn’t easy either). But it became popular, and that’s a fact. Despite a whole bunch of different problems, despite the numerous cries of “ocazualili, how can you!” and so on. TES 4: Oblivion, for all its problems, did at least one thing well: it created the atmosphere of a wonderful fantasy adventure. The kind where you run around for half an hour in the evening and come to your senses in the morning, not knowing where the time has gone.
Every gamer has a game like that, one that is not just memorable, but indelible. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the game we grew up with, fought with, made peace with, and fell in love with a second time. And now, in 2025, Bethesda presents us with a remaster like an old family album: dusted off, with RTX added, but with the same portrait of the Emperor looking at you and whispering: “You are the chosen one”. Is this nostalgia for hype’s sake or something more? We’ll find out when we return to Cyrodiil!
What has changed?
And I’m getting ahead of myself: The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is an exemplary remaster. With a few stars, but still. Here you can really see that the work on the game has been done. It’s hard work, serious and painstaking. Then you look at the “remaster” of the same Days Gone and ask yourself – where is the remaster? You have to look for the differences with a magnifying glass, and they want money for it. In the case of Oblivion, you don’t need a magnifying glass, because you can see the difference right away.
And it’s not just the graphics! The people at Virtuos have also reworked the mechanics, not to the level of a remake, but seriously. This is where you’ll need to use your memory and remember what it was like in the original. Otherwise, you won’t be able to understand where the authors have changed things.
I don’t want to get too boring, so I’ll just list the most significant changes. Added new voice actors, so that NPCs all over Cyrodiil no longer have two and a half (monotonous and mumbling) voices. Slightly improved the combat system – added the ability to do jerks, for example. Running speed has been increased (the hero runs faster than a horse!). Alchemy ingredients are now guaranteed to be collected. A few QoL things, like marking the container as empty, have been added. The full list can be found on Reddit – fans are still actively adding to it to find out what else the developers have changed.
But perhaps the biggest change has been the pumping. Oblivion’s auto-leveling has always been its bane and curse – it was always brought up when people wanted to point the finger at a game with bad auto-leveling mechanics. Bums in Daedric armour, a bouncing difficulty curve, and pumping that sometimes made the hero weaker rather than stronger. Because while you’re sleeping, your enemy is pumping. And sleeping to increase your level is, unfortunately, necessary. And the more you sleep, the stronger your enemies become. This, unfortunately, was the downside of Bethesda’s desire to allow players to explore the entire world at once, rather than following the story.
Because the remaster is based on a hybrid of two engines – Gamebryo and Unreal Engine 5 – all of the game logic from the original has been transferred to the remaster in its original form. This applies not only to loading between locations but also to interacting with physical objects. You can still kill an enemy with an activated trap or push a stack of logs onto the goblins below. Everything about the physics (such as traps, chains, and suspended objects) works just like in the original.
Artificial intelligence, basic mechanics, crowd behaviour – everything is carried over to the remaster with no improvements. Enemies are “stupid” during the stealth walkthrough, so “stupid”—scripted scenes that were broken in secondary quests in the original are still broken. NPCs stuck in textures and logic errors are commonplace, which probably won’t turn off the core audience, but newcomers are most likely to complain on forums and write negative reviews on Steam. During our time with the game, we encountered a few quest bugs, all of which were resolved with a simple restart.
The original The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
The year was 2006. We had the legendary Windows XP on our desktops, Linkin Park was playing from every Winamp, and hardcore gamers had joined the Dark Brotherhood guild. Then Oblivion was born, an epic, a symphony of Lord of the Rings-level pathos.
It was the first RPG where you literally spent an hour customising your character’s face just to make him look like a knight without fear or reproach (until he ran away from level 30+ crabs, heh). But that didn’t stop us.
Oblivion is about atmosphere. It’s about the time you were on your way to the next quest, but you ended up in the Ayleid Ruins and got eaten by those crabs. It’s about that moment when you steal a fork and the entire Imperial Guard follows you around to arrest you. And no, that’s not a bug – it’s a feature, and no – it’s an RPG.
The game world was astonishingly diverse: the cities of Sirodil, with their white stone columns and monumental statues; dense forests, where danger lurked behind every bush; and the Gates of Oblivion themselves – blazing, formidable, but unforgettable, all with graphics that were jaw-dropping in 2006 (and on PCs too). The HDR blur was more powerful than even Half-Life 2. And, of course, green was the dominant colour.
Oblivion was a game where the mechanics were perfectly… weird. You had a skill scale for everything from Eloquence (which made conversations look like Wheel of Fortune) to Athleticism, which you swung by simply running from corner to corner.
And then there’s auto-leveling. Yes, the infamous system where for every level you gain, all your enemies level up too, and a ragged goblin starts wearing armour. Balance? No, you didn’t.
Yes, Oblivion is outdated. But it still has something that many modern games lack – a warmth of heart. Its awkwardness, its pathos, and its sincere, naive scale all make it a true reminder of the days when RPGs ruled the industry.
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Features
So here we are – the year 2025, and we have Oblivion Remastered. What is it? It’s like coming home to a weird but sincere fantasy world where demons play jazz and you’re the Chosen One from the prison dungeons.
And now in 4K, with RTX, DLSS 4.0, and even almost (I’m exaggerating a bit) living faces of NPCs that no longer look like puppets from a creepy carnival. But is that enough to make you fall in love with Cyrodiil again?
It’s not a remake. It’s not a reboot. It’s a careful but deep tuning of an iconic product. The familiar quests, the humour, the slightly awkward NPC animations (and that’s part of the charm) all remain, but it’s all been seasoned with modern technology: from ray tracing to DLSS 4 and stable 60fps even in the thick of the battle at the Gate to Oblivion.
Oblivion Remastered should not be seen as an attempt to rewrite the past, but rather as a restoration of an imperial mural: the dirt has been scrubbed off, the colours (controversial!) have been refreshed, but the meaning and feelings remain.
For TES fans, it’s a homecoming. And for newcomers, it’s a chance to dive into the game that set RPG standards for years to come.
The game starts in the classic way, using the Unreal Engine 5 engine, with shader compilation. It’s a bit long, but unlike other game projects, this is a unique procedure. The menus have been given a “fiery” redesign. The music is old, but it has been remastered in lossless quality.
From the first few minutes, the game hints: “You are home”. The stone walls of the Imperial Prison, the face of the Emperor you trust even though you see him for the first time, and the voice of Patrick Stewart all return.
The ability to sprint, which uses stamina, has been added to the world exploration system. Now you can move quickly between locations and not abuse the quick movement from one point on the map to another. In particular, you will be surrounded by the newly recreated Sirodil, which you will want to admire as you explore the map. The remaster has also added a Skyrim-style overloading system, so if you like to carry junk around for sale anyway, you’ll have to go to the nearest vendor.
The interface has also undergone some serious changes. Some elements have been moved to more convenient locations, and the in-game map has finally become useful and informative. The HUD elements have been redesigned to look like something between The Elder Scrolls Online and Skyrim. Orientation in space and keeping track of stats has become much easier. We are glad that Virtuos has not been afraid to leave the basics behind and modernise what was really annoying in the original.
Among the less significant changes: movement animations have become more pleasant; inertia and the feeling of the main character’s weight have been introduced; it is much more pleasant to play from the third person; enemies have additional movements during fights, with smooth transitions between animations; armour and weapons break more quickly; interactive items now light up; there is a pleasant animation for picking up plants and mushrooms, and after picking them they disappear instead of staying in place as in the original. Small changes to the gameplay are enough, and together they add a noticeable freshness to two decades of dated gameplay.
Visuals and sound
Remastered does what you’ve been waiting for for almost 20 years: it brings the game’s visual style into line with your memories of it, rather than the reality of 2006. The landscapes of Sirodil look like the cover of a National Geographic magazine, but with shaggy wargs and mages everywhere. And when dawn breaks through the fog over Lake Rumare, you want to frame a screenshot.
The use of RTX has proven to be very subtle – light shading is not “frontal” as in some remasters, but gently emphasises structures: sunlight breaks through the stained glass windows in the Imperial City chapel, glare dances on the waves in Anville Harbour, and in the eyes of NPCs there are barely visible reflections (and a little more emotion than before). Shadows no longer “jump” but move smoothly and naturally – especially noticeable in dense forests, where sunlight draws vivid patterns on the ground.
At the same time, the sound effects have been updated: the forest is now alive, you can hear the crunch of twigs underfoot, the variety of flora and fauna, the rustle of the wind – it all adds to the immersion.
NPCs were given new voices for side dialogue, but the main voices remained the same. This had an effect – the game is perceived as a good old show, just slightly restored and staged in a new theatre.
Movement animations, while retaining the same vibe, have become clearer. This is particularly noticeable in fights – sword strikes no longer look like drunken embraces with cold steel on your head. Reactions to hits have also been improved. New animations have been added for casting magic.
The interface no longer feels like a survival quest – easy filtering, searching, and on-the-fly customisation for gamepad or mouse/keyboard. Such a small thing – but what a big difference in a 100+ hour game.
Gameplay
Oblivion has always been a quirky mix of classic RPG and experimental sandbox. It’s a game where you can save the world… or spend 12 hours stealing cheese in Bravil. And the remaster not only retains that, it emphasises it. You’re free to play whatever role you want.
The combat system of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered remains recognisable – block/strike/retreat – but has been improved slightly. A sense of the weight of the blow has been added, and the animations of critical attacks have become more spectacular. But not as dynamic and adrenaline-fueled as, say, Avowed. Finally, hits feel like hits, not phantom strokes. And enemy blood on our weapons!
The character development system in Oblivion Remastered retains the classic TES principle of earning what you actively use. However, new mechanics have been added to the system: for certain activities, you will receive “passive bonuses”. For example, if you run a lot, your stamina will increase. The game really “sees” your behaviour and reacts to it, making character development even more personalised.
The social system (all those conversations with the emotion wheel) remains, but has been revamped. Menus are now clearer, character emotions are synchronised with facial expressions, and persuasion has become a mini-puzzle. Most importantly, you can now earn reputation for regions as well as guilds.
The real magic of Oblivion has always been in the side-stories rather than the main quest, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered does a curtsy to the fans. The Assassin’s Guild quest is no longer just dark and morally ambiguous – it’s terrifyingly atmospheric, with stealth, a great soundtrack and variety. You can kill, poison, manipulate, or… change your mind. And that counts for something!
And most of all, freedom. That’s what Oblivion was loved for. The remaster not only retains it but enhances it. More interaction with objects, more physics, more ways the world reacts to you. You can kill an important character, and the game adapts. You can get through the game as a diplomat with very little blood. You can get through it with no blood at all – and just live. Oblivion Remastered is a life in another world, where the story is just one of the paths you take.
Visual style, remastering and the technical part
The game hasn’t just become prettier by using the Unreal Engine 5 graphics engine. It has retained its artistic style. That “European high fantasy renaissance” of soft colours, elegant castles and picturesque forests is still there. But now it all looks like illustrations from a revived book. And not without its drawbacks: the dirty orange filter has replaced the green one. But the modmakers are in business! Fix it.
Technologically, the remaster is a treat for the player’s eye. The geometry of the landscapes has been completely redesigned, with new peaks, vegetation and objects. Now the mountains are really high, the rivers are deep and rushing, and the dungeons are labyrinths in which you can lose an hour. Although, frankly, it’s boring.
Trees react to the wind, water has refraction and real currents. Even animals have physics – a deer can fall if it slips on a slope. Yes, this is already at the level of Red Dead Redemption 2.
I’ll say more: comparing my impressions of the Oblivion remaster and the relatively recent Starfield, I’ve come to the conclusion that my sympathies still lie with the game from nineteen years ago, not out of nostalgia. It’s just that The Fourth Scrolls is a much more wholesome game, not bloated with gigantomania and ambition. Procedural generation doesn’t create a thousand planets, but only works on a few relatively small dungeons.
All in all, I’m happy with the remaster. If you’ve never played the original, or if you’ve worn it out, it’s definitely worth giving the updated version a try. Just don’t expect anything extraordinary – and you’ll be fine.
All in all, in a way, the wow and the miracle didn’t happen. “Oblivion did not suddenly become the best game in the world, with polished gameplay, incredibly cool combat, a delightful script, and the best voice acting. But it couldn’t become that – because it’s not a remake. It’s a remaster, and the title of the game makes that clear.
Oblivion Remastered is undoubtedly a beautiful visual update of the classic. At the same time, the game hasn’t got rid of its old flaws. NPCs still act like they’re caught in a time trap, frozen in the time of the original. Bugs and technical issues are still a part of this world, which certainly detracts from the overall impression of the update.
If you want to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of old Cyrodiil with the ‘radiant’ Grapheon, the remaster will give you that. But if you’re looking for a real change or a completely new experience, you’re better off going for something more modern. The remaster is a gift for fans, but new players may find it a little archaic. And for warm nostalgia, you can safely add another point to your final score.
It doesn’t matter whether you take on the Shadow Brotherhood, try to become a Knight of the Nine, or head straight for the Shivering Isles for some real madness. The important thing is that either way you will be interested. How long – that’s another question, but you’ll definitely be hooked for twenty to thirty hours.
