The worst-kept secret of the year, Bethesda’s current-gen remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, finally shadow-dropped yesterday and the Xbox-360-era open-world RPG has wasted no time in reminding fans why it was such a hit nearly two decades ago. Complete with refreshed graphics, updated gameplay, and cherished memes intact, Oblivion Remastered is already topping Steam charts and taking players on an Unreal Engine 5-made trip down memory lane.
The PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC re-release by Virtuos Games landed on storefronts and Game Pass this week complete with a $10 upgrade for some DLC, including new 4K horse armor. Oblivion Remastered is the current best-selling game on Steam and sitting at over 120,000 concurrent players, a minor miracle for a single-player RPG, especially one that originally came out in 2006.
The buzz has carried over to more than 10,000 Steam reviews in the first 24 hours, the vast majority of which are positive despite some optimization issues for lower-end PCs. “Golden standard for what a remaster should be,” wrote one user. “More or less rebuilt from the ground up as if its a new game based off the standards we expect today, not just slapping some new textures on old assets and shipping it.” The reaction across social media so far has been a combination of being impressed with how good the game looks and relief at how familiar and ridiculous parts of it still are:
“[It’s] a staggering amount of remastering,” original lead gameplay designer Bruce Nesmith told VideoGamer. “It almost needs its own word, quite frankly. I’m not sure remaster actually does it justice.” While much of Oblivion Remastered seems to be a UE5 glow-up with the original game more or less intact under the hood, many critical systems have received an overhaul, including the original RPG’s infamously tedious leveling system in which skills improved through repetition. The result at the time was players putting rubber bands around their controllers to have their characters grind abilities while they went AFK.
Newer players will also be delighted to discover Oblivion’s surprisingly star-studded cast. It features Patrick Stewart, Lynda Carter, Sean Bean, Terence Stamp, and Alfred Molina, among others. The soundtrack is also top notch. Due to Skyrim’s gargantuan success in comparison and many diehard fans considering Morrowind the “best” Elder Scrolls game, Oblivion has arguably been somewhat overshadowed within the broader pantheon of Bethesda RPGs. It’s great that to see it getting a new lease on life in a form that strikes a decent balance between the legacy of the original and modern playability.
.
