I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming everyone to lower their expectations for the likely dumpster fire that is The Elder Scrolls VI.
I know its old hat nonsense of a complaint but whatever Bethesda used to be it stopped being that 20 years ago and we’re all just stuck thinking they’ll put out some new masterpiece when in reality all the talent they had back in the day has likely left for other jobs and they are now just a shitty company among countless other shitty companies putting profit over anything else and stifling anyone who might actually have good ideas on how to make good games (how unsurprising).
It is literally not a remake, and how is it half assed? I have a low to mid range PC and the game runs smooth as hell, and it’s gorgeous.
This is such a silly take. After Starfield, I was still excited, but had very little “faith” in the next elder scrolls. After this remaster, I’m even more excited, and I think there is a good chance ES6 will be an absolutely beautiful game that I will play for years after its release.
They weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel with this remaster, they merely demonstrated its possible to have classic BGS mechanics WITH modern day graphics and animations. Starfield made it seem like they had to choose between one or the other for future games, but this shows us we can have both!
You’re not going into depth on how it is half assed. The only thing I can complain about is some performance drops when travelling outside, but I imagine they’ll patch that out at some point. If you’re referring to the classic oblivion stuff like goofy npcs and most of them having the same voice actor tbh I’d be pissed if they changed that
half assed remake
which is exactly why they called it a remaster. it was never their intention to remake the game.
Personally I think most of the stuff that went wrong with Starfield were design choices related to space travel and many many planets, which won’t be an issue with TES of Fallout going forward. So if they stay in their lane I don’t see any reason why they can’t keep churning out decent titles in those series, even if they maybe don’t reach the same heights.
When I saw the post’s title I was hoping for a good, perhaps even balanced, critique of the remake’s choices, or the underlying engine’s shortcomings, or perhaps even the original designs.
All I got was “dumpster fire”.
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There‘s no Oblivion remake. Go to the Steam Page and carefully read word for word what it is you‘re talking about.
I play Fantasy Critic with some friends. We allow remakes in our league but not remasters. This one counts as a remake for purposes of this site, with a flag on it to note that it was contentious. This game definitely blurs some lines on some definitions.
Out of interest, how does that site classify Age of Empires Definitive Edition (and aoe2:DE and aoe3:DE) and Age of Mythology: Retold?
Listen, as long as ESVI ends up being highly modable and has a healthy community behind it to make the mods, it’ll be good enough for me.
Exactly. If the modding community for Starfield was bigger, it could be an incredible game. I still have hope it will grow, but ES6 will definitely be different
I think Bethesda has definitely fallen off in recent years, but I am a bit confused by the point this post is getting at. We learned at launch that Oblivion is a remaster, not a remake, and it’s just the original game running under the hood with a new coat of paint and some minor tweaks. And it’s a pretty high-effort remaster at that.
I just think it’s a bad example to use of how the company isn’t getting better, when the point of the remaster was to change as little of the core game as possible. It’s as good now as it was back then but it’s still a 19-year-old game.
Starfield is what should be killing everyone’s expectations of Elder Scrolls 6.
The remaster was also made externally, so whatever the point being made here is, it’s weird twice over.
Man the negativity. I’m so sick of gamers negativity. It’s not even a new game, it’s a remaster. you knew what the product was going to be. It’s oblivion. We all knew it was oblivion. If you don’t like oblivion, why did you buy it?!
I swear to God if they changed it too much I’d be commenting here on a post about how they had no respect for the original. Then we wonder why “they never listen to gamers”. Because we bitch and moan about everything.
100% agree. Pleasing Gamers™ is a Kafka trap.
It’s not even much of a remaster. They just slapped a coat of paint on it.
The Gamebryo/Creation Engine is still there running the game, it just uses Unreal 5 for the graphical elements. And they updated some of the levelling to work more like Skyrim, because the Oblivion system sucked in comparison.
It’s still the same 20 year old Oblivion under the hood.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but calling it a remaster is a bit disingenuous.
That’s literally what remaster are, a new coat of paint
And they updated some of the levelling to work more like Skyrim, because the Oblivion system sucked in comparison
Updated how exactly? Oblivion and Skyrim both have pretty serious flaws. I believe there are popular mods to fix the Oblivion system in a way that still feels like Oblivion, though it’s been a long time since I’ve read in to any of it.
They literally had a hour long stream explaining what they did, and then you could have watched any of the thousands of twitch streams showing it. There was zero reason that you should have bought this if you thought this. I knew exactly what I was buying, seems like pretty much everyone did.
You are describing a remake. A remaster is a fresh coat of paint. Todd Howard said verbatim “This is not a remake” and then talked about his reasons why. You’re going on like they lied to you when they literally said everything you just complained about, and then you still bought it.
What do you think “remaster” actually mean?
More than a coat of paint. They didn’t actually port the game to Unreal 5, they just used it to make the graphics look better. The modding community could have done this years ago if that’s all they wanted to do. Skyblivion is more of a remaster than this official one.
With all of the resources of the original development and sources, I expect more than the modding community is capable of.
Emm, no. If you build something from the ground up it’s called remake.(Demon Souls, the Resident Evil series) Remastered is taking the old game and put on a fresh paint of coat and give it some modern QOL so it’s much more accessible today.
Skyblivion is closer to remake than remaster.
Also i feels like you misunderstand why people like this game.
If you’re fine paying $50-60 for what amounts to a community graphical overhaul mod that’s fine. I expect more from an actual developer with access to the source code.
A remaster should be releasing Oblivion with an updated engine and graphics, and bringing in some gameplay enhancements from newer games. Technically this meets those requirements, but only by the bare minimum and all of those can be achieved with community mods for free.
A remake would be completely abandoning the decrepit Gamebryo/Creation Engine that’s clearly dragging all of their games down now, and has been for over a decade, and actually giving us something that doesn’t feel like it came out 20+ years ago.
I love the Elder Scrolls, Oblivion is one of my favorite games of all time, and the only one I ever bothered to get every achievement for back on the 360. But I won’t accept a half assed remaster for nearly full price just because it’s what Bethesda wants to distract everyone from the fact that Elder Scrolls 6 isn’t coming out anytime soon and they couldn’t just release Skyrim for the 12th time.
Don’t accept paying for mediocre products just because you’re desperate for content.
Thats a remake, not a remaster. Idiot.
You’re describing a remake, which isn’t what this remaster is. A remaster is literally what this is, just like Diablo 2 Resurrected a few years ago
Ok.
The only real problem here is the price. It should’ve been more like $30.
Just musing on the fact that Bethesda doesn’t care about making games and instead just cashes in on nostalgia. I also think their finance bros realized their upcoming big IP drop is going to be an objective POS and wanted to prime people’s expectations by re-releasing a 20 year old game with some lipstick on it.
It would be neat if they hired some people who actually had innovative ideas about gameplay, visuals and stories to maybe make a neat new game within an existing or new IP, but they haven’t done that in literal decades so I think its pretty reasonable to not be incredibly excited about anything they are putting out or planning to put out in the future.
As a long time Bethesda game fan I agree with you on almost everything you’ve said about Bethesda… But the remaster is a terrible example of your points.
The remaster does exactly what it says on the tin and they’ve been very upfront about how it was made and why it was made in the launch video.
It’s hard to criticise them for cashing in on nostalgia when they’ve shown time and time again with Skyrim re-releases that do a fraction of what the Oblivion remaster does still sell like hot cakes.
Nostalgia is at the core of their business model. That’s why they march Skyrim’s corpse out every two years like clockwork; that’s why they picked Fallout for a new franchise after ES; that’s, frankly, likely why Starfield sucks so much.
Imagine if capital G Gamers actually enjoyed playing games instead of nonstop bitching on online forums.
the internet would fall silent.
Just to clarify one thing while i agree with you on some stuff this is not a remake it’s a remaster. the OG game engine is running underneath and UE5 for just the updated models and terrain. The fact they are charging so much for it is what kills me. What this should have been is a $30 game of the year edition and maybe an discount or a free upgrade of you owned the original like they did with doom and quake remasters that nightdive did.
Yeah I’ll definitely buy it, but I’m a patient gamer. It needs to be really cheap on a steam sale. I’ve played the original. I can wait.
It might be nostalgia speaking, but I think the real issue is that a 20 year old game can actually be this good and popular. How can it be that it is more enjoyable than anything else I’ve bought over the last year (at least)? Doesn’t that say that game companies in general have dropped the ball on game design, focusing on graphics and money over content and gameplay? As I said, it might just be me stuck in my wonderfully comforting blanket of nostalgia…
I mean I am all for criticising creatively bankrupt mush like Ubisoft et al pushes out and Call of Duty 420: Black Ops 69 or FIFA or whatever but we can’t pretend there are literally no good games being released nowadays either. Just now we had a month with both Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being released within weeks of each other. BG3 and Alan Wake 2 releasing in the same year was just two years ago.
There are plenty of not just good but great recent games.
I hear this rhetoric a lot, which shows me that a ton of people have a much harder time than me finding the good stuff, even though there’s so much of it out there.
Clair Obscur came out the same time and it’s probably the best RPG I’ve ever played, and I’ve played every noteworthy one in the last 40 years at least. GOTY at the LEAST.
You’re just buying the wrong games.
Go play Split Fiction, Balatro, and Hades 2.
I think it’s almost definitely nostalgia speaking.
Granted, by the point Oblivion was made I was the nostalgia guy talking about how Bethesda games kept getting smaller and less ambitious. Most people saying that then did so because they were coming from Morrowind. Not me, I am a proper dinosaur and I was just pissed that after Morrowind dropped everything interesting about Daggerfall to make a console game they just kept moving further in that direction.
Was also not a fan of Fallout getting turned into Oblivion 40K instead of a proper turn-based CRPG.
Which goes to show this conversation isn’t new and gaming is old enoung now that it has gone in cycles.
I mean, seriously, Daggerfall was continent-sized and was using procedural generation to make dungeons and build dialogue and quests and essentially reimagining how games could be made in ways that wouldn’t resurface until what? No Man’s Sky? Oblivion is bad Lord of the Rings. If anything it’s the awkward middle child now, because man, the Imperial City in Oblivion feels hilariously tiny and basically deserted against modern RPGs. There are five people running loops and having canned conversations. Coming from Baldur’s Gate 3 or Cyberpunk to this is… a bit of a shock.
I can’t belive people play football. That game is old as hell!
It hasn’t been updated since forever, can’t believe even pay to watch others play.
“Why is an old game good?” feels like an odd question. It would be silly to ask that of any other medium, wouldn’t it? The most beloved classics being beloved isn’t an indictment of modern stuff, especially when cherry-picking the greatest hits and ignoring how many flops existed back then too.
Survivorship bias, essentially.
I have no idea what’s your complaint are though, and it’s not a remake, it’s a remaster that is significantly better than a lot of other remaster have to offer. They could’ve gave us widescreen support, some lighting change, some new horse armour and call it a day, but they somehow able to snap an UE5 rendering on top of gamebryo, some modern QOL, new character models, modern lipsync, while retaining the charm that spawned an entire genre of meme.
There’s a reason Witcher 1 isn’t getting a remastered but a remake. Gamer these day is so jaded and just can’t seems to satisfied with anything, that a witcher 1 remastered will get hated forever.
Maximum dooming for a game that almost everyone likes. lmao
You think this is a half assed remake? To me this feels like a significant upgrade (and not just to graphics) while maintaining the core experience and I’m kinda shocked at how good it is.
