We are a few days away from The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion’s remake shadow dropping for Xbox, PC, and PlayStation, if rumours are to be believed. According to the many reports that have spoken about the remake, its existence, and what it will bring to the table, it’s going to be at least a quasi-ambitious upgrade over the 2006 original, which of course means there’s every chance that we get to see a number of improvements made to the gameplay, the under-the-hood tech, the visuals, and more that we simply wouldn’t see in a simple remaster. In fact, the hope very much should be that this new take on Oblivion takes a look at the RPGs that Bethesda Game Studios went on to produce in the years since the original’s release, and takes cues from them in terms of both what to do and, in some cases, what not to do.
Of course, there are some sort of changes that we probably shouldn’t expect to see. Though it does look by all accounts like the Oblivion remake will make some notable changes and improvements, it’s fair to say that at the end of the day, it’s going to be a pretty faithful recreation of the original game- as close to a 1:1 remake as it could be given the changes that it is purportedly making. A Resident Evil 2 style reimagining this is probably not going to be. We can, as such, probably do away with any notions of, say, the open world map being injected with greater environmental variety, or any of the story or dialogue being rewritten in any meaningful way, or any other significant changes along those lines.
On the other hand, smaller scale changes to the design might not be entirely unreasonable expectations. Rumour has it that developer Virtuos has remade Oblivion in Unreal Engine 5, and if that is indeed the case, one would expect (or hope, if nothing else) that the switch in engine would allow the remake to avoid at least some of the many noticeable limitations and restrictions that were placed on the original by the tech that it was built on at the time. For instance, in other recent features, we have touched on things such as the original map not being seamless, and the dungeons being procedurally generated, both of which are issues that a remake could probably address, especially given the fact that it is purportedly being built on a new and different engine. Beyond that, it should also be exciting to see how the many cities, towns, and hubs of civilization scattered throughout Cyrodiil could be enhanced. Exploring the map’s cities was one of the original game’s highlights in 2006 as is, but with all the new tech now available to the devs, might we be in for an even more detailed and immersive rendition of those locations?
After all, getting to explore large, varied, dense cities has always been one of the best parts of any Bethesda RPG, and that’s only gotten truer with time. Admittedly, Starfield let quite a few people down in this department, but both Skyrim and Fallout 4 definitely did not, so it wouldn’t be surprising in the slightest to see a modern Oblivion remake taking cues from the games that followed it and trying to improve its city locations in various ways. NPC AI, for instance, could see tweaks to improve their interactions with each other, their interactions with the player, their pathfinding, and more, all of which were issues that the supremely janky original game was undeniably dragged down by. Sure, even in their original form, the cities of Cyrodiil’s map are still a joy to explore and get lost in even today, but I’d love to see the remake deliver even better versions.
Storytelling is another area where the Oblivion remake can make some smart changes to make for an improved experience. Again, I don’t think we’re going to get rewritten or re-recorded dialogue, or at least not at a scale that will change things in any significant way. I can, however, see the remake making other tweaks that have an effect nonetheless, especially when taken together. For example, the incredibly goofy camera zoom that precedes every conversation with every NPC and character could be removed from the equation. That zoom has admittedly become strongly associated with Oblivion in its own way, but it doesn’t do the game’s already rough storytelling any favours, to put it mildly, so getting rid of it with the remake for a somewhat snappier experience would certainly be a welcome change. Future BGS titles haven’t exactly gone on to be recognized as storytelling masterpieces by any means, but they have polished some Far more welcome changes of the studio’s earlier rough edges – many of which were quite prominent in The Elder Scrolls 4 – so hopefully the alleged remake will follow suit.
Even more welcome will be the changes that reports have claimed the remake is making on the gameplay front. We can, of course, talk about the changes the remake could make to improve the original game’s super-janky combat, and we have done that in past features. Other, relatively smaller aspects of the experience could also do with upgrades, however. There’s the UI and the menus, all of which were notoriously messy and not the most user friendly in the original game. That is obviously something that Bethesda games has continued to struggle with over the years – even Starfied has that problem – but the studio has still learned from its mistakes over the years, with the likes of Skyrim and Fallout 4 polishing things up noticeably. Reports have suggested that the Oblivion remake is indeed going to make necessary changes to the UI as well, so here’s hoping that things such as the inventory management, sorting, and what have you are less cumbersome than they were back in the day.
Changes are also needed in the progression department, as many will tell you. The original Oblivion used a very straightforward form of level scaling, with enemies scaling up to your level in pretty aggressive fashion throughout the experience. That, of course, was a problem, because it was easy to feel like you weren’t making any material progress. Of course, future Bethesda RPGs have also continued to use level scaling, but they have, at the very least, couched it in some form or another, making it feel like much less of a problem. Skyrim, for instance, scales up enemy levels to yours when you enter a new area, but then locks them to that range going forward. Fallout 4, meanwhile, populates its world with legendary enemies and formidable challenges to ensure that the difficulty curve feels like, well, a curve, not a static difficulty line. Oblivion’s upcoming remake needs to follow those BGS titles’ lead by finetuning its own progression mechanics.
The original Elder Scrolls 4 obviously remains a great game even today, close to two decades on from its release, but it has also inarguably aged poorly in some ways- particularly because the games that Bethesda Game Studios put out in the years afterward improved upon it in some key ways. Virtuos’ purported remake has the chance to look at many of those improvements and apply them to an absolute classic, in the process delivering an improved and definitive version of the game- in the best case scenario, at least. Again, a lot of this will depend on how much VIrtuos and Bethesda have been willing to change and fiddle with things with the Oblivion remake, but the hope is that they will have made changes at least in the areas where they can reasonably be made.
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