The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster (UE5) could be revealed next month (consoles, PC).

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Rumors suggest that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake will be officially announced during the Xbox Developer Direct event in January 2025. This has fans eagerly anticipating what could be a fantastic revival of this beloved classic.

Gotta say that I am excited to revisit Cyrodiil with updated graphics and gameplay. The remake has been created by Virtuos and runs on Unreal Engine 5. I wonder if all mods will work.

Also, I wonder if the expansions will be included and if the original voices will remain or we will get new voice actors/actresses.

Could this be considered a remake? šŸ¤” I mean, it uses a totally different engine, perhaps current mods won't work...

insider-gaming.com

Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remake Could Be Revealed Next Month, It's Claimed

A new rumor hints that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remake may not only be revealed next month but could launch sometime in 2025.
insider-gaming.com insider-gaming.com

These screenshots are from the original game, back in 2005. They don't look bad at all, this was 20 years ago!....

the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-20041022093606055.jpg


the-elder-scrolls-iv-oblivion-20041022095721109.jpg
 
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The rumor sounds more like a remaster and not a remake, where it's using UE5 engine for graphics with the original game scripting underneath. It sounds like it would be closer to the latest Quake 1 and Quake 2 with ever so slight adjustments but no substantial improvements in gameplay or story adjustments. That's squarely in the remaster territory and not remake.
 
BRiT said:
The rumor sounds more like a remaster and not a remake, where it's using UE5 engine for graphics with the original game scripting underneath. It sounds like it would be closer to the latest Quake 1 and Quake 2 with ever so slight adjustments but no substantial improvements in gameplay or story adjustments. That's squarely in the remaster territory and not remake.
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Mods compatibility, engine capabilities, yes, it's totally different.

It's one of the games that would benefit the most from a remaster for things like loading times, but at the same time that it'd be a PITA to revisit the world of Oblivion, it's not necessary to "remake" it if it's a true copy of the world as it is.

They could take advantage of the opportunity to expand the map, improve the cities even more and make them bigger, add more points of interest around the world, remake the Oblivion stages that became a nuisance...

arandomguy said:
Assuming this is true it would be interesting to see how they rework the underlying simulations to handle this as it was tied to the rendering for timing.
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that's something I am curious about. Also, can UE5 handle open worlds like the engine of Oblivion? I remember @nAo , which is a developer, being totally impressed at the time with the engine's possibilities, wondering how they managed to make it work.

Seeing a place in the very long distance and being able to go there, or seeing a mountain from way afar, and being able to climb it was huge at the time.
 
BRiT said:
The rumor sounds more like a remaster and not a remake, where it's using UE5 engine for graphics with the original game scripting underneath. It sounds like it would be closer to the latest Quake 1 and Quake 2 with ever so slight adjustments but no substantial improvements in gameplay or story adjustments. That's squarely in the remaster territory and not remake.
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ngl. all the jank in the original with updated graphics could be pretty fun if you don't take the game too seriously.
 
It's been so long it's hard to find images that aren't modded. Still, back in the day, coming out of the tunnels and overlooking the city and tower were breathtaking. Only other thing that was equally impressive for the intro sequence of Bioshock.
 
Dictator said:
I find it funny that people are posting press bullshots of Oblivion :D (old IGN, gamespot ones)
The real game is approximate to those shots, but in a few ways worse for sure!
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There's a quality to the Oblivion bullshots that I find hard to describe, particularly the last two which don't have excessive smearing. While I'm generally for PBR, there's something to be said for the somewhat neglected art direction of unrealistic yet cohesive materials.
 
RobertR1 said:
Still, back in the day, coming out of the tunnels and overlooking the city and tower were breathtaking.
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My memory of that moment is that the distance LOD was so bad and so close to the camera that I immediately exited the game and went looking for config settings to jack up the zone/cell loading number. IIRC people were comparing it to Mario64 due to how the hillside on the other side of the river bank was just solid green without any flora sprites. It definitely wasn't the FarCry1-like experience where you exit the cave and are greeted with a scenic vista.
 
They did a great job of hiding how horrible it could look in all their preview videos. With the terrain LOD changing and snapping into place as you walked around and the pea soup barren landscape. There were day after launch texture reworks with noise added, then Bethesda released a patch with texture noise. I used to run a mod that overhauled the grass models to reduce its complexity/overdraw and a mod to dynamically adjust its draw distance based on frame rate.

Oblivion has major problems with its game design too. It would be interesting what a "remaster" would do. Though I'm sure even a minimum effort job would be profitable for them.
 
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I would love it if it did not do the autolevelling of the enemies. Being higher level essentially means nothing in the game as everyything else levels with you!
 
Dictator said:
I find it funny that people are posting press bullshots of Oblivion :D (old IGN, gamespot ones)
The real game is approximate to those shots, but in a few ways worse for sure!
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:) tbh I bought into them. Even so, you can see many flaws on those screenshots but they looked incredible and still look ok-ish these days imho.

When you first saw those screengrabs, you couldn't unsee them. Bethesda did a good job marketing the game. Also, that was one of the best games you could play on the recently released -less than 6 months- X360, probably the best, possibilities and playtime wise.

The game also passed the casual test. I mean, a brother of mine who is a casual, watched me fighting a creature in the mountains. He felt amazed at the physics how the baddie were rolling down hill slowly after I fought it. He was also amazed at the graphics 'cos he noticed I could go everywhere, which was not typical at all.

My favourite bullshot is the IGN one. Now in high definition I find that the pine tree to the left looks super super blurry, and how any trace of vegetation completely disappears 5 meters away from the camera.

But when it came out, I didn't find anything lackluster about the game -except for the NPCs art style-, and I am surprised at how @swaaye
or @hughJ found the game so lacking, graphically wise, back then.

Maybe because they played it on a big screen? I played the game on a 19" 1440 by something super basic LCD monitor and I was amazed at the graphics for the most part.

Those bullshots represented the reality of the game to me. Never thought they were so doctored.
 
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