Video games have always been a big part of my life, with some of the earliest memories I have playing the Lego Star Wars games on the Xbox 360 with my siblings. I was such a prolific gamer that my parents lied that my fathers phone had been stolen so that I would stop playing Disney Infinity 3.0. Of course, as a kid, I was limited in what games I could play, and was usually resigned to games no more complex than your average Cool Math Game. That was, until I became exposed to role-playing-games, or RPGs, from Bethesda Games Studios. Games like Fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim were almost audacious in their promise of an immersive, open-world experience where one could go anywhere, be anyone and do anything.
But now, just this April, Bethesda announced and released on the same day a complete remaster of their classic 2006 RPG, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, and it is legendary.
Today, classic Oblivion is famous for its janky AI, ugly npc’s, and buggy quests. At the time, however, it was revolutionary, and paved the way for other RPGs in the future to improve on these systems without all the jank, What’s more, that “Oblivion feel” is what part of what makes the game so special, and is just as prevalent in this remaster. On top of that, many of its mechanics, such as class selection and spell creation, that were removed in later installments such as Skyrim for the sake of simplicity, make a glorious comeback.
The most obvious change, of course, are the graphics. Walking through the lush forests and greco-roman inspired settlements of Cyrodiil is absolutely breathtaking in Unreal Engine 5. As someone who’s played around 48 hours of classic Oblivion, however, I just wish the remaster had maintained the sort of magical, fun color palette of bright greens and blues instead of opting for more realistic browns. With that said, the character models were definitely a much needed change, with the Argonians looking less like mango-flavored crocodiles and more like an actual fantasy race.
Of course, a shiny coat of paint can’t hide every dent in the drywall. The difficulty settings, specifically the gap between Adept and Expert, is ridiculous. In addition, the shakeup caused a lot of other bugs to pop up, some of them game breaking, such as a guard getting stuck on ordering you to clear an empty courtyard of enemies during the main story.
Besides those issues, this remaster is a must for fans of RPGs. For Skyrim players that were put off of classic Oblivion due to its aged graphics, it’ll feel like an entirely new, and much better, game.
