After nearly two years of waiting and a leak that blew the surprise, Bethesda has finally made it official: Oblivion Remastered is real, and will be formally unveiled on April 22. There’s an awful lot of excitement for this one, but I think the hoopla is leading us to overlook one important but awkward question.
Andy Chalk, News Lead
Andy is PC Gamer’s foremost Daggerfall defender. His RPG tastes were forged in the ’80s and ’90s with dungeon crawlers like Daggorath and Eye of the Beholder 2, but there’s still room in his heart for newer RPGs, as he discovered when Elden Ring took over his life.
Are we hyped up because Oblivion is a really great RPG, or are we really just that desperate for something—anything—in the way of a new Elder Scrolls game?
Personally, I have no excitement for the Oblivion remaster. Zero. I liked Oblivion quite a lot when it was new: I bought the collector’s edition on launch day and poured an awful lot of hours into it, and yeah, it was good. It was also painfully safe. More than any other game in The Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion is generic open world fantasy pap for the masses, the game that carried Bethesda into the big time and whose driving philosophy was thus one of caution: Don’t alienate, don’t offend, don’t be too goddamn weird.
Compared to the bizarre magnificence of its predecessor, Morrowind, and the monstrous sprawl of the game before that one, Daggerfall, Oblivion comes off like Peter Jackson’s The Elder Scrolls: A big-budget, mass-market rendition of something that had previously been so daring and ambitious.
That style-over-substance approach is aptly summed up by the game’s two stars, Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean, who bookended Oblivion by showing up to die at the beginning of the game, and showing up to die at the end—two of the biggest “is that all?” moments in videogame history.
I think we’ll all be feeling a lot of that after the Oblivion remaster is finally in our hot little hands, even if PC Gamer scored it a sterling 93% back in 2006. And look, the issue here isn’t that I’m mad about horse armor (I’m not) or that I’m mad Bethesda didn’t remaster Morrowind (I am), and I’m sure not here to say you’re wrong to be excited about an Oblivion update (well, maybe a little). It just feels like misplaced enthusiasm to me. Oblivion is a perfectly fine game but not at all one that warrants years of anticipation.
The reality is that fans are so desperate for a “new” Elder Scrolls game they’ll stand in line and hoot and holler for a fresh coat of paint on what is the third- or maybe fourth-best game in the series. Once it’s out, I fully expect that sensation of “perfectly fine” will set in quickly, followed by the vague melancholy that comes from the realization that past glories are best left to lie in faded, shadowy memory. And then we’ll all move on to other things: Back to Skyrim, and wondering what’s going on with The Elder Scrolls 6. (And yes, I am 100% going to say “I told you so” when it happens.)
As usual, though, others on the PC Gamer team are a little more optimistic than I am.
Lincoln Carpenter
Lincoln: Oblivion was—I think—my first open world RPG, and at the time I wandered through it with wide-eyed wonder while getting my clock cleaned by dremora churls and failing to understand how magic worked. Now that my sensibilities have matured in a more Morrowind-ward direction, most of my remaining investment in Oblivion is tied to how goofy the guards sound. If they’ve changed out the voice samples to anything less absurd, I’ll consider it a personal betrayal.
Thinking about it now, though, the effect of a human slab of meat charging up to me and barking that I’ve violated the law might be more absurd if he isn’t speaking with a face that looks like a baked ham. So I guess that could be fun.
Lauren Morton
Lauren: I didn’t even play Oblivion for the first time until about 2016, so I don’t really need updated textures and whatever “next-gen upgrade” equivalent to the Skyrim Anniversary Edition that Bethesda slaps onto Oblivion to get me to play another few hundred hours without ever actually solving the Oblivion crisis. But if they HD-ify that opening cutscene flycam shot of Imperial City I will probably get goosebumps. I can’t help it.
They’d better have left the terrible conversation minigame intact though. I genuinely enjoy that thing.
Morgan Park
Morgan: Sure, Oblivion is the safe remaster, but it’s also the perfect remaster for 2025. Take it from this 28-year-old: Nostalgia around the early Xbox 360 era is extremely potent at the moment, and for many of us, our first Oblivion playthrough is a core memory. Like Lincoln, it was my first open world RPG, and how I discovered some games will let you screw yourself over by saving the game right after punching an innkeeper in the face.
If the price is right—as in closer to $30 than $70—I’m on board just for the novelty.
Ted Litchfield
Ted: I’m still curious about how far-reaching this remaster will be: It’s been rumored since 2021, with some claiming a full engine-level overhaul. Other rumblings are that, despite the huge lead time, it’s a largely cosmetic uplift more in line with the Metroid Prime Remaster.
I’m nervous because Oblivion not only had pretty bad combat, but the most rigid, intrusive enemy and gear leveling I’ve seen in an RPG. It screams out for the sort of mechanics-level pass we know is coming to the ambitious Skyblivion mod, but this official remaster remains an unknown quantity until tomorrow.
I’m not too worried, even though I love this game: If it’s bad, we’ve still got another Oblivion remaster on the way. If it’s good, well then I guess we have two.
I’m definitely ready to relitigate some “best in the series” debates. Sure, Morrowind is amazing and has the best writing and worldbuilding Bethesda’s done, but Oblivion’s where the studio actually got good at quest design. Compare “The Ultimate Heist” in Oblivion to “Kill Hard-Heart,” the corresponding final Thieves Guild quest in Morrowind—it’s night and day!
Chris Livingston
Chris: I’ve yet to be swayed by a remaster: I guess I’m happy playing the original low-fi versions of most games. If there’s one thing Oblivion could use it’s a bit more hustle and bustle, though. Towns feel empty, the wilderness feels barren, and even in Imperial City itself you’ll get a crowd of at most, what, five people? I’m not saying overstuffing a world full of randomized characters is the way to go—it didn’t make Starfield feel more alive—but just a bit more foot traffic in towns and cities and a few more animals in the woods would go a long way.
If it’s just a graphical facelift, though, I’m not sure why I’d play it. I mostly like Oblivion just how it is, and like Tyler said, I hope they didn’t make the NPCs hot.
