The old world in new colors. Review of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered

When players are already frankly tired of waiting for at least some news about the sixth part of the Elder Scrolls, Bethesda makes a completely unexpected move and without any extra noise, or to be more precise, without any advertising campaign at all, releases a remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, a part that many consider the best in the series. Unfortunately, the original game has aged not very well, so let's see if The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered has managed to bring it up to modern standards.

But first, let's get to the main thing - why is this a remaster and not a remake? Everything is very simple here, despite the fact that the developers used Unreal Engine 5 to modernize the visual component, our old friend Gamebryo Engine is still responsible for the gameplay itself, with all the ensuing consequences.

All your favorite bugs and exploits of game mechanics are in place, the level of monsters still scales in parallel with the level of the player character, which turns the midgame into hell or forces the weak-willed to go through the game with almost no leveling up, and the supposedly improved Radiant AI still generates absolutely magnificent in its comical situations, although not with such intensity.

Actually, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered does not contain radical changes to the game mechanics, we got literally the same game, but with modern graphics and some quality of life improvements that you may not notice if you haven't played the original in a long time. My favorite joke on the subject is that the developers even made the NPC faces and facial expressions as disgusting as possible to accurately convey the spirit of the original Oblivion.

This means that The Elder Scrolls veterans can skip reading and immediately install the game and start another playthrough. And for those who got to know the series thanks to Skyrim, I advise you to fasten your seatbelts, there's another journey waiting for you.

Chronologically, Oblivion's plot begins six years after the adventures of the Nerevarine in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, the setting is the province of Cyrodiil, where a mysterious cult is methodically destroying the imperial family, and the barrier between the mortal world and the plane of Oblivion is gradually crumbling, causing the penetration of the Daedra into Nirn and other minor inconveniences. Then the player is waiting for the search for the lost heir, exposure, participation in dark rituals, the pursuit of artifacts, travel through portals to hostile demonic dimensions and the end of the world, which is relentlessly approaching.

But, according to Steam statistics, it's been over forty hours since my Dunmer escaped from the Imperial City prison to fulfill the last will of the murdered Emperor Uriel Septim VII and deliver the Amulet of Kings to his bastard. The problem is that the amulet is still in my inventory, and Sean Bean... that is, Martin Septim, still doesn't know that he is the heir to the throne. And the to blame for this, you wouldn't believe it, is the topography.

Oblivion has previously encouraged deviations from the main plot thanks to a huge number of side quests and skillfully exploited the player's thirst for exploration of the environment with the help of long-range rendering and correctly placed landmarks, and with the technical capabilities of Unreal Engine 5, doing the latter has become even easier.

Wherever you go, there's always a city, a castle, ancient ruins, a poorly hidden dungeon entrance, or just a bandit camp looming on the horizon. And while some key points are easily visible due to their scale or strategic lighting with ordinary fires or magical lights, others are revealed seemingly "by chance."

Well, wouldn't you be interested in that ancient tower that towers over the surroundings? And it's right next to it, but what's there? It's quite likely that you won't find any meaningful reward: a couple of bandits, a few coins, boxes of junk that you don't even want to take to the merchant, because it weighs more than it's worth, but as soon as you turn around to go back down the road, your eye catches the elven ruins a kilometer to the right of you, some huts a few kilometers to the left... and what's that glowing right along the course? It's so good that I decided to climb up here, because all this wasn't visible from below. A completely flat surface in Oblivion is a rarity, and the game regularly forces the player to climb somewhere up to unobtrusively throw up a landmark or two and push them to additional unplanned adventures.

However, all the fun of exploration is still somewhat spoiled by the aforementioned scaling system. Not only does the variability of enemies depend on your level, but not only random loot, but even the characteristics of unique artifacts also scale. So at a certain point you find yourself in a situation where you have to choose - ordinary enemies, from which nothing useful drops, or enemies that outweigh you in strength, but with an adequate reward.

In fact, the world becomes more dangerous along with the player and the feeling that the hero is progressing is somewhat lost. It's good that the original leveling system was replaced with something close to Skyrim, because before it was a real problem that forced you to plan your character's development almost with a calculator.

For those who don't know, The Elder Scrolls has a somewhat specific role-playing system, in fact, the more you use something, the better you get at it. Run and swim a lot - you'll level up your athletics and be able to run and swim faster. Jump all the time? Your jump distance will increase, and your character will take less damage when falling from a height. Kill enemies with a sword? Congratulations, you're doing better now. Wear heavy armor? You guessed it, I think. And so on with literally everything.

Now it will be a little more complicated. To increase the level, you previously had to increase ten points in any of the seven main skills of your character's class. Leveling up secondary skills did not affect the level increase itself, but it did affect the "quality" of this increase. Each skill was tied to a specific attribute - Strength, Intelligence, Stamina, and so on. Increasing the level allowed you to improve three attributes by values from +1 to +5, depending on how many total points in the skills (both main and secondary) associated with this attribute you managed to get "in parallel" with the leveling up of the main skills.

For example, if you gained 1 to 4 points in Strength-related skills during your current level, you could only increase it by +1. And if you gained 12 points or more in the corresponding skills, you received a maximum bonus of +5.

This forced the player to carefully plan their actions and constantly keep in mind what exactly they were leveling up and using, and adjust their style of play accordingly. Especially if all the main skills of the character were combat skills, that is, they were actively used and grew quickly, which could lead to frequent leveling up without the opportunity to get the maximum bonus to attributes. As a result, you could find yourself in a trap: the enemies became noticeably stronger, but the character did not. In fact, without proper leveling, it turned out that the more the character grew, the weaker he became in relation to the enemies.

What does all this have to do with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered? Thank Akatosh, none. Now the received increases in primary and secondary skills, albeit with different coefficients, are transformed somewhere behind the scenes into the usual experience points, and when you get a new level, you can at your own discretion distribute 12 points between three attributes of your choice. The system works great, and it is now almost impossible to "screw up" the character.

Other changes are noticeable, but not so much - sprinting has appeared, the list of animations both in and out of combat has been updated, and the ability to bounce to the sides instead of rolling has also appeared, blocking has been improved, although, let's be honest, the combat itself remains a series of enemy attacks with slightly better than before, but still poor feedback, despite the presence of combos and different types of strikes that impose additional effects on the enemy.

A special mention should be made of the updated interface of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, the changes in which, at first glance, are minimal, but they only seem so until you launch the original game. There are a dozen or so other small innovations that you don't really pay much attention to - character lines have been updated, moving up slopes now occurs with inertia, the character skids downhill, the third-person camera has changed, and so on. But the main change is, of course, the graphics.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered looks like a thoroughly modern RPG, and I can't be one of those players who misses the lost, fabulously bright color scheme, as I've come to like the pull towards realism. With ray tracing enabled, the lighting is simply fantastic, and the lack of a full-fledged photo mode is a huge mistake on Bethesda's part, the local landscapes could generate an indecent amount of desktop wallpaper, although in dynamics it is, of course, even better.

I often gave up on fast travel not only for research reasons, but also simply for the sake of not even driving, but walking through the local forests. Given the updated spatial sound and plant physics, this is a very meditative activity, at least until some monster jumps out from behind some bush with wild screams. Well, it happens.

Visually, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is very similar to the recent Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, but it can't boast the same optimization. While my PC with an RTX 4080 has no problem delivering over 60 frames per second at ultra settings with maximum ray tracing at 2K, my laptop with a Ryzen 9 5900HS and GeForce RTX 3070 is already struggling to cope with high settings and suggests that it's better to turn tracing off altogether.

Steam Deck, unfortunately, is very bad for the game, even at minimum settings the number of frames often drops below 30, and the game itself does not look very good, so I would not focus on this platform at least until the patches are released. As for the stability of work and other bugs (which, as everyone knows, are generally features in Oblivion), now the Steam tracker shows 63 plays per hour, during which The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered crashed only once, twice I encountered a sudden drop in FPS, which was cured by a reboot, and never once did I catch anything that would block further progress in the game, which for Oblivion can be considered record figures.

Overall, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, in my opinion, turned out to be not just a great, but even an exemplary remaster, you get the same beloved game, with all its pluses and most of its minuses, with a full set of additions (but without official mod support yet), which is more convenient to play and looks much better. Now if only Morrowind were redone in the same way, Bethesda could take its time with the sixth part.