The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered (2025)

Oblivion was always my least favorite of the 3 modern-ish Elder Scrolls games. I think my previous feelings for it hold up for Remastered.

I should preface this with saying I like, but don't love Elder Scrolls games. The sandbox approach only holds my attention so long. I think Oblivion remastered will be amazing for folks who have hundreds of hours in Skyrim and want more, that isn't me lol.

Cyrodil, the region in Oblivion, is very vanilla fantasy. Where Morrowind was this amazing alien landscape, and Skyrim these sweeping mountainous areas, Cyrodil is just sort of placid forests, lakes, and a few ruins.

Oblivion's world feels less populated then either of the other games, and the enemy encounters get even more repetitive then either other.

That said, the facelift Remastered gave this game does give some fun to be found. I think the faction structure in Oblivion is a nice middle ground between Skyrim, where your character's progression doesn't effect factions, and Morrowind, that has a bit archaic progression.

The world in Oblivion remastered is absolutely stunning.

I have two complaints for Remastered. One, cloud saves dont transfer between PC and Steam Deck! Super annoying.

Two, the difficulty is completely off. Normal is mind numbing easy, with early enemies dying to single hits. But putting the difficulty up one results in an absolutely unfair power spike with enemies becoming absolute damage sponges and killing the player in a few hits. There isn't any middle ground.

Overall, if you love Elder Scrolls this game is completely worth trying. But if you think they are just fine, there isn't much here for you.

• Playtime: 142 hours (222 quests completed, just a few fetch quests left)

• Played: 2025

Intro

Oblivion Remastered (OR) is a rather faithful update/upgrade of the 2006 which fixes some flaws, keeps many others and introduces new ones. It was unexpectedly released on the 22nd of April, over five weeks ago. There still has been no sign of a patch despite severe performance and stability issues. Honestly, i would definitely wait for a patch if you're interested.

For the unfamiliar, OR is an open-world first/third-person game that followed Morrowind and preceded Skyrim. You explore a medium-sized world, do quests, fight enemies and pick flowers.

The Good

• So many worthwhile quests.
• Goofy NPC conversations still make me laugh.
• Many new voices for NPCs.
• Levelling is immensily improved.
• Vastly improved visuals really add to the enjoyment.
• The music is still wonderful (but Jeremy Soule is a cunt).
• Still wonderfully janky.
• Magic is still ridiculously overpowered.
• Bows aren't as weak because they paralyse much more often.
• Melee combat actually has weight to it now.
• You can now see if a plant is harvested (in most cases).
• Plants are always harvested.
• Sprinting added.
• Clairvoyance spell added (shows path to quest marker/door)
• Stealth icon shows stages instead of only visible/invisible.
• No random staggers.
• Empty container/corpse indicated (usually).
• Various other tweaks and bugfixes.

The Bad

• There are just too many cells/loading screens and nothing was done to improve this. It's actually worse because of longer loading times.
• About a dozen quest items get permanently stuck due to not being "unmarked" when the relevant quest is finished.
• Local map now doesn't show by default when indoors.
• Inventory subcategories were removed.
• They didn't improve the inventory by adding a keychain or categories for e.g. quest items.
• Recharging weapons is an absolute pain. Scroll to find soul gem, click twice, repeat.
• The inventory shows an image of the item but no information by default. Awful.
• Identical soul gems with identical souls don't always stack.
• Soul gems don't show the soul they contain in their name (or even if they're empty).
• There aren't remotely enough hotkeys so you constantly have to use the inventory.
• Items in containers are sometimes hidden because of a bug.
• The rate at which skills level is very unbalanced. Hand-to-hand is especially slow even if taken as class skill.
• Races are so unbalanced it feels like you're being punished for not playing Breton.
• Combat is messy and allies always get in your way.
• Even with the improvements melee combat is still boring.
• No indication you have ever cleared a dungeon or even an Oblivion gate.
• Playing a vampire is too annoying (feed prompt/no fast travel).

The Ugly

• Picking up items is done with Enter instead of E. Just... why?!
• No option to delete spells without a mod. Custom spells are obnoxious to remove with the console.
• Performance is really poor. In the Shivering Isles i had constant crashes until i lowered graphics to Medium and installed Lumen Begone. I already had Ultimate Engine Tweaks too.
• The game crashes quite a lot. I had to stop using bows in the SI because the paralyse effect kept crashing the game.
• Light armor constantly needs to be repaired and there is no "repair all" option. You have to repair each item in health chunks separately. Heavy armor can have dozens of chunks.
• Shield spells and enchantments make items absorb more damage, breaking them even faster.
• Level scaling means you will almost exclusively see the exact same handful of enemies after level 20-ish.
• Still the same repetitive dungeons and extremely repetitive oblivion gates.

Conclusion

The last time i played Oblivion was in 2011. Initially i was really enjoying the Remaster, but at the end i was just done with it. I didn't even bother with generic Ayleid ruins and some other dungeons, because i know they're dull. Oblivion gates were amazing at first because they look great, but at the end i just used console commands to fly to the top of the tower to skip all the loading screens. I only did about 18 out of 60 gates and honestly that was already too much.

The problem with the Remaster is that while it improves the game significantly in some aspects, it doesn't change enough while also making some existing problems worse. The longer loading times make some locations especially obnoxious to navigate, especially guild locations. The inventory is a complete mess which makes repairing and recharging items even more of a pain. You level faster, so level scaling hits harder.

But still. Despite how much better this could have been, it is still a great game. The guild quest lines are just so good. The main quest is weak, but that final cinematic is really cool (i'd never actually finished it). And there are so many other fun quests. The vampire hunters' society, the invisible village, many of the Daedric quests, et cetera. I just love all of the dialogue and voice acting. Sheogorath and Haskill are especially great.

And the jank and wonkiness. Having six NPCs have three different conversations all at the same time. Getting into fights with 3+ parties. Hopping across lava to skip annoying sections in Oblivion. Making ridiculously OP spells that make combat a breeze. Abusing the terrain and the dumb enemy AI. Oblivion is just so entertaining in such a unique way that few games even come close to.

I think everyone should experience this at least once. But you should definitely wait for a patch and/or mods. I can run Horizon Forbidden West at 4K Ultra with zero problems while this struggled at 1K Medium with two mods to improve performance. Wow.

This long-awaited remaster brings a significant visual overhaul among other changes that make it feel almost like a remake, but play for a while and you’ll see that it’s pretty much the same game under the hood. That's generally a good thing since it was a good game, but the original's ambition definitely brought along imperfections that can be immersion-breaking, confusing, and frustrating. Quest steps and other triggers often won’t activate properly, the game is prone to crashing outright more than I ever remember it doing on Xbox 360, NPCs will loudly talk over each other and behave weirdly, and so on. It’s disappointing that with all the effort put into more marketable updates to the game, it still has these kinds of issues to this degree.

But the original game, flaws and all, was and still is loved for a reason. For me, the main reason is that it’s just a really nice-feeling big fantasy world to be in. Both the towns and the open wilderness can have a great atmosphere that this remaster gets across well, even if the modern coat of paint does feel different. It would be nice if those towns were bigger and more fleshed-out, but each still has its own character, and it's hard to knock this for the overall scale it pulled off. I still love visiting all the different areas, filling out the map, and building up my character's abilities and renown. The game is very easy to get into and take at your own pace, and does a good job introducing many questlines to follow. As a result, it lends itself very well to hours and hours of play if you're up for it, but also is a game where you don't have to put in immense time or finish anything in particular to have a nice little experience.

I first played Oblivion around 15 years ago, and was a big fan, but haven't revisited it or thought about it all that much in the following years. To me, the game rarely feels particularly excellent and absolutely has content I'm happy to skip, but is usually at least "good enough" to remain engaging. Since I didn't touch it much for a while, I don't have a very keen eye for the exact differences between the original and this version, and also don't necessarily have enormous nostalgia for all the original's choices and execution. I definitely like the remaster's look and feel, particularly how the combat feels compared to my memory of prior Elder Scrolls releases. There's also not as much clash as you'd think between that more modern look and the game's goofy and somewhat charming jank.

When it comes to high fantasy games, this is certainly one that is still worth recommending. I think it's much easier for the average person to enjoy today than Morrowind for instance, and personally I find it more generally appealing in setting and storyline than Skyrim. It's also just the way all the content and systems are stitched together I guess that makes it feel like more than the sum of its parts, a nice example of scale, pacing, tone and atmosphere, etc. taking precedence IMO over things like combat and plot. Just think of it less as something that will blow your mind with amazingness, and more something you can just chill in and get a whole lot of baseline-level fun out of, and it should work out pretty well.