Oblivion remake is... really making it apparent how outdated Bethesda is in its approach to making games

I see a lot of people downplaying the remaster as a fresh coat of ue5 paint. I'm playing the game, having disliked the original, and I'm loving it. I'm kind of impressed with what they did with the game, basically remaking the world elements in ue5 and leaving the gameplay as it was with minor tweaks. Fresh coat of paint feels more like rip out the drywall and do it again. Just leave the structure alone. Like, the electrical and plumbing is still there and feels the same but it looks completely different.
Games like this dont come very often, so if anything, this remaster and BG3 should raise the bar on what we should expect from a new TES game.

Lower expectations...?
Bethesda Game Studios has been on the decades-long trend of watering down all their proper RPG elements. Morrowind is significantly more jank in combat and movement than Oblicion. Oblivion significantly more jank than Skyrim.
However, Skyrim is over simplified compared to Oblivion in all of its RPG mechanics, and has removed a number of gameplay features that were previously present (e.g. Spell crafting). In turn Oblivion is itself more mechanically shallow than Morrowind, significantly lacking in such things as speech options.
The Oblivion Remaster is so more a reminder of something we'll never get anymore; an open world RPG that isn't as weighed down as Morrowind and not as over-simplified as Skyrim (though honestly complex NPC interactions need to come back from Morrowind).
TES VI will likely have better combat than Skyrim, but still incredibly dated compared to other games, and mechanics that can barely be called "RPG" anymore.
- Replacing spell crafting with blacksmithing makes sense for the setting. It would have been nice to have something a bit deeper to replace it though.

You don't seem to know what a remaster is. Most importantly, it's not a remake and the two terms are not interchangeable.
- Remaster -> Take same assets, enhance it (better textures, better shaders, etc.), add some QoL fixes (new hardware support, etc.), but the base (and most of the time the engine) stays the same. Remake -> Take same idea, redo it (new models, new technologies, etc.). May or may not have an engine change
  Reboot -> Take same base, new ideas, and redo it (new models, new technologies, etc.). May or may not have an engine change
  Edit :
  A remaster example : Titan Quest Anniversary Edition -> Same game, remastered textures, add large screen support, among others.
  A remake example : Oblivion Remastered (ironic name) -> New engine, new textures and models, but with globally the same idea.
  A reboot example : DmC: Devil May Cry (the 2013 game)

I think Bethesda has definitely fallen off in recent years, but I am a bit confused by the point this post is getting at. We learned at launch that Oblivion is a remaster, not a remake, and it's just the original game running under the hood with a new coat of paint and some minor tweaks. And it's a pretty high-effort remaster at that.
I just think it's a bad example to use of how the company isn't getting better, when the point of the remaster was to change as little of the core game as possible. It's as good now as it was back then but it's still a 19-year-old game.
Starfield is what should be killing everyone's expectations of Elder Scrolls 6.
- The remaster was also made externally, so whatever the point being made here is, it's weird twice over.

It is literally not a remake, and how is it half assed? I have a low to mid range PC and the game runs smooth as hell, and it's gorgeous.
- What gfx setting are you using?
- Tried to run it on Wine Lutris and the open world ran like shit.
  Gamers is it time to retire the 2060?
  
  The 2060 is a 7 year old entry level card.
  Have you tried the config tweak to disable Lumen?
  https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/183
  This one helps with lower VRAM apparently:
  https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/399
  
  Mine runs smooth as fuck.
  
  Try running it on an operating system that the game is native to and not one that doesn't properly support nvidia

Man the negativity. I'm so sick of gamers negativity. It's not even a new game, it's a remaster. you knew what the product was going to be. It's oblivion. We all knew it was oblivion. If you don't like oblivion, why did you buy it?!
I swear to God if they changed it too much I'd be commenting here on a post about how they had no respect for the original. Then we wonder why "they never listen to gamers". Because we bitch and moan about everything.
- 100% agree. Pleasing Gamers™ is a Kafka trap.
- It's not even much of a remaster. They just slapped a coat of paint on it.
  The Gamebryo/Creation Engine is still there running the game, it just uses Unreal 5 for the graphical elements. And they updated some of the levelling to work more like Skyrim, because the Oblivion system sucked in comparison.
  It's still the same 20 year old Oblivion under the hood.
  Not that there's anything wrong with that, but calling it a remaster is a bit disingenuous.
  
  What do you think "remaster" actually mean?
  
  That's literally what remaster are, a new coat of paint
  
  They literally had a hour long stream explaining what they did, and then you could have watched any of the thousands of twitch streams showing it. There was zero reason that you should have bought this if you thought this. I knew exactly what I was buying, seems like pretty much everyone did.
  You are describing a remake. A remaster is a fresh coat of paint. Todd Howard said verbatim "This is not a remake" and then talked about his reasons why. You're going on like they lied to you when they literally said everything you just complained about, and then you still bought it.
  
  And they updated some of the levelling to work more like Skyrim, because the Oblivion system sucked in comparison
  Updated how exactly? Oblivion and Skyrim both have pretty serious flaws. I believe there are popular mods to fix the Oblivion system in a way that still feels like Oblivion, though it's been a long time since I've read in to any of it.
- Just musing on the fact that Bethesda doesn’t care about making games and instead just cashes in on nostalgia. I also think their finance bros realized their upcoming big IP drop is going to be an objective POS and wanted to prime people’s expectations by re-releasing a 20 year old game with some lipstick on it.
  It would be neat if they hired some people who actually had innovative ideas about gameplay, visuals and stories to maybe make a neat new game within an existing or new IP, but they haven’t done that in literal decades so I think its pretty reasonable to not be incredibly excited about anything they are putting out or planning to put out in the future.
  
  Imagine if capital G Gamers actually enjoyed playing games instead of nonstop bitching on online forums.
  
  As a long time Bethesda game fan I agree with you on almost everything you've said about Bethesda... But the remaster is a terrible example of your points.
  The remaster does exactly what it says on the tin and they've been very upfront about how it was made and why it was made in the launch video.
  It's hard to criticise them for cashing in on nostalgia when they've shown time and time again with Skyrim re-releases that do a fraction of what the Oblivion remaster does still sell like hot cakes.
  Nostalgia is at the core of their business model. That's why they march Skyrim's corpse out every two years like clockwork; that's why they picked Fallout for a new franchise after ES; that's, frankly, likely why Starfield sucks so much.

When I saw the post’s title I was hoping for a good, perhaps even balanced, critique of the remake’s choices, or the underlying engine’s shortcomings, or perhaps even the original designs.
All I got was “dumpster fire”.

There‘s no Oblivion remake. Go to the Steam Page and carefully read word for word what it is you‘re talking about.
- I play Fantasy Critic with some friends. We allow remakes in our league but not remasters. This one counts as a remake for purposes of this site, with a flag on it to note that it was contentious. This game definitely blurs some lines on some definitions.
  
  Fantasy Critic
  Wait what? Is this like fantasy sports, but with video game reviews? Do you draft developers or some shit?
  
  Out of interest, how does that site classify Age of Empires Definitive Edition (and aoe2:DE and aoe3:DE) and Age of Mythology: Retold?

half assed remake
which is exactly why they called it a remaster. it was never their intention to remake the game.
Personally I think most of the stuff that went wrong with Starfield were design choices related to space travel and many many planets, which won't be an issue with TES of Fallout going forward. So if they stay in their lane I don't see any reason why they can't keep churning out decent titles in those series, even if they maybe don't reach the same heights.

It might be nostalgia speaking, but I think the real issue is that a 20 year old game can actually be this good and popular. How can it be that it is more enjoyable than anything else I’ve bought over the last year (at least)? Doesn’t that say that game companies in general have dropped the ball on game design, focusing on graphics and money over content and gameplay? As I said, it might just be me stuck in my wonderfully comforting blanket of nostalgia…
- I think it's almost definitely nostalgia speaking.
  Granted, by the point Oblivion was made I was the nostalgia guy talking about how Bethesda games kept getting smaller and less ambitious. Most people saying that then did so because they were coming from Morrowind. Not me, I am a proper dinosaur and I was just pissed that after Morrowind dropped everything interesting about Daggerfall to make a console game they just kept moving further in that direction.
  Was also not a fan of Fallout getting turned into Oblivion 40K instead of a proper turn-based CRPG.
  Which goes to show this conversation isn't new and gaming is old enoung now that it has gone in cycles.
  I mean, seriously, Daggerfall was continent-sized and was using procedural generation to make dungeons and build dialogue and quests and essentially reimagining how games could be made in ways that wouldn't resurface until what? No Man's Sky? Oblivion is bad Lord of the Rings. If anything it's the awkward middle child now, because man, the Imperial City in Oblivion feels hilariously tiny and basically deserted against modern RPGs. There are five people running loops and having canned conversations. Coming from Baldur's Gate 3 or Cyberpunk to this is... a bit of a shock.
- How can it be that it is more enjoyable than anything else I’ve bought over the last year (at least)?
  Possibly because you're buying the wrong games? Don't get me wrong, I've got a massive nostalgia-on for Oblivion, and I picked up the Remaster, and it's cool....
  But there have been a lot of great games so far this year. Just this month alone, Blue Prince and Expedition 33 have both been fantastic. Both better than the Oblivion remaster imo.
  The Indiana Jones game is cool. I haven't played Split Fiction yet, but it looks really good as well. Just to name a few.
  Edit: More that I remembered: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii. Wanderstop is pretty chill. Xenoblade Chronicles X was finally released on Switch (game map is like 5x the size of Skryim or something..). Atomfall. Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is pretty cool if you're into that kind of thing.
- Clair Obscur came out the same time and it's probably the best RPG I've ever played, and I've played every noteworthy one in the last 40 years at least. GOTY at the LEAST.
- I can't belive people play football. That game is old as hell!
  
  It hasn't been updated since forever, can't believe even pay to watch others play.
- "Why is an old game good?" feels like an odd question. It would be silly to ask that of any other medium, wouldn't it? The most beloved classics being beloved isn't an indictment of modern stuff, especially when cherry-picking the greatest hits and ignoring how many flops existed back then too.
  
  Survivorship bias, essentially.
- I mean I am all for criticising creatively bankrupt mush like Ubisoft et al pushes out and Call of Duty 420: Black Ops 69 or FIFA or whatever but we can't pretend there are literally no good games being released nowadays either. Just now we had a month with both Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being released within weeks of each other. BG3 and Alan Wake 2 releasing in the same year was just two years ago.
  There are plenty of not just good but great recent games.
  
  Just now we had a month with both Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 being released within weeks of each other.
  Didn't see your comment before saying almost the exact same thing lol
- I hear this rhetoric a lot, which shows me that a ton of people have a much harder time than me finding the good stuff, even though there's so much of it out there.
- You're just buying the wrong games.
  Go play Split Fiction, Balatro, and Hades 2.

You're not going into depth on how it is half assed. The only thing I can complain about is some performance drops when travelling outside, but I imagine they'll patch that out at some point. If you're referring to the classic oblivion stuff like goofy npcs and most of them having the same voice actor tbh I'd be pissed if they changed that

Just to clarify one thing while i agree with you on some stuff this is not a remake it's a remaster. the OG game engine is running underneath and UE5 for just the updated models and terrain. The fact they are charging so much for it is what kills me. What this should have been is a $30 game of the year edition and maybe an discount or a free upgrade of you owned the original like they did with doom and quake remasters that nightdive did.
- Yeah I'll definitely buy it, but I'm a patient gamer. It needs to be really cheap on a steam sale. I've played the original. I can wait.

Maximum dooming for a game that almost everyone likes. lmao

I have no idea what's your complaint are though, and it's not a remake, it's a remaster that is significantly better than a lot of other remaster have to offer. They could've gave us widescreen support, some lighting change, some new horse armour and call it a day, but they somehow able to snap an UE5 rendering on top of gamebryo, some modern QOL, new character models, modern lipsync, while retaining the charm that spawned an entire genre of meme.
There's a reason Witcher 1 isn't getting a remastered but a remake. Gamer these day is so jaded and just can't seems to satisfied with anything, that a witcher 1 remastered will get hated forever.

You think this is a half assed remake? To me this feels like a significant upgrade (and not just to graphics) while maintaining the core experience and I'm kinda shocked at how good it is.

It's a remaster of a game from 2006 with a fresh coat of paint and some QOL changes and that's basically all it ever could be. 70% of the game did not age well and they honestly did the best they could. If they did a complete remake and "modernized" the game all the old-school fans would be pissed. If they kept it as true to the original as possible besides a facelift they'd make it harder for new players to want to pick it up. I feel like a good 7/10 was the best they could shoot for under most circumstances.
And if you ask anyone where Bethesda fell off, depending on which game was their first, they will all give you a different answer. For me Morrowind and Oblivion are the best in the series and that's with over 500 hours in Skyrim. They've been dumbing their games down with each new iteration since the 90s as they try to "modernize" the newest game each time and reach new audiences. Like, good luck playing Morrowind or Daggerfall these days without losing your patience in a matter of hours. And Morrowind especially is barely playable without mods these days.
I still hated Starfield, though. Gave it the old college try and left so underwhelmed I couldn't tell you a damn thing about the story.
- The story was the most interesting thing about Starfield, since like me, the writers of Starfield also really loved the movie Interstellar. Unfortunately, nearly every plot line sort of wrapped up in an unfulfilling way for one reason or another.
  I think the gist of Bethesda games is that what they did was truly impressive 20 years ago, but each individual piece of them is kind of bad. The combat is bad, the story is bad, the RPG systems are way worse than their pen and paper roots, the NPC schedules tend to do little more than make quest givers just appear in slightly different locations, and what should be dynamic uses of physics and NPC line of sight never manifests in anything more interesting than putting a bucket on a shop keeper's head to steal things.
  There's nothing quite like a Bethesda game, because I think when another developer sits down to make a new game, they try to make one or more of those pieces way better than a Bethesda game rather than implementing everything that Bethesda implements, because plenty of it is bad and will be bad without being able to focus on it.

If anything this has raised my bar for TES 6. I didn't play 4 just as you did and sunk an ungodly amount of time into 5. I also played fallout 3 at the time of launch so I feel like I'm fairly versed in Bethesdas formula.
The progress from 4 to 5 is obvious. They put a lot of love into making Skyrim better than its predecessor in tons of ways. With the absolute flop of Starfield, they're putting all their chips into TES 6 and they know it. They're going to stick to the core gameplay that everyone expects, but how they expand and improve upon it is really what will make or break them. If they get the story telling down, it's all up to the mechanics of the game and design of the world.
My bar has absolutely raised by them putting this remaster out.
- I don't think I agree on them going all in for TES6, I think oblivion and the upcoming fallout 3 remake (confirmed by court docs ages ago) are probably going to lean into monetized mods, just like skyrim has been for the last decade. Skyrim's creation club made it a pseudo live service game, where they can maintain bethesdas tiny team size (Relative to most AAA devs) and still get ongoing payout for a decade or more, letting players generate new content to buy into. Optimistically this means they'll have plenty of funding for TES6 to hire some decent writing staff and put together something great that's presumably been at least thought about the last 14 years since Skyrim, but it might just be going into Microsoft's coffers.

This is such a silly take. After Starfield, I was still excited, but had very little "faith" in the next elder scrolls. After this remaster, I'm even more excited, and I think there is a good chance ES6 will be an absolutely beautiful game that I will play for years after its release.
They weren't trying to reinvent the wheel with this remaster, they merely demonstrated its possible to have classic BGS mechanics WITH modern day graphics and animations. Starfield made it seem like they had to choose between one or the other for future games, but this shows us we can have both!

I personally don't really pre order or set up prior expectations for games these days. No matter the company's prior track record a game is only judged on its own, not because how good a previous game was. Oblivion is great because it is, In my opinion, better than Skyrim. It is dated by today's standards. Heck starfield was dated as well. Even when elder scrolls vi comes out I don't have any high expectations for it.

All I wanted from the remake was character models that didn't look like cartoons and a leveling system that didn't punish suboptimal builds, and by God that's what they delivered.
People keep clamoring for a Morrowind remake, and I disagree. It's perfect the way it is. Oblivion NEEDED this.

Listen, as long as ESVI ends up being highly modable and has a healthy community behind it to make the mods, it'll be good enough for me.
- Exactly. If the modding community for Starfield was bigger, it could be an incredible game. I still have hope it will grow, but ES6 will definitely be different

Morrowind was my first Elderscrolls game. I loved morrowind and I would buy an remaster of it.
Oblivion came out when I was an adult. I sunk thousands of hours into it when it came out. It was my favorite game by far at that time.
Skyrim I didn’t enjoy. It was fine, I guess. But by the time Skyrim came around I started to see Bethesda change. Fallout 4 and then Fallout 76 sealed the deal for me turning from a Bethesda fanboy to a hater.
Overall, I do not believe Bethesda will ever put out another new original game that is polished or quality. Bethesda rips off their biggest supporters and lies to their customers.
That being said. I’m very happy with this remake. Because it’s been 20 years since I first played, I genuinely only remember a few strong moments. All the minor quests and even the main story I barely remember the details of. So, it’s nice to revisit the game as a more mature adult. I think they did a fantastic job keeping the feel the same but it looks great considering.
Can’t run it on my LegionGo that’s my only complaint. I’m happy with having bought the remastered version of Oblivion because I’m sure as hell never buying a new original game from Bethesda ever again. Not unless they do an about face.
- How did you find thousands of hours to blow on it as an adult? Teach me your ways

Wasn't there a couple of modders who was making the older elder scrolls game into the Skyrim engine? Wouldn't it be easier on Bethesda to just hire them and other talented modders to do it?
- They sent the modders complimentary copies of the remaster

It's a remaster. What's the problem?

Maybe they're trying to get potential players of Elder Scrolls VI so hyped that they'll still play the new game even if it's sold 'games as a service' style
in which case, fuck that

They needed a quick cash grab before the Trump terroriffs wipe them out.
Amazing how many people are willing to pay full price for a 20 year old game.
- Yeah man they really saw this tariff stuff coming earlier than anyone else when they started developing the remaster 2-3 years ago.
  
  We both know tariffs have little to do with this game, but it was very possible to see them coming 2-3 years ago if you listened to that man speak.
- Its not a quick cash grab, the remaster was in development starting in 2021. This release had nothing to do with tarifs.
- Bethesda is a Microsoft company. Don't think there's any danger of the tariffs wiping out Microsoft.
  
  There is more of a danger of being wiped out by microsoft than anything else