The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remaster - Review

In March 2006, the Xbox 360 launched in Australia and alongside the console, we also got The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I took that home and played it, and I returned it a few days later, as I just could not understand the game. But a few months later, when all the new games had dried up, I picked it back up, and after putting in more effort, the result was that I lost hundreds and hundreds of hours to the game. So, news of a remaster was welcome, but could it hold up to the memories that I had for the original?

The story that is being told here is the same as the original, you are a prisoner, and your cell is opened by the guards of the Emperor. After realising you were not supposed to be there, they all funnel through a secret exit, leaving you standing alone in your cell. Now it wouldn’t be a fun game if you remained there, so you follow, and events lead you to being the only one who makes it out of the secret tunnels. After fulfilling the final promise of the Emperor, you begin the task of finding their illegitimate son and stopping a cult from unleashing Mehrunes Dagon, a Daedric prince. That sets off an adventure that cris-crosses all of Cyrodiil, and the planes of Oblivion.

Now with an Elder Scrolls game, the main adventure is not the only adventure and Oblivion has so many extra quests, that you can lose days undertaking them. That does not take into consideration the Mages, Fighters and Thieves guilds, plus the Dark Brotherhood, because they always know. There are a lot of quests that are fun to undertake, a few that are not as fun, looking at you ghost hunting and depending on your build, they can all feel very different. The remaster also includes both the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isle expansions, which add even more quests to the game. Given the replay potential of character classes and playstyles, there is a lot you will get from the game.

Now the gameplay here is mostly the same as what was on offer in the original release. All the actions you undertake impact your level, both overall and in that specific category. So, the more you run, the better you get at athletics, or the more fire spells you cast, the better your destruction magic becomes. Nothing has really changed here, the same mechanics are still in play, which also means the same irksome elements are still in play. For me that just means not being able to know exactly how much a skill is levelling up per action, but you can see your overall progress in the menu. Combat is mostly the same here, you can wield a single-handed weapon and shield, a dual-handed weapon, bow and arrow or just cast magic. The old adage of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ comes to mind here, and while they didn’t fix things, they did refine.

The combat is made a bit easier now thanks to the fact that enemies now respond to your attacks. Originally, if you hacked at someone with a sword, they would still keep coming after you, but now if you hit them enough, you might see them fall backwards or stagger. Even the beastly enemies in the Daedric plain feel more threatening, with how they react, the change isn’t a massive one, but it does make a massive difference. The other gameplay change is that navigation is a lot easier. In the original game your compass was a tiny thing in the bottom corner, now it lives at the top of the screen, like most games. As you get near places, the icons appear on the compass, but also now a distance counter. This allows for an easier sense of distance, which is not something the original game offered, again not a massive addition, but a worthwhile one.

Without a doubt though, the most expansive addition is the visual overhaul, because everything looks beyond amazing, well mostly. Once you start to see the faces of the Emperor and the guards, you will notice that things are very different, but the moment you step out into the world for the first time, you will notice just how much grander everything looks. But it wasn’t just making things look prettier, even the user interface got an overhaul and while modern gamers will likely enjoy those changes, I prefer the original. The new menu system does look nice, but I often found myself looking for options that were not as easily found, looking at you, immediate area map. I think in their attempts to make things look modern; they removed a lot of the charm from the original look.

Something that definitely was not in the original game were those visuals, because as I said before, the game looks so pretty. The team have said that everything was recreated, so there is no ai upscale going on, which is great to hear. The first time I wandered the streets of Chorrol, I was blown away by the light filtering down through the giant tree in the main plaza. Even when walking in the mountains, starring back down at the Imperial City, with fog blanketing parts of the landscape, the game just looked incredible. The plains of Oblivion looked great, though I am not sure one should refer to a hellish landscape as great, still it’s visually pleasing. There were countless times when I was walking on the roads, or running away from them, where the games beauty would catch me off guard, sometime as simple as the way the sun reflected off a river, it sadly made the times when things look weird, feel worse.

I know that jokes can be made about a Bethesda game having issues and for some of them, I give a little bit of leeway, but for some of the visual issues here, they get none. The most common visual issue for me was the loading of assets, it was more prevalent when going out of a building into the world, I would often see all the textures loading over time. First the low-resolution versions, then the medium resolution ones and then finally all the detail was added in and when I say it happened all the time, I mean it happened all the time. Even going into buildings was not immune, but for them it was the people that faded in and if you choose an inn or a guild hall, you get a lot of folks doing it. I feel that sitting on the loading screen an extra few seconds would have hidden those issues, but they did not do that, and now we see it all. There were other small issues like a wall of light basically pushing out from my entry point into the world, usually at night and it would load things as it receded. Or the random glowing points that would just fill the screen and eventually become hard to see around.

The other common visual oddity that bothered me was with the lip syncing, for those characters with a more traditional human face it worked fine, but for the Orsimer, Khajiit and Argonian, it was often weird. The Orsimer, or Orcs if you prefer, often had their faces pull their mouths wide open when speaking, as if it was trying to follow the commands for a human face. The others had similar issues, but the Khajiit had one major problem for me, they all looked more like lions than house cats and it felt weird. When Oblivion Remaster is not loading in, the game looks stunning, the problem is that you just get to see behind the curtain, so to speak, far more often than you would ever want to.

Something that I hoped that they had not touched was the audio, because from my time with the original game, I am so used to the games audio, it would feel wrong if it was updated like the visuals. I am happy to report that the audio was given a treatment similar to the gameplay, everything you liked is still here, but there are just improvements to it. All the same voices from the games original release are still present, but there are now a host of extra ones mixed in. This does mean that you will no longer get to hear the same voice come from two different characters as they have a conversation. It also means that, if you have played the original, the new voices will stand out as weird and while they do fit the world, they just seem weird to me.

There were a few audio issues, the one that is easily addressed by yourself, as I fixed it, was the games music track is just too loud by default. Now I love the games music, I own the soundtrack after all, but the mix here is just off and I had to turn the music down to 3, in order for the rest of the games audio to come through. The only other complaint about the music is that the tracks don’t quite align to the area, as the music that plays when you are scenically walking across Cyrodiil, also plays in Oblivion and it just does not match. The only other audio complain is that sometimes the voices talk over each other, not in the sense that a room full of people are just having a chat, but more that the volume just sort of increases. It does not happen a lot, but when it does happen, you will notice it.

For years now I have wanted Bethesda to do something with Oblivion, Skyrim has been ported and remastered so many times, it would not surprise me to see people have no knowledge of the original, but Oblivion was left alone. They could have easily just ported the game to work on modern hardware and honestly, I would have been happy, but the amount of effort put into this remaster is phenomenal. Are there issues, yes of course there are, but those issues are minor in the grand scheme of things and if you are willing to put up with them, you will find one incredible game here. Plus, if that was not enough incentive, you do get to enjoy the chaos of Sheogorath in time, and he is always a riot.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Bethesda

The Pros

The gameplay on offer is very much the best version of what the original release had

Visually, this game looks amazing. There are times when light filters through trees or buildings and will blow you away…

The Cons

…but those visuals are impacted by odd loading issues, weird lip syncing and odd glowing lights

The games default audio mix favours the music far too much