If I recall correctly the team behind Skyblivion was (or still is) in contact with Bethesda throughout the development and had no problems with the latter in regards their work. Heck, Bethesda itself posted about the mod on their site in 2023.
They’ve been aware of Skyblivion for years and there’s no indication they’re interested in killing it.
That goodwill can change in an instant, especially if they are releasing a competing product, and especially if the legal team gets in the loop rather than the development staff.
We can already see it with stuff like the Beamdog remasters. People insist that it is totally better to play BG2 with these five mods, that launcher hack, etc. And everyone except for the usual suspects just say “Buy the Beamdog release. It has almost everything you want and is zero effort”.
Also, the mere existence of a fan project (that will never release in a satisfactory manner…) shows that Bethesda is super mod friendly and blah blah blah.
How does it not? It is the same game map, same missions, even the same character names. You just know the corporate bros would hate an alternative to their paid remaster that is basically the same thing.
Can it change? Sure. There’s just no reason to expect that based on Bethesda’s approach to modding until now. I’d rather base my expectations on their past actions rather than assume the worst just in case.
skyblivion is great marketing, and it’s free to let them keep going for now. Keep people excited about a new oblivion, and then kill the only other option besides yourself. I actually think it’s more likely than not that there is a last minute reversal.
Also, Skyblivion will, at worst, only cut into their PC sales. The official remake will be the only option available on consoles due to the nature of the mod.
Maybe they aren’t, but what about the company that is doing the remake? They might argue it will hamper their ability to meet estimated sales and overall profit.
At the end of the day Virtuos are just a contractor - Bethesda are the ones with final say in the matter. Despite all their flaws they never really showed to be hostile towards these kind of projects (or at least I haven’t seen them act that way) so there’s no reason to automatically expect the worst. That’s just my opinion though.
For all their faults, Bethesda may be the most mod-friendly AAA studio out there right now.
I can vaguely recall a single instance where they shut someone down, and that was over re-used audio assets from an older game. That was almost certainly about contractual licensing obligations to voice actors.
Did they even shut them down back then? I might be thinking about a different situation but I remember one of the other remake mods (was it New Vegas on Fallout 4 engine?) where they simply told the team they can’t use the original audio. The cancellation of that mod happened months later and didn’t even have anything to with that issue, I believe.
Either way, this kind of scenario is something I skipped over in my initial question since banning reuse of assets in different engines is a legal thing. I mostly meant them blocking/killing projects for no “serious” reason.
Still, it was a good idea to mention these kind of issues as well.
Yeah, I don’t remember all the details myself, so you’re probably right. I was basically trying to support your thesis that Bethesda getting nasty over mods would be something entirely new and out of character. The only example someone could even try to point to had a bunch of other (better) explanations than “mod bad, Bethesda mad.”
I actually thought about including this case in my original post but I have tendency to waffle way too much and in the end decided against it to keep things shorter. It is a useful example to mention so thanks for that.
That’s true. It’s still on Bethesda, but yeah they could have an agreement. Skyblivion has been in development longer than this though I’m sure, and Bethesda was aware of it and said it was OK, so I’m assuming there’s no agreement like that. If there were then Bethesda would have done something that will make them look really bad, which they do tend to do so it is a possibility.
The way skyblivion has been implemented avoids all this. They have made it very clear they are not in any way using original assets or providing the game. They are mods that utilize both Skyrim and Oblivion game files and you must have both for it to work. It is modding those game files, not providing them.
My computer’s specs are just under the minimum for new games released these days. It will probably be able to handle Skyblivion, but almost definitely not the remake. So that’s the one that has my attention
My only thing is that I hope they fixed some of the blaring issues with the original. I still go back and play Oblivion from time to time, but I usually have to spend 4 or 5 hours just downloading and installing mods. My biggest gripe with Oblivion has always been enemy scaling. Unless you do the main quest first you’ll be fighting the strongest enemies in the game by the time you get around to it.
We’re saying the oblivion port to UE5 is going to be less buggy? That makes you hopeful?? What is this place??? Did the gta trilogy not make it to lemmy?
I remember that one from the PSP but I never played it. I didn’t know it was on DS and mobile too! That’s actually pretty sick. It looks much more like the original GTA games, which is not what I expected. I bet that was neat for the time with gta 4 having just dropped!
I mean, despite whatever reputation UE5 may have, Oblivion was legendarily buggy. Oblivion defined Bethesda’s reputation for producing bug-riddled games.
Im not denying the bugginess of oblivion I’m more concerned about the general unplayability of a lot of Unreal games in this latest gen
Like if the bugs were bad when they wrote the code I can’t imagine porting that code into unreal with its famously poor optimizations is anything but the worst case scenario for this remaster lmao
My hope was that they were porting it to creation 2 with upscaled assets and taking some time to squash the most egregious bugs. Hearing it’s going to be a ue5 port now I’m almost not even willing to give it a chance. We shall see. For all we know, this could just be industry drivel getting us excited about a fake leak.
Avowed was a recent unreal open world game that didn’t have many issues but I still had at least one point in my playthrough where every object was ghost trailing and map textures were stretched across the sky. Thats from obsidian busting their asses and it was great outside of the one major glitch.
With oblivion being what it is in its original form and then being handed to some outside studio to port to unreal it just sounds like a nightmare scenario. Maybe they’re unreal specialists idk but they can’t be better than Bethesda themselves. I’ll be holding my breath until we get confirmation but I’ll have to see what people think once it’s out before I’m gonna risk spending money on this. OG oblivion is free on gamepass and I can stream it to my phone lol
If it does end up being great, fantastic! Im just not trusting Todd Howard to do the right thing anymore lmao
Huh, I never knew satisfactory was in unreal. On that point, if they offloaded development to a 3rd party studio does that impact your expectations? Idk who it is but I saw a bunch of people saying it wasn’t Bethesda remaking it
Earlier this month our Jim called upon Bethesda to remake Morrowind rather than Oblivion. “You cowards,” Jim wrote, calling Morrowind a “special game, where a beautifully unique fantasy setting is locked away behind technology and interface design that has aged particularly badly”.
I prefer Morrowind’s UI to Skyrim’s, even with SkyUI mod:
It’s more fun to have individual item icons than just text or generic icon just for item type
Those classic brass borders are beautiful
Choosing one of multiple reply options work more reliable in Morrowind, in Skyrim when playing on PC you often click one option and it still picks the wrong one because you didn’t scroll enough
Overall, this whole system was obviously designed for consoles and it doesn’t really work well on PC even with mods. I don’t really remember Oblivion’s interface, but the one in Morrowind’s is something that I think definitely needs less “fixing” than Skyrim’s for example. And I don’t think it aged bad at all. Also hotkey system was great, I really miss it in Skyrim, potions are way less fun when you need to go through a bunch of menus every time you want to drink one.
I like Morrowind’s interface better, too, with the optional window managing and selecting dialogue options from within text. But the icon-only inventory is atrocious. I have to hover every single icon to know what it is. I hope OpenMW will spawn a mod or something that will offer an alternative.
That’s because they’re classy and understand that the two are totally different projects. Skyblivion is impressive but that doesn’t even remotely mean that an official remaster/remake isn’t worth having.
Hasn’t this Bethesda helmed Oblivion remake been in the rumors and ‘eventually’ stage since around 2021-2022? Feel like skyblivion team has had plenty of time to get used to it at this point, but has something changed recently to make the bethesda version more relevant?
I don’t think it would be hard to fake these screenshots. Bethesda shadow dropping a game of this high profile within a week, without ever having officially said anything about it or even replying to media asking about it just seems incredibly unlikely.
Maybe release isn’t likely, but announcement is. Remember they drop Fallout 4 trailer and then saying it’ll come end of year? Maybe that’s the magic they want to recreate.
As a diehard(man) Death Stranding fan, I gotta say the boss fights were easily the worst part of the game. I always turn the difficulty up to maximum when I’m doing a new playthrough because the game just feels more impactful and fun when there’s an actual sense of danger, but it goes straight down to easy mode whenever a boss comes out cause I am not dealing with that lol
While I’ll definitely be doing the bossfights the first time around in DS2 this feature will probably save my future playthroughs. It’s just always nice to see more options for letting players engage with the game in the ways they want to.
Didn’t play the first one yet, but your insight is very interesting. Honestly, I cannot understand why any game wouldn’t offer the “storytelling” mode. It’s a solo game, just let people play how they want to. It’s like selling a toy car and saying “You can only drive it on a carpet with four wheels touching the ground at any time”. Nope, my (hypothetical) toy cars will be goddamn submarines if I want them to.
I 100% agree. Games are about what’s fun, and that differs for everybody. Difficulty selection exists for a reason. My mom LOVES the playstation first party games (god of war, horizon, etc) but she always plays them on story mode. It’s not because she can’t handle any higher difficulties (she’s been gaming since before I was born), she simply doesn’t care about the challenge and just wants to experience the story.
Games are for us to enjoy, and short of cheating in a multiplayer game I don’t really think there’s a wrong eay to enjoy them. Opening up more avenues for more people to enjoy them is just a net positive in my opinion.
Death Standing is a single player game, but I’m not sure I would call it a “solo” game.
I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the “asynchronous multiplayer” stuff, and how the delivery process evolving over time through cooperation with real people you will never see or meet, parallels the story, was my favorite part of the game. And why I will be 100% playing the sequel.
I’ve been literally at the end of the game (right before the end segment, which is very long from what I understand) for like 2 years.
I really enjoyed the game, but wasn’t a huge fan of the times where they took you out of the main gameplay loop for some story shit that, let’s be honest, is barely coherent. Which is why I haven’t started the final segment.
I’ll have to do it before the sequel comes out I guess… How long should I expect that final segment to be? Movie-length?
Definitely set some time aside to do the final segment. I’m not sure exactly where you are before the end segment, but assuming you’re right before edge knot city you’ve probably got about 4-5 hours left for the main story, if you take your time with it. There’s probably like an hour or two of cutscenes there though and you can absolutely rush the gameplay sections so if you really don’t care about the story you can probably shave that down to under 2 hours. It’s still a commitment though that’s for sure.
"At the end i believe? Spoilers ahead"Where would I be when you lose the baby? The game just always freaked me out and knowing I’m going to face some kind of boss and not have any help from it made me put down the game many years ago and I’ve never been able to get back into it
If you mean chapter 14, post Edge Knot CityWhen you’re taking Lou to the incinerator
You’re right at the end, there’s no more bosses. It’s just a bit of hiking and then a bunch of cutscenes. Then you’re in the epilogue and time rewinds so you can keep playing. Might be a bit of a weird place to start playing again though, as you just boot up the game after so many years just to watch a cutscene or two and then credits roll lol.
If you mean chapter 6, before reaching Edge Knot CityWhen Deadman takes the baby to recalibrate it
As you can probably guess by the chapter numbers, you are nowhere near the end of the game, sorry. There IS a bossfight, but you only have to do the first section alone, then you reunite and do the actual main fight together.
Yeah I hated all the time warp boss fights especially. I gave up on the game on the last trip back to the beginning area. I LOVED the side quests and general gameplay loop but whenever the main quest came up I was bored out of my mind. I think I would have enjoyed the game more if it was just a sandbox.
Oblivion has my heart, but I’m not super interested in this. So far some of the visual choices look less inspired than the original take, and I don’t just mean the yellow filter. The dryad went from other worlds to person with a dryad skin equipped.
I’m more interested in the Skyblivion mod. It feels more like it improves upon what was there and has some cool deviations of its own.
I still remember my first playthrough. Low level character. I save scummed until I could sneak into the tower in the heart of the Imperial City. In the council chamber was a mage with an incredibly powerful staff. I pickpocketed it off of him, again using save scumming. I then traveled to Bravil and entered the castle there. As the Count of Bravil was giving a speech, I pulled out the staff and zapped him dead on his throne, right in front the of the whole court. I then got away from the assassination through the brilliant escape plan of running out the front door, murder weapon still in hand.
My favorite story was actually from my buddy’s playthrough. He duped the poison apple from the assassin’s guild quest using the arrow glitch. He then duped it 50 more times and put-pocketed one into everyone’s pockets in a specific town. When they all went to lunch they ate them and died. An entire town of dead people. It was hilarious.
I beat the entire thieves guild quest line starting at basically level 1 by using the strategy of “run fast”. There were some major flaws that kept me from loving that game properly, so I’m hoping it’s more user friendly with the remake. But I could definitely see a lot of charm in it.
If it isn’t one of the ugliest games I’ve ever played though. Why is every character a shiny, pudgy, orange?
Yup. I’m pretty sour on Bethesda RPGs after getting burned hard by Starfield. But I have a hard time imagining even they could fuck up a simple remastering of a game I already loved in the past.
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Aktywne