As someone who played waaaaaay too much of the original game back in the day and was very concerned about a remaster doing it justice, I have to say it turned out about as well as it possibly could have.
It didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel or make fixes for things that weren’t broken (other than the leveling, at least), it just turned Oblivion into a modern game while still being Oblivion deep down inside.
I am curious to hear perspectives on what Skyrim-only players think about it, because while the Oblivion remake is arguably now the most modernized Elder Scrolls game, it still doesn’t have some of the gameplay and QoL improvements that later came to Skyrim. It’s a perfect remaster for me, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there are folks out there thinking, “Why is there no dual wielding,” “What’s with the weird zoomed in dialog system,” “Where are all the skill perks,” or “Why are there no NPC companions,” and similar.
I also do hope that Bethesda or the community releases an updated version of the construction set soon so the modding scene can take off again for the game. From what I hear, the original Oblivion construction set is able to be used in the remaster with a good deal of messing around, but modders don’t currently have the tools needed to interact at all with the Unreal Engine 5 wrapper.
Also played Oblivion years and years ago, and I can agree and think you put it best. “It turned out as well as it could have”. Because to anyone complaining here, any and all changes anyone here suggests the team obviously thought the same things, but there is obviously a balance. Change it too much and hardcore original fans are pissed. Don’t change it enough and new fans are pissed because it’s too old. No matter what people were going to be unhappy. Gamers are some of the most negative people I’ve met.
I see a decent remaster, I see gameplay and motions have been updated, I see a lot has been updated without changing the core game too much. It turned out as well as it could have.
I played oblivion when it first came out but I put a lot more hours in to skyrim. I do think they could have improved the game a bit more. I’ve only been in the capital yet but it felt brutally empty, with all the npcs having the same path/walking speed and so few of them.
I think a bit of decorations and a few new npcs would have gone a long way. I wished they would have worked on the AI a bit more. Taverns don’t have bards and little ambiance, walking into one is disappointing and ends up with all the npcs in a clump moving at a snails pace because all their walking paths overlap at the same time when they spawn it. It was the same in the original but it’s also 2025.
The waterfront could have really used a bit more shacks. The arena posters just slapped onto walls bother me as well.
Thankfully, I imagine mods will fix all this so I’m optimistic overall.
It’s normal for a Bethesda game to have every town’s NPC be a named character with routines. So to do that in Oblivion would require programming a whole bunch of additional named NPCs that don’t exist in the original game.
Perhaps a crowd system could’ve been implemented… But… I can’t think of any Bethesda Game Studios game that ever used crowd systems.
Extra named NPCs was what I was hoping for. I understand why they didn’t because it would of been a huge change and I’m sure some of the fan base would have been very vocal about it.
I would have loved if they shipped it with mod support and maybe a oblivion+ version with official mods built by their teams like added npcs and other extras.
Oooh modders will find a way. Nexus has already been slowly populating with smaller, simpler mods. It’s only a matter of time before more complex mods come around.
good to know about performance. I was going to try to play it anyways, even though my Ryzen 1500x and RX580 GB didn’t meet minimum specs, but it just might not be worth it.
Careful! If your card doesn’t support DX12 you’ll not even be able to launch it. UE5 in Oblivion Remastered does not have a DX11 fallback and will refuse to launch.
I’m disappointed that they apparently didn’t do any bug fixes. I find that embarrassing and not charming at all. I’m also not crazy about the UI, and the performance could be better.
Otherwise, pretty happy with it. Looks amazing, really breathes new life into it, honestly couldn’t be happier in regards to the visuals. I’m stunned that people cared so deeply about the saturated color pallete of the old game though, I mean they’re literally talking about the exact shade of the grass. Never in a thousand years would I have imagined this would be such a problem, I really have nothing nice to say about that lol
Seriously. The bugginess of Bethesda games has always been one of their top criticisms, people used to call them “BUGthesda” for crying out loud. Granted, the bugs never bothered me all that much, but you’re telling me they had an opportunity to correct some of that infamy in a remaster, and still didn’t do it? Get the fuck outta here.
Regardless, yeah. It’s great, can’t deny it. Gotta find time to play it alongside Clair Obscur now.
They literally used the same logic from the OG. The .esm and .esp files are exactly the same as the latest version of the original Oblivion. They did absolutely nothing to the original scripts and quests other than replace the dialogue for certain characters to a new recording.
I think it’s dumb, but also funny that Todd definitely knows that the “charm” of his games are how fucked up they are.
It’s kind of crazy how well this 20 year old game is designed. Each NPC has a life. Each house is a real house, and not just a closed box for background setting.
The gameplay feels so good that it’s a bit startling when things are buggy, or just not as modern. Like when you have a fetch quest, but you already have the item: there’s no option to say: here it is! You have to literally walk away to trigger something in the quest engine, and then come back to deliver the item.
Also, the way enemies are not at all aware of each other stands out: 2 bandits standing next to each other. I snipe one of them, and the other doesn’t even react. Must have been the wind…
Agreed, I’m also surprised how much more alive the NPCs feel. They start conversations with each other and have their own lifes. It’s feels much more dynamic than Skyrim’s dumbed down version of the same system.
Difficulty settings are wack. Normal is too easy and hard is way too hard. The slider literally goes from 1x/1x damage taken/damage dealt to 3x/0.6!
This was my only real complaint, other than them taking the noise cue away from lockpicking! I’ve really been itching for an elderscolls game with modern graphics and QOL so I’m super happy.
As for the lockpicking I learned something recently from a video and now I never break a pick. I can’t believe I never knew this:
Basically when you hit one tumbler there are the 3 drop speeds right? You push it up and it falls either slow, med, or quick. They “switch” between those three speeds when the tumbler falls back to the starting position.
If you hit a tumbler up and HOLD up (I’m on controller), or whatever key is up, then the tumbler will bounce slightly in the fully raised position. When it’s like this it will be remaining in the “fall speed” from when you first triggered it. We want it to be the slow fall speed so basically while it’s bouncing if you see any spring between “bounces” it’s too fast, let it fall to the starting position and try again.
If it’s bouncing and you can barely see any movement at all let alone any spring then it’s in the slow position, that’s what we want. When it’s like that watch the lockpick and when the lockpick is moving upwards trigger the lock with whatever the confim button is for you. It should always work!
As for the lockpicking I learned something recently from a video and now I never break a pick.
I noticed this myself today! At first I thought lockpicking was random and I broke almost all my lockpicks, but I noticed a subtle cue for when it’s going to lock in place. From what I understand the middle speed has a chance to work or break your lockpick, but the slowest speed is guaranteed to work.
other than them taking the noise cue away from lockpicking!
Noooo! I loved Oblivion’s lockpicking system. Got so good at it that one time I tried doing it with my eyes closed and was able to lockpick purely using the sounds. It was so fun and intuitive. Haven’t played the remaster yet but am sad to hear that they took those sounds away, lol.
Can’t run the game because Unreal Engine runs like crap on Arc GPUs… Or in this case, not at all. :/
I’ll have to wait till MESA 25.1 drops later next month to see if it fixes my issues.
Besides that, from the few gameplay videos I’ve seen; I don’t like the Argonians. From the reveal video the developers said they’re using the same lip-sync animations for all races/species, and it’s very easy to tell that the large, blunt faces Argonians have in the remaster are a design decision for this. It still doesn’t look right either because the teeth inside their mouths are animated with the lips.
Other than the Argonians, however, the game looks great. Just wish I could play it. This was my first Bethesda game, and the first open world game of its kind I played.
Only with Unreal Engine games, it seems. That includes Direct X 12 implementations in Unreal Engine 4 games:
The Ascent runs at 2 fps on the main menu, where it basically just renders one dude standing on a roof with a completely red background. It’ll also freeze.
Outer Worlds Spacer’s Choice Edition also runs at 2 - 5 fps in menus, has low framerate in-game, and crashes every 5 to 10 minutes.
I have Conan Exiles. Not DX12, but still UE4. Should probably give that a try and see how it goes…
Oblivion Remastered refuses to launch. Says my system doesn’t support DX12.
Nightingale also refuses to launch. Same error.
A couple of indie games still in development switched from UE4 to UE5 and now crash immediately after trying to launch.
Works just fine on everything else. My card is the Arc A770:
Can get a reasonably stable 40 fps with ultra settings (including ray tracing) in Cyberpunk 2077.
Helldivers 2 is great. Had to use launch commands to force DX11 at first, but after a few numbered updates to MESA that’s no longer a problem.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is great. Avoid the option to launch the game with Vulkan, though. It is really badly implemented and causes very obvious graphical glitches all the time.
I get a stable 50 fps on KCD 1 on ultra. Though I have only played it for three hours recently (started a new game).
Very smooth in Sins of a Solar Empire 2, except for truly massive fights (thanks to the large VRAM size my card actually does a better job at rendering large battles than some of my friends with more powerful cards).
For none game related stuff:
Great performance in Blender 3D, though it’s finnacky to set up and I think I still didn’t do it right (can’t get One API to work), but despite that it still performs fast in cycles.
That gives me hope. Sounds like it’s just drivers they need to fix. I really just want something for transcoding, which it sounds like they’re great for that. Figure they’ll go up in price once the bugs are ironed out.
Friend of mine in the Netherlands has a server at home with Jellyfin. He bought the weakest A series ARC card (forgot the exact model number), because he found out all the ARC cards use the exact same hardware for transcoding. Meaning there’d not be any performance difference between the lowest end card and the highest end card.
Check that info yourself, of course, but me and my group of friends have been using his Jellyfin for watch-parties and it’s been going great.
I downloaded it on this rec and I’ve been playing the hell out of it the past day. Sweet game that’s filled the last of us void I’ve been in since finishing those games. Def different, but similar genres and themes (so far anyway).
There is some risk of burn in, but it's pretty manageable for modern OLED monitors with normal usage. Like, it should last closer to a decade than a year, especially if you lower the brightness a little.
As you rightly point out, both IPS screens and OLED screens (plus related technologies) have their problems. Unfortunately, IPS still has that glow effect and OLD risks burn-in for productivity work. Since there is no readily-available technology that fixes both of these issues, you will ultimately have to consider what you value more and make a compromised decision. Take a look at comparison articles (example linked here is authored by one of the people from Hardware Unboxed) to see what they recommend within various categories of monitors.
The monitors unboxed youtube channel does really good in-depth reviews and includes mixed usage. They also have good buying guides at various price points.
I have an LG 38GN950-B, 1600p Ultrawide, IPS, 144Hz, and really like it.
For productivity, I think Ultrawide is great. WFH on this is really nice.
For gaming, it’s kinda hit-and-miss. Many games just don’t support UW, so you’re stuck with black bars or have to mess around with mods, fixes or tools. While not a dealbreaker, when I upgrade in a couple of years, I’ll probably just go back to 16:9, because of that.
IPS glow is there, but not really noticeable. I’m usually in a well-lit room, so that cancels out any glow I could notice out anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
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Aktywne