I know there’s great love for Oblivion (I never played it when it was new), and of course Skyrim is the gold standard for new fans (I played the shit out of that and it was my first entry into the elder scrolls back when it came out 14 years ago…) but I really feel like this shadow drop of a half assed remake is just priming everyone to lower their expectations for the likely dumpster fire that is The Elder Scrolls VI.
I know its old hat nonsense of a complaint but whatever Bethesda used to be it stopped being that 20 years ago and we’re all just stuck thinking they’ll put out some new masterpiece when in reality all the talent they had back in the day has likely left for other jobs and they are now just a shitty company among countless other shitty companies putting profit over anything else and stifling anyone who might actually have good ideas on how to make good games (how unsurprising).
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.
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.
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.
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 changeEdit :
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
Maximum dooming for a game that almost everyone likes. lmao
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.
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.
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 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.
