The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered – Nostalgia While We Wait

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is here to feed on your nostalgia and wallet. This collaboration between Bethesda and Virtuos was long rumoured to shadow drop on all platforms aside from the Nintendo Switch.

Does the 19-year-old RPG still stand firm in 2025, and is it worth your time and money? Even for new and returning players of the game, it’s true that Oblivion can stand the test of time like Skyrim has done again and again. You got me again, Todd Howard, and I was happy to revisit this new Cyrodiil to wreak havoc.

TL;DR

The Oblivion Remastered is an Unreal Engine remake of Classic Oblivion, where every asset has been redesigned and comes with changes to combat, scaling and levelling. It features all the classic bugs, jank and options to utterly break the game. It runs like any UE5 game with stutters and dips, but looks simply breathtaking. If you are looking to play it on the Steam Deck, be aware, it is an unpleasant experience.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered – A Nostalgic Return to Cyrodiil

If there is one thing Todd Howard is good at, it’s finding ways to fleece your wallet by not making a new game. Instead, he simply sells you a game you already own. As a new Skyrim has become a literal meme, the change to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was a slight surprise. Then again, we were excited to relive Oblivion as it was a staple of our childhood and a huge upgrade in visuals and questing after spending hundreds of hours in Morrowind.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Deluxe Edition also came with its two story DLCs and with the notorious horse armour, extra side quests for armour and more horse armour. The Shivering Isles expansion alone was well worth the extra price for us, as it remains one of the most fun expansions to date that we played in an Elder Scrolls game. This review is not sponsored; we paid for it while having access to the Xbox Game Pass version. That Steam Deck verified badge was too alluring to pass, and we simply had to test the Steam Deck and Valve’s verification process.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Has Many New Wares

Calling The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered a remaster is really on point with what it is. While there is some debate that this is more than a remaster, it only shows how lacking other remastered games truly are. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is simply put, Oblivion with all its jank, bugs and issues. Broken voice-lines, weird camera angles and utterly game-breaking builds and mechanics. There are no changes to the stories, characters or even the map.

It is a 1:1 of the original game and expansions, with only minor additions like the new armour and horse armour that you can unlock after a very short quest. The only minor gameplay changes are those to scaling, levelling and some combat animations and interactions.

But why do we call it a remaster? Why do we agree that it is truly a remaster and raises the bar? For us, a remake is when you change the narrative, flow or main mechanics that get reworked to a more modern standard. It’s when you change a major part of what made the game with its original release to better fit a new or broader audience. The masterminds behind The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered are Bethesda Game Studios and Virtuos Studios, retaining what made Oblivion while making it a visual marvel.

Trust me, Darling, I’ve Changed

While most lovers of big open-world RPGs have an abusive relationship with being presented with Skyrim on every imaginable device, tempted each time to open their wallets for a dab of nostalgia and being brought back to better times briefly while playing it.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is no different, to be honest. We think it’s here to fill up the gap to The Elder Scrolls VI that was teased in 2018, seven years ago already. That makes us think a 2026 release date is very optimistic, and Bethesda needed something to show for in the meantime.

Does that mean you shouldn’t buy The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered and wait? Actually, no, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is a good game even though the original is considered a classic. Older RPGs offered more freedom and tended to experiment more with certain mechanics. The classic spell-making present in Morrowind and Oblivion was insanely fun to tweak around with, but led to utterly broken builds that ended up destroying the fun sometimes.

If you take it slow and just play The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered as it was intended to be played. Take your time and can overlook the repetitive dungeons, weird loot tables and push from content creators to break your games using easy glitch mechanics. You got a solid classic accessible RPG with fun side-quests, dialogue and creative narratives that will surprise you.

The Daedra Never Looked So Good

The visual upgrade Unreal Engine 5 brings with Ray-Tracing and crisp detail really helps make The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered feel like a new experience. As mentioned earlier, Virtuos and Bethesda Game Studios decided to redo every asset in the game. Creating new looks for all items, characters, races, walls, doors, everything! All while maintaining the 1:1 true nature of Oblivion. The user interface and menus also got an upgrade while still feeling like Oblivion.

Ray-tracing adds much of the awe and beauty when exploring. Caves where rays of light shine through holes in the ceiling. Torches and cauldrons lit aflame cast long shadows or reflect on the damp stones of an abandoned Imperial outpost. Maggots or cockroaches scurry around trash piles, or tiny spiders run along the walls to bring life to scenes and rooms. As you stand atop a mountain, the draw distance has been insanely increased, and you can see the grand tower of the Imperial city kilometres away as the sun sets.

The biggest difference in looks really got the Daedra, they are so detailed and look a lot more horrifying or sexy than we remembered. Why they decided to make Flame Atronachs and Flame companions such thirst traps is a mystery, but it sparked some good memes in the community. Fire-resist potion prices are on the rise due to their new appearance.

A Classic Performance Experience

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered runs like the Classic Oblivion at times. Oblivion in 2006 ran not that well. Whether it was on the Xbox 360 or PC at the time, it had issues just like our hormone-infested teenage bodies. We remember the ending of the main quest not so fondly as it crashed multiple times, and having to replay it 4 times really took the magic, mystery and awe out of it.

The ending of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered ran fine on our PC, RTX5080 – AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D – 32GB DDR5 – NVME SSD, which is a beast. But the open-world sections are plagued with the same issues all UE5 games suffer from. When you travel in the open world, it just stutters, drops frames, freezes for that millisecond that is noticeable and has you sigh slightly. This is not the first time we have seen a truly beautiful game hindered by performance that is caused by the UE5 engine. Lords of the Fallen, which we reviewed, was exactly the same.

How do we know this is due to UE5? Tweaking around with settings and trying to optimise the living hell out of Oblivion is part of the reviewing process. And truly, even on the lowest setting, these micro-stutters kept occurring. Digital Foundry made an in-depth video about the performance issues with much better tools at their disposal than we have. While indoor dungeons ran supremely well and looked insanely good, the open world is where you spend most of the time in the end.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Steam Deck

This section is always hard, as some games are perfectly fine with the limitations of what the Steam Deck has to offer and adapt to the limitations of the device. While for our The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered review, that verified tag has a bigger meaning. For us, it means that it needs to run well and still look good enough for a small handheld screen.

Our go-to comparison game is Elden Ring, which we also reviewed for Xbox. It still looks good, it runs really well while suffering in certain areas, but it isn’t reduced to a blurry mess that barely gets 30 FPS. The compromises you have to make to get The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered running are just too big.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered becomes a blurry mess, and you still get to enjoy the UE5 stutters when traversing the open world in stutters and get to enjoy a slide show on the big fights near Oblivion gates. We definitely do not recommend you purchase The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered intending to only play it on the Steam Deck.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered Conclusion

A superb remaster that brings a lot to the table for its price. Well worth the development time and investment the studios put into it, and truly enjoyable if you are nostalgic or entering Oblivion for the first time.

Having to talk with friends on how they are experiencing their time with the game is also pretty nostalgic, as we recollect quests forgotten or get to relive those wacky side-quests that remain fondly in our memories with a whole new look. If you are on the fence or worried about performance, getting Xbox Game Pass is your cheapest bet or wait for a sale and dive in when you have the time.

As this is a non-sponsored review, we would like to thank you, our readers. Thanks for being here and thanks for staying with us.