When Bethesda lastly revealed Oblivion Remastered earlier this week, I may hardly imagine my eyes. In some way 2006’s journey to Tamriel, recognized for its bizarre, potato-faced characters and smeary stretches of low-res verdant grasslands, is now the best-looking Elder Scrolls recreation ever made. A protracted historical past of HD overhauls has conditioned me to anticipate underwhelming outcomes from remasters – Mass Impact Legendary Version and Darkish Souls Remastered are barely indistinguishable from their Xbox 360 mother and father, for example – and so to see the Imperial Metropolis that I explored practically 20 years in the past rendered in Unreal Engine 5 with ray tracing was momentarily unbelievable. Not solely that, but the sport has been enhanced with upgrades to fight, RPG techniques, and a multitude of different particulars. All that thought of, I questioned if Bethesda and the undertaking’s developer, Virtuos, had bought the title improper. Certainly that is Oblivion Remake, not remastered?
It seems I wasn’t alone in that pondering. Quite a few followers have declared it a remake, and even Bruce Nesmith, the senior recreation designer on the unique Oblivion undertaking, has mentioned “I’m undecided [the word] remaster really does it justice.” But whereas I doubted Bethesda and Virtuos’ remaster declare at first, after enjoying a number of hours it’s really fairly clear – Oblivion Remastered could appear like a remake but it performs like a remaster.
There are many the reason why Oblivion seems like a remake and they are often simply summed up: Virtuos has accomplished a big quantity of labor, with “each single asset redesigned from scratch.” By way of what you bodily see on display, it’s all model new. Each tree, each sword, each crumbling fort. This implies Oblivion lives as much as fashionable graphical expectations. Not solely is it superbly textured, it additionally has attractive lighting and a entire new physics system that ensures each arrow and weapon strike impacts the world realistically. And whereas all who you meet within the recreation are recognisably the identical people you crossed paths with again in 2006, each single NPC mannequin is a model new creation. It’s a vastly spectacular overhaul that rejects the thought of constructing one thing that “seems such as you bear in mind” and as a substitute goals for one thing that’s nice by 2025 requirements. It’s the most effective a Bethesda Recreation Studios RPG has ever seemed, and if I had seen it earlier than the remaster rumours started I’d in all probability have believed that it was The Elder Scrolls 6.
It’s not simply visuals, although. Fight has been overhauled, and so swinging a longsword not looks like fencing with a balloon. The third individual digital camera is now really purposeful because of the addition of a reticule. Each menu, from the search journal to dialogue to the lockpicking and persuasion minigames, have all had refreshed interfaces. The authentic, horrific levelling system has been changed with a way more logical hybrid of Oblivion and Skyrim’s approaches. And lastly you may dash. With so many visible and gameplay upgrades, certainly we’re firmly in remake territory?
The huge problem right here isn’t a lot one in every of know-how, recreation adjustments, or undertaking scope, but semantics. There aren’t any industry-defined parameters for remakes and remasters, and publishers recklessly throw the phrases round. Rockstar’s “Definitive Version” remasters of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy are unmistakably blocky PlayStation 2-era video games with upscaled textures and fashionable lighting results. However the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, additionally branded a remaster, sports activities all-new graphical property and appears like a recreation from the fashionable period. Issues are even muddier after we get to remakes: Bluepoint’s Shadow of the Colossus and Demon’s Souls each rebuild their respective video games from the bottom up, but are trustworthy, 1:1 recreations of the unique experiences. Resident Evil 2, in the meantime, sticks more-or-less to the unique blueprint when it comes to construction, but utterly redesigns the best way you work together with the survival horror icon. After which we’ve got Ultimate Fantasy 7 Remake and Rebirth, which radically overhaul the design, script, and even story beats of the unique video games. All 5 of those examples are thought of remakes, but there’s little or no shared philosophy between them.
At one cut-off date, the overall consensus appeared to be that if the sport had been rebuilt from scratch in a fashionable engine, it was thought of a remake. Remasters, in the meantime, have been extra restricted upgrades carried out inside the scope of the sport’s authentic know-how. Such a definition is clearly changing into quick outdated, although. At present, it appears extra becoming to say that a remaster is a graphical overhaul that preserves the design of the unique recreation (bar a few high quality of life gameplay upgrades), whereas a remake redesigns a recreation from scratch. Such a definition would “downgrade” Demon’s Souls and the upcoming Steel Gear Strong: Delta to remasters, and make sure the remake time period solely applies to video games that genuinely really feel like new takes on outdated concepts.
So if we settle for these proposed definitions, is that this new model of Oblivion a remake or a remaster? As anybody who’s performed even simply an hour of it may well plainly see, Oblivion Remastered completely has the proper title. Sure, these new property and Unreal Engine 5 ray tracing results make it look model new, but beneath that glowing pores and skin is a assortment of 20-year-old bones, organs, and muscle tissues, all roughly stapled and taped collectively in that unmistakably Bethesda manner. Because the studio defined, “We checked out each half and thoroughly upgraded it. But most of all, we by no means wished to alter the core. It’s nonetheless a recreation from a earlier period and will really feel like one.”
The hallmarks of that earlier period are in all places. It is within the loading screens that conceal behind nearly each single door. It’s within the baffling persuasion minigame that also, regardless of the interface improve, barely is smart and feels completely disconnected to your conversations. It’s within the design of the cities, which have the simplistic design of theatre stage units relatively than the complicated, knotty preparations of genuine inhabitants centres. It’s within the NPCs, who wander like awkward automatons and speak with all of the grace of an AI educated on a “how one can be society” guide. It’s within the fight, which even after a vital improve nonetheless feels indifferent and unwieldy. And it is within the lengthy listing of bugs and glitches that also stay, reverently preserved within the title of upkeeping the unique’s quirky allure.
Simply a couple of months in the past we have been handled to Obsidian’s Avowed, which provided a imaginative and prescient of the long run for a few of The Elder Scrolls’ key constructing blocks. Its kinetic fight is virtually space-age in comparison with Oblivion Remastered’s, whereas its method to rewarding exploration makes the rolling hills and grotty caves of Cyrodiil really feel very a lot a relic of yesteryear. Such fashionable techniques assist put Oblivion Remastered into context. That’s to not say that this revised traditional has nothing to supply in 2025 – removed from it. The magic of its world nonetheless sparkles brightly, its Rohan-like open fields stuffed with dozens of mysteries and oddities. A lot of its ambition stays intact even two generations later, such because the dynamic goblin wars that wage between its NPC clans, or the narratively-satisfying questing construction that is still head-and-shoulders above Skyrim’s many “go to a draugr-filled dungeon” missions. Lots of its old-school concepts round participant freedom really feel refreshing in an age the place we now reject the hand-holding nature of video games from the 2010s. However the granular particulars of Oblivion are clearly gray and lengthy within the tooth. There’s no finesse in its dialogue, nor magnificence in the best way its techniques interconnect. And the extent design, be it cave, fort, or the cursed lands of Oblivion itself, feels positively historical. A remake’s job could be to replace all these concepts, but this undertaking is all about reliving the outdated. As such: Oblivion Remastered.
Video video games have traditionally leant on terminology from different mediums. On the planet of films, remakes are model new productions with contemporary casts, crews, scripts, and units. Remasters are current movies which can be enhanced so far as attainable to match fashionable image high quality requirements. But an outdated movie remains to be an outdated movie; the 4K restorations of Jaws and The Godfather look unimaginable, but they’re clearly merchandise of the Nineteen Seventies. You possibly can see it within the course, the supply, the consequences work. It’s within the texture of the movie grain. Oblivion is like these blu-ray restorations of traditional movies. It pushes visible high quality so far as it probably can, which because of the extra malleable medium of video video games means recreating the undertaking’s “exterior” in a model new engine. But beneath that shell, Oblivion is unmistakably a product of the 2000s. Alex Murphy, govt producer at Virtuos, had the proper analogy throughout the reveal stream: “We consider the Oblivion recreation engine because the mind and Unreal 5 because the physique. The mind drives all of the world logic and gameplay and the physique brings to life the expertise that gamers have liked for nearly 20 years.”
Oblivion Remastered is precisely what it says it’s, and that shouldn’t be seen as downplaying its achievements. As an alternative of insisting that it is a remake, we should always really be utilizing it as the standard bar by which we decide remasters from different titan-scale AAA corporations. That is what Mass Impact Legendary Version ought to have been, relatively than a cleaned-up re-release. That is what Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy ought to have been relatively than an extremely cynical-feeling money seize. As a result of there’s nothing cynical about Oblivion Remastered. It seems like a remake crafted by passionate arms but performs like a remaster preserved by loving followers, and that’s precisely the way it needs to be.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Senior Options Editor.