Oblivion Remaster

 

I recently heard about Oblivion Remastered being released. This caught me completely off guard and I was not prepared for it. So what did I do? I immediately purchased it, and now I am going to tell you how I feel about it.

Morrowind and Oblivion were, for me, peak action RPG games that I sunk hundreds of hours into when they first came out. I was really young then though, and I don’t think I really appreciated what those games meant at the the time. Gaming now is so much different, there is not many games anymore that have the same level of detail, same level of environmental exploration, or same level of character development. Gaming industry seems so focused on immediate and repeatable dopamine hits, and on money.

My first thought was why is there no physical edition?! I still try to get all my games on physical copies. I know its unrealistic now a days, but I do try. I would rather have a hard copy that I can keep forever, that has the ability to be resold, than just buying a license to use. But maybe I am just an old man with old ideologies.

My next thought, “Fuck. I have to go through the tutorial dungeon.” Which actually turned out to be fine, because I haven’t played Oblivion in a long enough time that it wasn’t too boring.

The game appears to be 100% identical to the original but with improvements. Subtle things though, like harvesting plants. Harvesting plants is now 100% success rate, cursor no longer needs to be 100% on the plant, plants have a harvest animation, and they disappear so you know when they are harvested. A lot of this kept me from really diving into alchemy to thoroughly in the original games.

The leveling mechanics changed quite a bit too. Used to get a multiplier based on what skills you used during that level. This made it very difficult to get the max skill ups every level up. You could get as little as 3 skills points and as many as 15 skill points. Remastered did away with that “bonus” system and just gives you 12 points each level, no questions asked. I don’t know how to feel about this. It does make leveling easier and more consistent, also keeps your character from getting severely under leveled from those levels where you accidentally train only one skill.

The big change is obviously the graphics, and holy hell this game is beautiful. I think they have re-textured everything and have redone all the graphics into Unreal Engine 5. I was standing on a mountain and was able to see three cities in the distance. The graphics overhaul has really given a new life to this old and tired game.

I really hope that they do this to Morrowind as well. Morrowind is my all time favorite and it desperately needs some upgrade love. I know that there is the Skywind project going on but that has been going on since February 7, 2012 (according to Gemini) and I am not getting any younger. Although, I just checked out some of their most recent work and its looking very exciting!

So at the end of the day, I am extremely happy with my purchase of Oblivion Remastered and I do recommend trying it out if you can. :)