Bethesda Explains Skyrim Remaster: Oblivion Remaster Work Would Be “Mountainous”

Though the news of The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition was pretty cool at first, there’s been a strong contingent of fans wondering why Bethesda just doesn’t remaster Oblivion. Why go back to the well with Skyrim?

As it turns out, remastering Oblivion would take a significant amount of work. Speaking to GameSpot, Bethesda VP of marketing and PR Pete Hines said, “Oblivion is 10 years old, so the amount of work for that engine and that tech to bring it and remaster it and do all the things we wanted to do was significant. It’s not impossible, but it was mountainous. It was either like, go make an entire new game or do Skyrim.”

Some of the porting work for Skyrim had already been completed as well thanks to an exercise completed by the developer over the years. “It just seemed to be a much closer path. It was the most successful game that we had ever done before Fallout 4, so it already had a huge audience.”

As for how Skyrim mods would work on PC, Hines said, “The idea is that it’s exactly the same way [as Fallout 4]. Skyrim Special Edition on PC is free only if you own Skyrim and all of the DLC… It also has a new creation kit. It doesn’t just work with all of the existing mods; they will have to take that mod and run it through the new creation kit and publish it to Bethesda Net. Then that would be available on console.”

The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition is out on October 28th for Xbox One, PC and PS4. PC users who already own the game and all it’s DLC will be able to upgrade for free.