He also praised the work that went into the backwards compatibility features of modern Xbox consoles, especially when it came to running titles like the original Xbox’s The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, and Xbox 360’s Fallout 3. “They did an incredible job with backwards compatibility,” he said. “Right now, you can go and play the original Oblivion, you can play Morrowind, you can play Fallout 3. It’s backwards compatible, it’s 4k, and like, great.”

“So that to me was like, job number one – can you play them as they were?”

He also revealed that work on The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered started because the idea of remastering older Bethesda games “kept coming up.” The fact that there hadn’t been a new mainline entry in the fantasy RPG franchise since 2011’s The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim also likely proved to be enough motivation.

“Feeling like this also serves the Elder Scrolls audience that we hadn’t had this, this is good for that audience, and having a single player game and kind of this pocket of time. But there’s a million ways that that could have gone wrong,” he said.

As for the Fallout franchise, a report from last month has indicated that the team working on Fallout 3‘s remaster is aiming for a similar level of polish and quality as The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered. “The game is still in active development, and I understand Bethesda is keen to ensure it’s as well polished as the surprise release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered last year,” wrote The Verge’s Tom Warren.

More recent reports have been adding more fuel to the fire when it comes to a remaster of Fallout 3. Earlier this month, a listing for new McFarlane toys indicated that an “Elite Edition” for Fallout 3 Remastered was planned. This edition would include a 7-inch-tall “T-45B Nuka Cola”. While few details were revealed, the name indicates that it might be a figure of power armor featuring a color palette based on the Nuka Cola brand.

Interestingly, a remaster of Fallout 3 might involve more work than previously thought. Former Bethesda developer Bruce Nesmith spoke about this back in April 2025, noting that the project would require a major revamp of the RPG’s gun-based combat. He referred to Fallout 3‘s gun combat as being “not good,” especially when compared to its contemporaries.

“[Fallout 3 combat] didn’t hold up to shooters at the time,” Nesmith explained. “Also, it’s an RPG shooter; it’s not a run-and-gun shooter. But a lot of work was done on that for Fallout 4. So I anticipate seeing a lot of that work go into it, assuming they’re doing the same thing.”

The video, which you can check out below, features quite a few developers that had previously worked on Oblivion, who have still stuck around with the company and worked on more recent titles. The old documentary that they are watching even has their past selves talking about the development of the game, with their modern day-selves mentioning how they didn’t know that they would go on to work on games like Fallout 3 and Skyrim at the time.

Former Bethesda executive Pete Hines also spoke about how Microsoft presenting The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion on stage during its Xbox 360 reveal was a big deal. “This was the first time we ever had that kind of spotlight,” reminisced Hines. “Nobody ever put us on the stage before.”

“It was as awkward as I thought,” said Todd Howard when asked how he felt about watching the documentary twenty years after being a part of Oblivion‘s development team. “In so many ways, when I see [the documentary] and look in the room, it feels the same.”

Bethesda had revealed last week that development on The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered had only begun four years before its release. In a post on social media, the company thanked its fans, as well as its development partner Virtuos.

“When we started this project in 2021, we aimed to breathe new life into a chapter of The Elder Scrolls that set the path for so many of our games after it,” wrote the company. “We never wanted to remake it – but remaster it – where the original game was there as you remember playing it, but seen through today’s technology.”

The company also went into detail about some of the changes that had been made to the Remastered release over the original 2006 version of Oblivion, which includes new animations, art, and even some gameplay enhancements.

“We were so fortunate to work with an unbelievable team and partners at Virtuos,” posted Bethesda. “Even though we had worked together before, we had never attempted something on this scale. Every piece of art, animation, special effects, and part of the world would be remastered.”

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was released just last week, and is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Priced at $49.99, with a Deluxe Edition priced at $59.99, the game is also available through PC and Xbox Game Pass. For more details, check out our review. You can also check out everything you need to know about the game.

In the meantime, you might also be interested in the thoughts of other veterans of the gaming industry, such as former Blizzard president Mike Ybarra who believes that, even with the Remastered release, Oblivion can’t really hold a candle to more modern RPGs like FromSoftware’s Elden Ring when it comes to combat and the sense of exploration offered by current games.

Don’t Grind Out Individual Skills Early On

Since enemies still scale to your overall level in the remaster, it’s best to avoid grinding out skills that won’t help much in combat (like acrobatics). Every 10 skill ups grants you a level up, so choose what to train wisely or enemies will outperform you in the scaling ‘arms race’. The remaster lets players choose any attribute to level up regardless of class, so it’s possible to out-power enemies just by boosting Strength and Endurance. You can also just avoid leveling entirely by becoming an eternal insomniac. No really, just don’t rest and level scaling will never be an issue. Of course, avoiding leveling up forfeits your ability to progress your attributes like Strength and Endurance, so maybe that’s not the best option.

Raise Five Combat Skills Every Level

Another more commonsense tactic to make sure enemies don’t overpower you through scaling is to increase five combat skills every level. Doing this will scale your fighting skill rank (the Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert, and Master ranks) in parallel with enemy soul class ranks. The specific skills that are useful in this situation are Blade, Blunt, Hand-To-Hand, Armorer, Block, and Heavy Armor. But you don’t need to constantly fight stuff to level these fighting skills; money can do the trick with the right trainers. There’s a Heavy Armor trainer smack dab in the Imperial City. Head to the City Market District and talk to Varnado at The Best Defense store to get started on your road to heavy armor mastery, if that’s a combat skill you want to focus on.

Always Keep Repair Hammers on You

Even if you’re not focused about raising Armorer skill, keeping a batch of repair hammers with you is smart. This is because, unlike Skyrim, armor and weapons degrade with use and break completely after a while. Consistent weapon and armor repair is crucial in Oblivion.

Go Anywhere

Now that you have some repair hammers with you, it’s time to choose a direction and explore! In Oblivion, it’s perfectly safe just to set off in any direction without the threat of level 100 dragons or the like. Since every enemy scales to the your overall level, there aren’t any super high level areas that kick you in the teeth (until you activate oblivion gates).

Oblivion Gates

Speaking of oblivion gates, this game has a soft ‘point of no return’ of sorts. Once the ‘Dagon Quest’ is initiated, those pesky oblivion gates open up all over Cyrodill, causing quite the blemish on the lush, and slightly more desaturated, landscape. These gates will persist until the main quest is finished, so it’s best to hold off on the Dagon Quest until you’re well equipped and ready to deal with their ubiquitous presence.

Customize Your Class for the Best Optimization

If you want to avoid running into the level scaling problem early, it’s best to make your own custom class. Standard classes are built to level fast before receiving the full bonuses to your targeted attributes.  While there’s a wide array of options that can yield effective results, raising Endurance early on is especially useful as it multiplies HP increase every level up. You want to ever level up to  health as much as possible, so targeting skills tied to Endurance is the best way to get that.

Join a Guild for Free Bed, Trainers, and Various Cheap Vendors

There are five main guilds available to join and rank up throughout Cyrodill. Being a member of any of these guilds supplies you with a free bed, cheaper vendors, and in most cases, a lot of supplies and adventuring experience. The Thieves Guild can be found when investigating the Gray Fox within the Waterfront District of the Imperial City. The Dark Brotherhood is perhaps the easiest one to get into….if you’re a murderer, that is. And the Fighters and Mages guilds have to be entered through other cities such as Chorral. The next point covers the fifth guild.

Do the Arena Questline for Some of the Best Early Money in the Game

The Arena is located right in the heart of the Imperial City. Just head on in and start taking on bouts to get some great early money and combat experience. This faction is especially recommended early on because the rewards don’t scale with the overall player level like other quest lines. Oh, and if you’re not a fighter, don’t worry. You can join, freely take weapons and armor from the racks, sell them in the city and never look back again to get some free cash without swinging a sword.

Join the Mages Guild To Create Weapons and Spells for Good Early Game Money

The Mages Guild has loads of free equipment lying around for apprentices to take. Finding alchemy equipment such as a mortar and pestle is easy once you’ve joined a guild hall. Furthermore, every guild hall houses many spell merchants, some which sell some of the best spells in the game.

Use the Mages Guild to Triple Enchant Weapons for High Damage Hits

Enchanting becomes available once you unlock the Arcane University within the Mages Guild quest chain. It’s a very open-ended method of adding special effects and spells to your armor and weapons. Enchanting your weapon with fire, frost, and shock each with lower points, is more powerful over time than enchanting a weapon with just one effect with very high points. For armor, it’s highly recommended you use the resist magic enchantment so that the particularly difficult daedra within the oblivion gates don’t pose too much of a threat.

Summon Monsters for Easy Combat Experience

Whether you’re a mage who wants to get some quick and easy strength skills up to par or a fighter seeking a risk-free method of training, Conjuration magic is a great option. Any new player can grab a basic Summon Scamp spell in a shop in the Imperial City Market District. Just head to Edgar’s Discount Spells shops and train your combat prowess against your summoned scamp for easy and quick experience. If you pick a Dark Elf race for your character, you get a built-in “Summon Ancestor” spell from the get-go, though you can only use it once a day.

Buy the Dremora Lord Spell Before It’s Too Late

The Dremora Lord conjuration spell disappears after the “A Plot Revealed” quest in the mages guild questline; buy it from Volanaro in the Bruma Mages Guild before then. For those particular interested going down the route of Conjuration, there’s a missable Dremora Lord spell within the Mages Guild questline. Volanaro sells this powerful spell in the Bruma mages guild branch. You must buy it before the “A Plot Revealed” quest or it, and Volanaro, will be gone forever.

There’s much more to explore and min-max within the wide world that is Cyrodill, but these 12 are ones that helped us early on in our own adventures.

Either way, there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to the many visual and technical improvements that Oblivion Remastered makes over the original game, which, incidentally, is exactly what we’re here to do. Join us as we take a look at several different areas where the newly released RPG touts notable technical and visual enhancements over its source material.

LIGHTING

This, of course, is one of the most noticeable and prominent changes that Oblivion Remastered has made on the visual front, and you notice it pretty much the moment you begin playing (and especially as soon as you step out of the tutorial dungeon and out into the wide open world). The original Oblivion had a rather garish, over the top look to it, a lot of which was down to its lighting and its excessive use of bloom.

That, thankfully, is no longer the case here. Lighting in Oblivion Remastered is much more grounded and realistic. With better, more dynamic lighting and consequent improvements to shadows and reflections, the remaster’s world looks a lot sharper and much more gorgeous. Atmosphere and immersion tend to be key priorities for any Elder Scrolls game, and Oblivion Remastered benefits visibly with both thanks to its changes.

ENVIRONMENTS

And here’s where Oblivion Remastered boasts the biggest of its enhancements, to the extent that, as mentioned previously, it is effectively a full and proper remake. All of the assets and models have essentially been reworked from scratch or, if nothing else, given massive uplifts, which means the game’s environments end up looking absolutely stunning, especially when pit directly against the original game.

Oblivion’s Cyrodiil has a lot of greenery to look at, but thanks to the improved lighting and shadows, more obsessive level of detail, sharper textures, comprehensively better looking water and water effects, and what have you, its environments take on a much more vibrant and at least somewhat more varied look. Granted, you’re still in the same map and the same locations, which means environments largely have the same visual style as the original game. They do look much more alive, however, which is what you’d want for a re-release of a nearly two decade old game.

DRAW DISTANCE AND WORLD DENSITY

As a 2006 game, the original Oblivion’s draw distances were understandably had pretty lackluster, but this is another area where the remake (or remaster) sees radical improvements. Oblivion Remastered’s greater draw distances allow your surroundings to vastly stretch out and offer up some truly stunning vistas. For instance, the moment you step out into the world for the first time, it’s hard not to be impressed by the distant skyline of Imperial City, or the mountains looming against the sky in the background.

Environments are also just much denser in Oblivion Remastered than they were in the original. The telltale Xbox 360 era lack of vegetation in the original game’s world is a thing of the past, with the remaster instead bringing its locations to life with dense vegetation, forests, environmental objects, effects, and what have you.

CHARACTERS

Character models, faces, and animations were pretty rough and janky in the original Oblivion even back when it first came out, while by today’s standards, they feel downright ancient. Naturally, this was one of the areas most desperately in need of changes, and Oblivion Remastered successfully makes those in abundance. Faces are much sharper and bear much greater details, with hair and fur looking much improved and, as a result, different races now looking much more authentic. The humans also don’t look like the walking nightmares that they almost all invariably looked like in the original game, which is also a bonus. Animations, lip syncing, and facial movements have also received upgrades, which, combined with at least partially re-recorded dialogue (at least in some instances) makes for characters and NPCs that don’t feel as static and downright glitchy as they so often did in the 2006 title.

CLOTHING AND ARMOUR

It’s easy to gloss over how much better the clothes and armour worn by characters throughout all of Cyrodiil look in Oblivion Remastered, but viewed side by side, those changes become much more apparent. Though the core designs in general have remain largely unchanged (for the most part), with the additional level of detail and little flourishes they now boast, a lot of these assets can easily pass off as entirely fresh. More detailed stitching, realistic folds and creases, and improved animations paired with movement are some of the ways that Oblivion Remastered tweaks the clothing and armour you see throughout the game.

LOADING

Like the original game, Oblivion Remastered still doesn’t present a fully seamless open world (something that Bethesda fans are obviously unfortunately used to at this point). That means there are parts of the map (like, say, pretty much all indoor environments) that are instanced and separated from the larger world by loading screens. Thankfully, however, these loading screens are pretty brief, and even at the worst of times, they tend to take about 6-8 seconds, while on average, they are usually even quicker.

CAMERA

The camera has seen instantly noticeable tweaks in in Oblivion Remastered, regardless of whether you’re playing first or third person. During gameplay, animations feel weightier and slicker, though on the storytelling front, with conversations and cutscenes, the changes are less prominent. You still get the cartoonish zoom, you still get the camera locked to whatever character you’re speaking to while they look directly into your soul- all of that stuff just looks less goofy now thanks to the improved visuals and the radically better looking and animated characters and character faces.

WHERE DOES IT STILL NEEDS IMPROVEMENTS?

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is obviously a huge and undeniably high effort enhancement of the original game, and it deserves a ton of credit not only for the scale that it makes its many changes at, but also how well it does so. Is it a spotless experience though? Unsurprisingly, no, it’s not. You still get instances of clipped assets and unloaded textures, and the performance can be a bit jittery from time to time (though that will obviously vary from hardware to hardware). There are times when you can definitely see the bones of the much older game that this shiny new remaster has been built on top of, so there are still ways that it feels a bit aged that perhaps an even more ambitious remake could have been able to address. Even in its current form, however, Oblivion Remastered is a hugely impressive effort by Virtuos and Bethesda.

In his post, Ybarra says that he doesn’t believe that older RPGs like The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, even with a fresh coat of paint with the Remastered release, don’t quite compare favourably to more modern RPGs like FromSoftware’s Elden Ring. Rather, he believes that the bar of quality for a modern RPG is too high for an older title to be able to surpass.

“I’m skeptical about 20 year old remasters,” wrote Ybarra on X. “What was once fantastic, now remastered, will never hold up against modern masterpieces like Elden Ring. The bar has simply moved from safe open world RPGs to what Elden Ring brought us all. I would love to be proven wrong. But I’m not.”

Responding to other posts, Ybarra also wrote about how he believes a remake would be more suitable than a remastered release. “I’d be all in on a real remake,” he wrote. “Remaster is my point and why I’m iffy on this. Everything I read says ‘remaster’.”

When the point of a remastered release being able to tap into nostalgia is brought up, however, Ybarra mentions that he believes that the nostalgia factor is quite limited since the industry has seen plenty of remakes and remasters having been released already.

“I hear you, but I think we’ve had so many ‘remasters’ that nostalgia is limited,” Ybarra responded to a post about nostalgia allowing an older title to compete with more modern releases. “I could be wrong. But I think the gaming community wants fresh and new more than ever.”

When it comes to bringing up Elden Ring as a point of comparison, Ybarra also mentions that he doesn’t strictly mean to compare The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered with FromSoftware’s title in terms of it just being a Souls-like game. Rather, he is focusing more on the sense of discovery and the deep combat system offered by Elden Ring.

“I don’t mean soulslike, I mean the discovery, the classes, the combat system, etc,” he wrote. “Just a new level of quality.”

While Ybarra may have a point about the gaming audience wanting more fresh titles rather than just remakes and remasters of older games, the points he makes does miss out on the idea of bringing older games to a newer audience.

Before the remastered release, Oblivion was an incredibly difficult game to get running properly on a modern PC since it requires quite a few community-made patches to fix game-breaking bugs. Console players, on the other hand, couldn’t experience Oblivion anyway since it was only released on the Xbox 360.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered was released on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S as a shadowdrop earlier this week. The game is also available on PC and Xbox Game Pass. Here is everything you need to know about the game.

The remaster is developed from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5, with every asset remade. It features new dialogue lines, revamped combat, new lighting, and so much more in terms of improvements. Best of all, you can finally sprint with character locomotion redone from scratch. However, Virtuos retained everything that made the original unique (including the creepy dialogue, mini-games and more).

If that wasn’t enough, it includes all DLC, including the Shivering Isles and Knights of the Nine expansions. The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is also available on Game Pass for PC, consoles and cloud. Stay tuned for more details on the remaster.

The website first broke details about the remaster’s alleged improvements, so there may be some validity to this. While the remaster is reportedly coming to Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC, it’s also playable on day one for Game Pass.

Other notable leaks recently include screenshots highlighting the overhauled visuals and the apparent file size on PC, which is close to 121 GB. One rumor even alleged that the remaster includes all the DLC.

The livestream is scheduled for 8 AM PST today, so stay tuned for more details. You can check out all the rumored features of the remaster, including gameplay improvements, here, and why we’re excited to revisit Cyrodiil here.

What else could it be but the remaster’s announcement? Based on reports thus far, it’s possible that it could launch shortly after the livestream, if not later this week. Stay tuned for updates.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is rumored to be a significant revamp over the original, developed on Unreal Engine 5 from the ground up by Virtuos. It’s coming to Xbox, PlayStation, and PC (alongside Game Pass), and offers improvements to stamina, combat, archery, stealth, and more.

Recent rumors indicate it includes all the DLC, like Shivering Isles and the legendary horse armor. It’s allegedly quite hefty on PC, demanding nearly 121 GB of installation space. Check out our feature for other reported details you should know.

Hearing it on “very good authority,” Cognito reported that Shivering Isles and horse armor are included. It’s thus safe to include the Knights of the Nine, the other paid expansion, and content packs like faction-themed housing, additional spells, and a free dungeon.

Whether Virtuos will add more content on top of this remains to be seen. However, reports indicate a complete visual overhaul courtesy of being remade in Unreal Engine 5. Combat has also seen improvements like hit reactions, archery improvements, less susceptibility to getting knocked down on zero stamina, and more.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion remaster/remake is allegedly dropping today, though other rumors indicate it’s sometime this week. Stay tuned in the meantime and check out its alleged PC size here.

Though the launcher is unknown, Kran, who is also part of the same group, the remaster launches later today. Previous rumors indicated that the remaster would arrive this week, so the jury is still out. Judging by screenshots leaked last week, the title is closer to a remake with overhauled textures, models, and more.

If rumors of its development on Unreal Engine 5 and that it includes all DLC (Shivering Isles, Knights of the Nine, the infamous horse armor, etc.) are true, the large size makes sense. As always, stay tuned for updates.

The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered is reportedly coming to PlayStation, Xbox and PC with a supposed day-one launch on Game Pass. Check out our feature for everything you should know.