Review - The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion Remastered

“The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion Remastered” is a 2025 remaster (go figure) of the 2006 action RPG "The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion." Oblivion came out originally on Xbox 360 and PC, which I had neither at the time. It came out later on PS3, but for whatever reason I never bought it. Oblivion Remastered was my first opportunity to play through this classic on my own.

But wait. This is a remaster of a nearly 20 year old game, the fourth of a pretty popular series. I feel like I need to roll it back and give some context on the series as a whole, in addition to my own personal context. I've often said that Morrowind was my first Elder Scrolls game, but that's perhaps a bit misleading. Morrowind was the first game in the series that I personally owned. Oblivion was the first one that I played, and I didn't buy Morrowind until after I had played Oblivion on a friend's 360. We were in Kohl's sometime in 2006 or 2007 and saw Morrowind for the original Xbox on a shelf with an eclectic selection of games for sale. It was cheap, and if I couldn't play Oblivion on my PS3, I could at least try out its predecessor on my Xbox.

Alas, I never bought Oblivion on PS3, even after it did get ported. Much later, it was gifted to me on Steam (more on that in a bit). However, The Elder Scrolls V - Skyrim came out before I was able to procure my own copy of Oblivion. After Skyrim came out, obviously, nobody was playing Oblivion anymore. I pre-ordered Skyrim and picked it up during a midnight release, so I assumed the Oblivion ship had sailed.

I played a TON of Skyrim. When I picked it up at release on PS3, I played through to completion with the platinum trophy. In February 2024, I picked it up from the public library on Nintendo Switch. I got a decent chunk in, but didn't finish the main quest. In January 2025, after I got my PS4 working again, I got Skyrim Special Edition from the library and started over.

While I was playing on PS4, there was a Steam sale where I snagged Skyrim Special Edition for $3.99. Yes, I was in the midst of playing it on another platform, but I figured I may as well actually buy it again rather than relying on the library. Besides, I knew I would eventually get a Steam Deck and I could play it with mods on there. I finished the main quest and quite a bit of side content, but I got burned out after trying to get all the Daedric artifacts and realizing that the NPC to start one quest had died in a vampire attack. I decided to put it down for a bit after that.

Around this time, I decided to see if I could get Oblivion running on my Surface Pro 7. As much as I had played Skyrim multiple times across multiple platforms, I had only played Oblivion occasionally on my friend's 360. If I owned it on Steam and my Surface could technically run Skyrim (though not very well), I figured it might be worth trying out Oblivion.

I installed Oblivion, and I expected Valve magic to just immediately let the game work with the PowerA Nintendo Switch USB controller I had been using for Stardew Valley and other Steam games. Unfortunately, it didn't just work. Furthermore, it seemed Oblivion on PC had NO native controller support. Weird, since it was released on consoles at the same time, but whatever. I started looking into my options.

Various Reddit and Steam threads existed from users with the same problem. They wanted to play Oblivion on PC, but they wanted to use a controller. Turns out, there were mods that implemented controller support and cleaned up the UI a bit. That sounded like exactly what I needed!

In particular, NorthernUI seemed to be the most commonly mentioned mod to add controller support. The UI adjustments I could take or leave, but I really wanted to be able to use a traditional gamepad. I got the mod installed and running with very little effort (thank you, Vortex), and managed to launch the game.

When the main menu opened, I was able to navigate with the USB controller. Success! I resumed the save file that I had started with a touchpad and keyboard and started to play around with the controls. I could move around and perform actions, but something just felt... off. Movement was fine in compass directions, but anything diagonal was much slower. Weapons didn't seem to work right. The controller did work, technically, but there was no way I could play a full game like that.

I decided to hang it up for the time being. Playing with a USB controller hooked up to a Surface Pro 7 was janky enough as is. I could revisit later after I got my Steam Deck and see if it worked better there. With some of the fancy controller mapping that Deck users could pull off, maybe it would work better.

Soon after I put the original Oblivion on hiatus, I started hearing murmurings of a modern remake or remaster of the game. According to a super detailed timeline by Reddit user /u/Crusader3456, the earliest leaks came out in June of 2023. January-February of 2025 is when they seemed to crop back up a little more visibly, and that's when I took notice.

None of the leaks could point to a definitive source, but they all seemed REALLY confident it was coming. I was particularly interested, since I didn't have much success with the original, but a remaster or remake was bound to have controller support and take advantage of modern hardware much better. I might get to experience Oblivion after all.

By mid-April 2025, leaks seemed all but certain. They pointed mostly definitively to a remaster rather than a remake, suggesting Unreal Engine 5 graphics on top of Bethesda's Creation Engine for the game logic. April 21st seemed to be what the internet landed on for a launch or at least the official announcement.

There was an announcement, but it wasn't quite the "here's the game" mic drop. All Bethesda social media simply pointed out April 22 at 11am. This could be anything from "we ARE working on it, but it isn't finished" all the way to "here's the game." I wanted to expect that it was the game launch, but I had to anticipate that it realistically might not be done yet.

The next day, the internet was simply buzzing. Reddit was full of posts, group chats were lighting up, and even my coworkers were ignoring work to discuss the upcoming announcement. When the official reveal stream began at 11, I was locked in.

There was a lot of talk about the process of working on the original Oblivion, as well as the cultural impact that it had. It was genuinely informative, and honestly entertaining to watch. At roughly 33 minutes into the stream, we got the confirmation from Tom Mustaine that everyone was waiting for: "the Oblivion remaster will be available... today."

I was so excited. I kept refreshing Steam until I saw Oblivion Remastered (as it was officially called) on the home screen of the Steam store. Immediately, I bought the deluxe edition for $59.99 and didn't even think twice about it. Did they charge me for horse armor? Absolutely. Is that the same thing that people got mad about before? Yes, it is. Am I mad about it? Not one bit. First "new" game I've bought in a long time, especially at full price, and I have no regrets.

I kicked off the download to my Steam Deck and kept watching the stream. Unfortunately, whether it was an IP issue, something with the Steam store, or just my hardware, the download took forever. The game was in my library by 11:26, but I didn't actually get to start playing until 3:13, nearly 4 hours later. Annoying first world problems, and there's a case to be made for game discs and cartridges with the actual game content on them, but this isn't the time or the place. I finally had Oblivion.

While I was waiting for the game to download, I looked over the achievements. Nothing skill based or weird individual tasks that you'd never think to do. Roughly 10 achievements per guild, plus main story quest and Shivering Isles (with 2 for dementia/mania). Literally just beating the game fully would be enough to get all achievements. Sick!

I tentatively planned to finish all of the story content and guilds first, then finish with Shivering Isles. I've heard nothing but praise for it, and I figured I could save the best for last. Unfortunately, I hated it. The rest of the game was great for the most part, and I really enjoyed it. With Shivering Isles, I couldn't wait to be finished. The characters were uninteresting and the quests were boring and repetitive runfetchdat tasks that became excruciating because most of the dungeons were essentially huge mazes with a bunch of similar looking halls. Wanted to get that out of the way first, because those complaints are solely about Shivering Isles and not the rest of the game. Your results may vary.

Start to finish, the whole game with all achievements took me 81 hours and I finished roughly 4 weeks after it launched. The best compliment that I can offer is how faithfully it is to the original game. This is certainly a remaster and not a remake, as it is the same game with a fresh coat of paint. If you loved the original Oblivion as so many did, this is basically the same game but better looking.

Story -8/10

Without spoiling anything, the story is a really interesting response to the assassination of Emperor Uriel Septim VII. You, the player character, are an unnamed prisoner who happens to be the destined Hero of Kvatch and essentially all of Tamriel. Through the entire game, you are battling forces from the plane of Oblivion. The whole thing is very cinematic and I think it's done really well.

Outside the main story, there are several guilds to join and advance in, as is typical of Elder Scrolls games. Some of these are fun, notably the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood. I didn't love the Fighters Guild, especially when one location doesn't have any tasks for you, so you have to go all the way across the province to get something from another office. Regardless, I think they add a lot of compelling content to the game, and it would feel incomplete to leave a guild unfinished.

One big complaint that I have is how isolated the guilds feel. I started the Thieves Guild after I completely finished the Dark Brotherhood, but there were frequent comments about not killing marks because "this isn't the Dark Brotherhood." It just felt like no NPC or questline acknowledged the reputation that you would DEFINITELY have gained from some of the other content. I realize that technically, it would be difficult to pull off convincingly, but anything would've been better than nothing.

General Gameplay - 9/10

Like Skyrim that came after (before?) it, Oblivion Remastered is really fun to play. Simply exploring Cyrodiil and seeing what the world has to offer is enough to keep it interesting. There are various caves and dungeons that (in contrast to Skyrim) repopulate every few days. Even if you've cleared a cave of enemies and looted it for all it was worth when you first escaped the sewer, you can go back again for stronger enemies and better spoils. It really keeps the game fresh.

The map and menus are busy, but I think they're as optimized as they probably could be for the most part. In addition to the full map, you can zoom in to see a local map in your current location. I wish the game did a better job of presenting that option, but it is a very useful and convenient tool to have when you're looking for a particular path or location.

Character development is certainly better than it was in the original Oblivion, but it is not without flaws. Originally, major skills that you pick when you create a character contributed to leveling up, but minor skills provided attribute points to increase your stats. If you worked only on your major skills, you would leave behind valuable attribute points and create a less than optimal character.

In Oblivion Remastered, all skills contribute to your character level, with major skills simply leveling faster than minor skills. On character level up, you get a flat 12 attribute points that you can invest in up to 3 skills per level. It's way easier to level efficiently, without having to min/max every single action you take. In that regard, the remaster has been a HUGE upgrade.

Where I don't like the leveling system is the lack of perk points. In Skyrim, character level up provided you with a perk point to invest in some skill for a particular benefit. In this way, you could build a very specific type of character with a markedly different feel from other perks. In Oblivion Remastered, you simply get a new static ability for any given skill at levels 25, 50, 75, and 100. There is no choice in the matter. As such, any character with a particular level in a skill works the exact same as any other character with the same level.

I would like more choice in the matter, as well as the option to invest in different play styles, but alas, that's how this game works. I appreciate them not trying to make everything work like Skyrim, and instead following the trajectory of the original Oblivion with some minor improvements. This is simply a point that I prefer Skyrim on, but I'm sure Oblivion fans prefer the system as it exists.

Combat - 6/10

With Oblivion being a little more of an action RPG than other IPs, you'd expect the combat to be pretty good, but it's just alright. It's not like Souls games, THANK GOD, but it's just kinda clunky. I usually play as a stealth archer (surprise, surprise), so I don't usually have to get within melee or blade range of enemies. If you do have to get close to an enemy, you're basically running up to hit them, then backing away to avoid their attack. The timing isn't terrible to get right, but I just personally don't find it very fun. Hence, I'll hang back and one or two shot most enemies from a distance.

One huge complain that a lot of people have is the level scaling. As is the case with most open world games, enemies get stronger as you level up. That's fine, it makes sense with the game design, you don't want particular areas off limits to new characters and other areas to be a massacre for late-game characters. The problem is that enemies seem to scale stronger much faster than the player character. Leveling up can often make you LESS able to kill your opponents quickly. I get that you want the game to still pose a challenge as the character develops, but I don't want to be penalized by my growth.

There are several methods that players suggest to combat this poor level scaling. The first thing many say is to change the difficulty setting. I appreciate the ability to change the difficulty of a game, but it should never be the case that I change the difficulty as I'm playing to counter stronger enemies. Besides changing the difficulty, a lot of people also just say you shouldn't sleep to level up. Oblivion is different from Skyrim in that instead of leveling up as soon as you gain enough experience, you have to sleep to actually reach the next level and allocate your attribute points. It's a neat system, but I think deliberately avoiding leveling up to block your enemies from scaling is similarly idiotic. If I'm intentionally refusing to level up to keep enemies easier to kill, that is indicative of a poorly designed system in my opinion.

The one suggestion that I actually appreciate is to lean more heavily on enchanted weapons and armor, and leverage magic to a greater extent. Base damage and protection obviously increases with equipment tier, but the best equipment makes use of enchantments. Hit an enemy with weakness to fire AND fire damage, and you're going to stack up damage pretty quickly. Plus, Oblivion has a super complex magic system where you can create custom spells with a mix of effects. If you're willing to dig in and understand the magic, you can make some really powerful spells. The problem with both magic and enchantment is that they're really unwieldy and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining them. Sure, you could argue that learning the system provides the reward of greater combat prowess, but I think it's an incomplete answer to a complicated problem.

Difficulty - 4/10

Immediately following combat, it makes sense to talk through the difficulty of Oblivion and how the difficulty slider works. In Oblivion Remastered, there is a difficulty slider with 5 distinct options: Novice, Apprentice, Adept, Expert, and Master. This setting only changes the damage scaling for damage dealt and received; there are no differences for WHICH enemies spawn or how they behave.

The problem with the difficulty options isn't how they behave, but rather the numerical values associated with them and how absurdly different they are. Quinton O'Connor does a great job of explaining in more depth, but basically Adept is the default difficulty with 1x damage dealt and received. Expert (the VERY next difficulty option) decreases damage that enemies receive to 0.286x and increases damage the player receives to 3.5x. Essentially, enemies take almost 4x longer to kill, and they can kill you almost 4x faster. If that jump seems unreasonably steep to you, you aren't alone.

The general consensus is that Adept is too easy and Expert is too hard. And while I would tentatively agree, I will say that Adept isn't so easy that it makes the game unfun. It's easy, sure, but enemies still put up a fight and it was honestly pretty rare for me to be able to one shot enemies until I enchanted a pretty powerful bow. I'd much rather be a little less challenged and still be able to enjoy the game.

There are mods that make the damage modifiers for higher difficulty levels a little less punishing, as well as some that add a granular bar rather than five distinct settings, but it shouldn't take a mod to implement proper difficulty scaling. The messed up thing is that the original Oblivion had that granular slider already. You could pick from (I believe) 100 different incrementally harder or easier options to make the difficulty feel just right. It's weird to me that a game that stayed so true to its predecessor and improved on a few places actually managed to do worse with something. Alas, the difficulty situation is a little unfortunate unless Virtuos comes through with an update.

Graphics - 8/10

Despite my frustrations with Unreal Engine 5 sometimes, I will say Oblivion Remastered is beautiful. The trailer looked immaculate, and even with me having to drop the graphics settings to Medium, it still looks really good. I do wish that the game was a little brighter the way the original was, but the province of Cyrodiil never looked so good.

Just based on stills and environments, I would probably give the graphics a 10/10. The problem is combat with lots of NPCs involved. When there are climactic battles with many participants, especially those in and around Oblivion gates, the individual animations become choppy to the point that it's almost funny. I suppose the game just can't render that many models moving all at once, but the motion looks like something you would see out of Arena or Daggerfall. These instances are rare enough that I can't dock many points for it, but it's severe enough when it happens that I would be remiss to give full credit.

Music - 9/10

It's Jeremy Soule. Despite issues with him as a person, his music is legendary. The title screen music for Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim are ALL amazing. Even beyond those tracks, combat music and simply just the ethereal tracks that you hear around Cyrodiil sound great. I don't think this is music that most people would just turn on to listen to outside of playing the game (again, besides the title tracks), so that's the single point drop from a perfect score. I'm very glad they kept the same music from the original Oblivion; it's classic and I genuinely don't think they could have improved on it in any way.

Performance

Now that I'm playing through Steam on the Steam Deck, I feel like I should probably start discussing performance for relevant games. This isn't a situation where I played it on the same console as everyone else, so we all got the same experience. Hardware can absolutely affect the enjoyment of a game and people have drastically different definitions of "playable." I would be remiss not to include at least some information on how a game runs.

With a brand new game running the hilariously unoptimized Unreal Engine 5 for graphics, I expected that the Steam Deck with a mid-tier APU from a few years ago would be unable to do much. I immediately dropped the graphics settings from the default low to lowest. We kept a pretty steady locked 30 fps for a while, so I increased the settings back to low. After low ran fine, I increased the settings again to medium specs. I started seeing a few dips to 20 fps on occasion, but mostly stayed around 25-30 fps which is perfectly fine for me.

The biggest problem I saw was loading from a closed area like buildings or cities into Cyrodiil proper, ESPECIALLY in areas with a lot of water around like the Imperial City Waterfront. Loading into the area would drop the game to a crawl, frequently 1 or 0 fps, and Unreal would crash maybe 10-20% of the time after a minute or so. After I closed out of the game and restarted, it would often work better, but it's almost like the game would just accumulate too much in memory and have to clear that on occasion. It was certainly frustrating, but I don't think the problem was severe or frequent enough to take away from the game; just something to be aware of. Obviously, if you're running on more powerful hardware, those issues may be eliminated entirely.

My Take

The Good

Oblivion Remastered took basically everything that made the original game great and just cleaned it up a bit.

The Bad

Unreal Engine looks good, but it's just so clunky and inefficient.

The Ugly

Bethesda is known for making janky games with weird bugs, and since Oblivion Remastered is still built on the Creation Engine, it's still janky and weird. Personally, I love the jank, but I can understand why some people might not be so fond.

Overall - 8/10

I had a blast playing through a classic that I never got to properly experience when it first came out. I can see why some people still say the original Oblivion is one of their favorite games, and some suggest even the best game in The Elder Scrolls series. There are some places where the game could be improved, or just design decisions that I don't agree with, but all in all I think Virtuos did an amazing job with the remaster. I would easily recommend this to anyone who played and enjoyed Oblivion or Skyrim, or fans of action RPGs in general.