At this point, who knows if the much teased Oblivion remake or remaster is happening. At times it seems an official announcement is all but imminent, at other times it seems like a load of Trust Me Bros on Reddit are just making it up. The rumour mill has been swirling with it since at least 2016. My theory is that Todd Howard has a Prince-style vault that he keeps all this stuff in, and there’s a fully playable remaster in there somewhere that won’t see the light of day until, you know. But he seems like a man who looks after himself, so he’s definitely gonna outlive me, you, and probably western civilization.
What is certain, though, is that it’s a no-brainer: Oblivion is a hugely popular and fondly remembered game, the one that made Bethesda a household name, and arguably represents the point where the seventh generation truly arrived, kicking off a golden era of Western role-playing games that we’re still enjoying today.But among old-school Elder Scrolls fans, Oblivion is seen as something of a let down, especially as a follow up to their darling Morrowind, which released way back in 2002 and laid much of the groundwork for what would become the hugely successful Bethesda template that we know and sometimes love, sometimes hate today. Seriously, every Bethesda game since Morrowind is more or less a reworking of Morrowind: from Fallout 3 to Starfield, the basic framework, game loop, and even underlying technology is all rooted in that groundbreaking release.
When you compare it to the much more grounded fantasy fare of Oblivion and Skyrim, Morrowind stands out as feeling most like an alien world: it’s a small island that feels massive, partly because of its public transport-based fast travel system that works more like the London Underground than the magic one-click solution of more recent games, but also because of how much the landscape completely changes between its various regions. The river city of Balmora feels almost mediterranean, the grand capital of Vivec stretches upwards with its vast cantons, there are mage towns grown from magic trees, and an entire settlement inside the hollowed out shell of a gigantic emperor crab.
We Don’t Need an Oblivion Remake, We Deserve Morrowind Instead Watch on YouTube
In contrast, the Cyrodiil of Oblivion just sort of looks like any generic fantasy realm. Thatched roofs, leaded windows, churches and village greens that wouldn’t look out of place in Somerset or Surrey. And grand medieval castles that are so familiar looking it’s a wonder the National Trust hasn’t put in a bid for them. The game’s most major settlement, the Imperial City, with its impossibly tall White Gold Tower is Oblivion’s most recognisable landmark, but as grandiose as it looks in screenshots, the reality is disappointing: this is supposed to be a Tamrielic Rome, and yet it amounts to a handful of streets walled off from the rest of the landscape, and one of the least interesting places in the game to actually explore.
Which massively contradicts what the lore says about it:
The Imperial City as described in the Pocket Guide to the Empire, as far back as 1998.
Oblivion players will know that it bears little resemblance to the capital we actually got to explore in The Elder Scrolls 4, which was much more reminiscent of a Gondorian walled city from Peter Jackon’s Lord of the Rings than the almost Amazonian metropolis conjured up by a source that is, in fairness, of dubious canonicity. Given that those were the biggest films going during Oblivion’s development, it’s not hard to deduce where Todd’s head was at.
1 of 3 Caption Attribution Screenshots from the opening moments of Morrowind, as experienced today.
What I’m getting at here is that Oblivion, on paper, isn’t all that interesting. The setup is a drab rehash of basic fantasy tropes. And though there are some standout quests, like The Dark Brotherhood storyline, and various one shots that are dotted around, what makes it truly memorable and distinct is its weird look and its jank: the spaces where its interlocking systems don’t quite fit together, and where silliness happens. NPCs having endless conversations about mud crabs while generally looking like sentient yams. Physics glitches that can cause an entire shop’s worth of objects to explode in a hundred directions while the shopkeeper just stands there, blinking. Its distinctly early seventh-gen look, all those Crayola primary colours and excessive bloom lighting. Its terrible menus that betray a studio unused to designing controller interfaces and more or less ballsing it up – it was as unwieldy for PC users as it was for Xbox and PlayStation players.