Oblivion Remastered: Review
The Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion, released in 2006 by Bethesda is an RPG action adventure game that took the gaming community by storm cementing itself as another epic installment of the Elderscrolls franchise. It’s no wonder why in 2025 it’s about time this game was brought back to life for a new generation of gamers to enjoy.
On April 21st, 2025 after a leaked surprise announcement The Elder Scrolls IV, Oblivion Remaster was both announced and immediately released directly after the announcement, this led to an internet sensation among fans of the franchise and everyday gamers alike, within the next day over 180,000 people were seen playing the game on steam alone.
As a kid I grew up on The Elder Scrolls V, Skyrim and as many others fell in love with the franchise, devoting days at a time to exploring the world and discovering every location I could. This interest led me to naturally want to explore the other games but being a kid I was frustrated at the fact that it was dated, and it didn’t play like what I had just spent the better part of my childhood playing, but now when I found out it was being remastered I knew I had to check it out.
Getting into the game you are instantly brought into the story of Oblivion, With the Death of the Emperor the gates of Oblivion (basically this universe’s version of Hell) are opening up all over the province of Cyrodiil, you are tasked to go out and recover the legendary “Amulet of Kings” that was stolen from the Emperor before his death and close the gates of Oblivion and save the Empire, obviously the stakes are pretty high.
I got to work and started following the main quest, and right from the start, you cannot be anything but amazed at the game’s stunning visuals. In remastering the game, one of the major things they did was bring it from its old game engine, Gamebryo to Unreal Engine 5, a top-of-the-line engine completely revolutionized how players can see the world of Oblivion. Every detail and texture is enhanced, along with beautiful ray ray-traced lighting, it brings stunning new life to the game. When comparing this to how I experienced it as a kid, it’s like looking at the world day and night, completely stunning.
Like every Elder Scrolls Game, it offers a large open world that the player can explore with hundreds of things to do besides the main quest. Adventure is a top priority of the Elder Scrolls, and it rewards the player from getting distracted from the main quest. There is a wide variety of factions and guilds that can be found all over the world, each with their quests, stories, and missions for the player that offer interesting and unique loot.
When doing these quest another key part of oblivion in the ability to let the play experience the game however they want, this is done by allowing players to create any playstyle they want! Want to be a lizard mage? You want to be a vampire archer? Do that too! You truly can do whatever you want.
A feature of Oblivion I haven’t experienced before is spell crafting, the ability to take any magical spells you learned on your travels and combine them or modify them into your own unique creation. This feature is crazy, with the right abilities or stats you can truly do whatever you can imagine, from running at the speed of sound to draining the health of an entire city, how ever you choose to use this feature it allows the player to truly create their own experience in the game that is unique to them and fits exactly how they want to play.
But as all Elder Scrolls games there is a few issues I have found while playing that bug me, one being the bartering system with vendors, in shops vendors will have a certain amount of money if you choose to sell them things, this is here to stop the player from selling hundreds of items in one place and instantly becoming a millionaire, this feature is broken. When bartering with shops as long as you sell below their limit it does not actually drain their limit, let’s say they have 600 gold to spend, if I sold 599 gold worth of items the vendor would still have 600 gold to spend.
Another Issue I faced while playing is having trouble with NPCs being where they should be or sticking to their routes/ schedules during quests, sometimes the game will make you fight with a group of people on your side or follow a leader, there are times where the mission will just stop, not because of anything you did but simply because the NPCs stop moving, get stuck or simply don’t work, This is frustrating but not unfixable. Usually by reloading the save things should work but at the same time it’s frustrating losing progress for something like that.
Those bugs aside I have had a wonderful experience so far in Oblivion remastered, I have spent well over 70 hours already exploring and I still feel like I have so much left to see, definitely give this game a shot.