Oblivion Remastered bugs get worse the more you play it reveals tech breakdown
Bethesda's remaster of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion has turned out some odd performance issues, and they get worse the more you play it.
The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered launched last month after a slew of leaks, to a rapturous reception and higher sales than even Bethesda expected.
The remake, developed by Virtuos, is a substantial overhaul of the original 2006 game, with revised gameplay mechanics, a revamped user interface, and widespread improvements to the visuals thanks to Unreal Engine 5.
While Bethesda's role-playing games are synonymous with technical bugs, it seemed at first that the remaster had ironed out a lot of them. But a new analysis shows that the game is something of a ticking time bomb.
As outlined in a new Digital Foundry video, which is focused on the Xbox Series X, PlayStation 5, and PS5 Pro console versions, it seems Oblivion Remastered is more prone to crashes and other performance issues the longer you play it.
The video claims a 'fresh boot' of the game, aka shutting down the software, booting it up and loading into a save for the first time, will give you an 'often significantly higher' frame rate compared to a playthrough which has been running for 15 minutes or more, with drops from 59fps to around 45fps.
You'll be more prone to crashes and other issues affecting the camera position the longer you play in one continuous session, which is fixed when you reload the save following a reboot (albeit only for 15 minutes).
Digital Foundry suggests it is a memory management issue (aka memory leak) which is making the performance worse over time. According to players, this was an issue in some of Bethesda's past games as well, including The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim Special Edition, but it's less forgiveable when it's affecting a substantial remake running in Unreal Engine 5. More Trending
'Returning to the Oblivion remaster for a second console testing brings a great many issues to light,' the video concludes, with all console platforms affected by hitching, frame rate drops, and bugs.
Since its launch on April 22, there have been no substantial updates to Oblivion Remastered. Bethesda has called for suggestions from players on how to improve the experience on its official Discord, so hopefully some kind of patch is in the works.
Bethesda is currently in development on the next mainline entry, The Elder Scrolls 6, which is expected to launch at some point after 2026.
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