Why I tried to beat Oblivion Remastered without ever using fast travel
A reader enjoys a return trip to the world of The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion and explains why ignoring one of its key features made it even more fun.
I sit here with a sense of accomplishment, pride, and somewhat of a headache.
I have earned all 50 of Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion Remastered's base game achievements/trophies (not Shivering Isles… yet). I know, this is not much of an achievement in itself.
The original Oblivion game came out just under two decades ago, on the Xbox 360, setting the world up for its younger protégé Skyrim to take over some six years later.
Completing the main story quests, the four job guilds (fighter, mage, thief, and assassin) and the gladiatorial arena is pretty straightforward in the region of Tamriel known as Cyrodill. If anything, Oblivion is little more than a long checklist of fetch quests, battles, some mild stalking, and a not insignificant amount of murder.
The expansive world with hundreds of dungeons, caves, and various points of interest has never looked better with the recent (not much of a) surprise release, but you'd be forgiven if you never actually see any of it.
I chose, in this shiny new version, to roleplay as a Necromancer/Assassin Hunter (yes… I was Jinwoo from Solo Leveling, don't judge me). I could summon monsters from the planes of hell itself to fight for me, pull powerful daggers out of the air, and blink out of existence to swiftly dispatch my foes with stealth attacks. Speed, agility, and intelligence were key to my success, so I figured I'd make the most of one aspect I'd really ignored back in 2006: travel.
The remaster retains one of the original version's overpowered methods of travel. Simply click on a point of the map that you have previously visited, or one of the major town/city hubs, and you are whisked away to you chosen destination in the time of a mere loading screen.
If the target is within a stone's throw of a selectable point on the map you don't even have to walk for more than a couple of minutes to reach your destination. You travel the world by just warping door to door like some sort of Grim Reaper delivery service employee (Uber Reaps? Just Reap? DeReaperoo? OK, I'll stop).
That is why I decided not to use fast travel via the world map, ever.
I can spoil the story here by saying categorically it was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
The game has zero, and I mean not a jot of, forethought to pathing and logical world exploration.
At the start… oh at the start! Sure! Everyone has something to say, a cave to investigate, a missing family member to inevitably bring back a remnant of. By the time you've met everyone and monopolised the entire adventuring trade for yourself, you start to notice patterns in quests that, with the luxury of fast travel, are little more than an extra couple of loading screens and a quick chat.
Without fast travel it's an hour long round trip for something that could've been an e-scroll Modyrn Oreyn! Eh hem… excuse me.
Don't get me wrong, I got the absolute most out of my playthrough. The joy I got replaying old quests again, seeing old friends… and enemies. Rediscovering things I'd forgotten, like running along and finding an invisible sheep in the road before the 'Oh this is a quest not a bug!' penny dropped, was a wonderful dopamine drip directly into my rose-tinted veins.
I hit the credits with: 125 in-game days passed
140 quests completed
Level 100 in all major skills (without really trying)
336 places visited
1,500 potions made
59 Oblivion gates shut
121 nirnroot found
The game unfortunately doesn't track distance travelled, nor does it specify the units of distance on the compass. To work it out roughly I had to reconcile this with the fact that the world map seems to be scaled down compared to maps and accounts in books of how large certain areas should be. So it's complicated to try to work out how far anything actually is relative to the next.
The official lore says Tamriel (as in the entire continent) is roughly 80% the size of Australia. This could explain why everything is trying to kill me constantly but it doesn't help with my calculations.
The little waypoint markers have a real-time counter of how far your goal is. This is measured with a 'footprints' symbol, which could be as simple as literal 'feet' or even just 'steps'.
For the sake of staying somewhat true to the world I've gone with yards. If nothing else, it does feel more appropriate for somewhere with the 'Imperial' City at its centre.
(Note: After some quick googling the majority of Elder Scrolls lore does indeed seem to reference inches/feet/yards/miles/leagues as the default, but the scale of the world size is vague at best.)
Using the bridge between Imperial City and the settlement of Weye as my marker, my maxed out speed and athletics stats took me 100 'units' in just under nine seconds.
If I translate that to yards it would put me close to Olympic athlete pace (around 23 miles per hour); not quite Usain Bolt, however I can keep that pace up indefinitely .
At this point I effectively gave up trying to go any deeper into my potential travel time. Between speaking, sneaking, and spelunking I wouldn't even venture a guess as to how much of my time was spent standing around or moving at a snail's pace. That doesn't even begin to mention the pace increase as I levelled up my stats. (Oh… my headache is back again.)
I did give myself one caveat. One beautifully, cruel moment of respite. I had Frostcrag Spire as my homebase. Settled way up north, at the top of Gnoll Mountain, was my little beacon of safety. Visible from miles away, I could see it towering above the world. Inside, my vault filled with millions of gold worth of loot, my flame atronach standing to attention inside the entrance and, most importantly, my mage guild warp points.
Every time I was nearly over-encumbered with magical tat I began the trek up that mountain path. Over and over. Dodging bears, bandits and yet more bears I tipped my swag bag out into various chests and then I could make that wonderful choice: 'Which city's Mage Guild should I portal over to?'
It was a rare treat to simply be able to skip the next 4,000+ yard sprint back to Leyawiin for the 18th time.
One thing I can confidently say is that, by the end, a little part of me died every time I stepped out of a city and saw '3,721' units next to my next quest marker.
The game has a horrible habit, during its faction quests, of the following: Meet your local contract vendor in City A. Meet the client in City B (3,000 yards away). Complete the quest in a nearby cave (if you are lucky). Return to the client. Return to City A (another 3,000 yards). Get told there's a new contract vendor with work for me in City C. Travel 2,000 yards to City C. Meet the client in City A ( I just came from there ) Complete quest… in City B?! for the client (that's another 3,000 yards). Return to City A (sure, OK pal). Return to the vendor in City C. Realise I'm over-encumbered, so travel to Frostcrag Spire. Teleport to City C (thank goodness my thumb is actually starting to hurt from holding forward). Get promoted! 'You should talk to the first vendor again in City A for more work' (…you're joking). Return to step 1.
For a perfectly sane player, with the use of fast travel, this is a 15 minute burst of action-packed questing. For me, it was nearly two hours of swimming, sprinting, jumping back and forth… and back… and forth.
This wasn't an isolated incident either, it happened again and again. I travelled hundreds of unnecessary miles (yes, I know almost all of the miles I travelled were unnecessary) for what could have just been a message left for me at the guild hall I'd just been to.
It was rewarding, frustrating and easily the best way to experience Oblivion again after all these years. Catching details I'd missed way back when, meeting people I'd never met before, becoming an overpowered monster in my own right.
I'd recommend that absolutely no one plays without ever using fast travel. It's really not worth it. More Trending
Do it. You'll love it.
By reader Jay Parry
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If Bethesda wants to be back on top by the time next Elder Scrolls game rolls around, it should take more lessons from Oblivion Remastered than Starfield. Oblivion Remastered demonstrates the kind of inspiring world and storytelling experience any studio worth its RPG weight should be aiming to recapture. For the longest time, the RPG video game arms race was dominated by the two Bs: BioWare and Bethesda. Specialising in creating titles with memorable characters set in incredibly detailed worlds – the kind where you, the player, can make an impact through your own gameplay decisions – it's clear that this style of game, in 2025, has only become harder to make for both studios. As a result, there's a lot less of these 'all-encompassing' style RPG experiences to be found in general, which means when a disappointment of, say, Starfield 's calibre arrives, it's no fun for anyone. Particularly the players and developers who adored the genre-defining experiences of BioWare and Bethesda's heyday. While not a bad game per se, Dragon Age: The Veilguard 's more action-oriented approach caused long-time series fans to wonder why it was even called Dragon Age at all. As for Mass Effect? Time will tell whether BioWare can put lightning back in that bottle. Meanwhile, as for the other big B, I've been dipping in and out of Oblivion Remastered since its release this month. It's showing age in places, true, yet still reminds me of when a Bethesda RPG was something to be savoured. Is it full of jank and barmy voice acting? Yes, but it also nails (as Skyrim also did) the feeling of being transported to another place, a feeling that's further cemented once you gain influence over it through your decisions. Starfield lacked a lot of this texture, by comparison. The difference with Oblivion is that it cuts the clutter. Now, what do I mean by 'clutter'? Part of this is the size of the world, of course. Whereas Starfield was largely sold on the premise of being limitless, what with procedurally generated planets making up a vast solar system that seemed ripe for exploration alongside a few central hubs, Oblivion's Cyrodiil is almost the exact opposite. In a little under 10 minutes, I can run from its capital all the way to the county of Kvatch, where I'm immediately besieged by countless narrative threads to pull on – almost all of them interesting. By nature of being substantially smaller, not only is Oblivion Remastered more manageable, but less intimidating when wanting to become invested in the several stories it presents. Starfield's more procedural approach feels more like a chore. There's an interesting concept at its centre, one involving some sort of ancient prophecy that quickly sees your main mission to hunt down a series of Artefacts as part of Constellation's effort. This narrative throughline quickly gets muddled soon after you've first launched off the starting planet, however, and it isn't helped by the avalanche of continuous load screens as you board, fly, and then exit your shuttle. Oblivion Remastered has absolutely none of these extra trimmings, and therefore very little bloat. You're quickly out there, exploring Cyrodiil at your own pace, meeting all kinds of quirky races and characters. A dying age Funnily enough, where Oblivion Remastered is most like Starfield is in the raft of dungeons I'm encouraged to plunder. Absolutely all of them I've explored so far feel like the same copy-and-paste underground design, only with a slightly different layout and objective. This isn't an issue exclusive to Oblivion, mind you, Skyrim still has a similar sense of repetition. However, it never bothers me too much since you're never forced to spend exorbitant amounts of time in them, meaning it's never too long before you're back out into Cyrodiil's beautiful open scenery – which obviously looks better than ever due to being rebuilt from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5. These are just a few superficial examples, but as someone who is currently playing Oblivion for the first time via this remaster, the benefits are clear: Bethesda RPGs are best when they cut out any noise and make you the centre of this story cleanly and promptly. It's not perfect, and by nature of being essentially a facelift of a 2006 Xbox 360 title, there's a few niggles I have with combat, pacing, and the minigames. Dear lord, the minigames… That said, I hope Bethesda learns what it did great during this era of RPG development so it can use these lessons to inform the next generation of The Elder Scrolls rather than the less nuanced approach of Starfield. In the end, there's a direct line that can be drawn from Oblivion all the way to Starfield. You see it in its insistence on wanting to make the player feel special, combined with plenty of reasons to poke away at the farthest reaches of the map and, most of all, tell a story in a world that reflects the effects of your specific decision-making right back at you. These kinds of wide-scale RPGs are no longer a walk in the park to make, and so it's not too surprising to see both BioWare and Bethesda stumble a fair bit when wanting to still get it right while making the most of what new advancements in technology offer. Oblivion Remastered, warts and all, has far more texture and allure than most other recent video game worlds. As such, I don't think it's wrong to expect a once great RPG studio like Bethesda to try and get back to that.
