Latest news with #ElderScrollsVI
Irish Independent
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered review – the madness has not faded, thankfully
If you know anything about Oblivion, you'll be aware of its fabled foibles, the amusing glitches that accompanied its sweeping medieval fantasy in the land of Tamriel. But perhaps you've only heard of and never played Bethesda's seminal RPG, one of the pinnacles of the Elder Scrolls series before the even more revered Skyrim. Now's your chance, a scarcely conceivable 19 years after its debut as it gets the Remaster treatment while we wait for Bethesda to put a date on Elder Scrolls VI, the next instalment that's been in the oven for many moons. We shouldn't be surprised that Oblivion's remakers chose not to sanitise its lunacies too much. Bethesda built a large open world back in 2006 and the Xbox 360 technology of the time couldn't always reliably handle the permutations of underlying systems. Hence the infamous but largely amusing kinks where characters and the world itself behaved unpredictably at times. Players of the original enjoyed a novel buffet of adventures – wielding magic spells and swords while exploring the Tamriel wilderness, all wrapped in a yarn about an evil sorcerer and portals to hell. Crucially, though, you could ignore the main quest endlessly in favour of swashbuckling exploits in dungeons, forests and cities. Almost as importantly, the bugs in the code could frequently produce a smile on your face for their sheer ridiculousness. Bethesda went on to even better things with 2011's Skyrim, which built on Oblivion's template, albeit featuring possibly even more glitches. Hopefully that remaster is only just around the corner, nonetheless. In the meantime, there's plenty to appreciate in Oblivion's 2025 makeover but despite its occasional brilliance it feels a product of its time despite the new coat of paint. The original voice cast had put in a decent shift – including celebrity performances from the resonant tones of Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and even Lynda Carter of Wonder Woman fame. But many of the NPCs still look stilted and often a bit freaky. Tamriel felt like an impressively capacious realm back in the day but, two decades on, its boundaries chafe at your freedom as the game sends you pinballing from one side of the map to the other. The hinterlands may be generously loaded with dungeons but they're very obviously copied and pasted from place to place. How often must you sift the junk loot from the real treasure scattered around every location? The answer is tediously often. Oblivion Remastered offers an assortment of concessions to 2025, such as the ability to sprint, a breadcrumb trail to your next objective, a graphical upgrade and a smoothing of levelling curve. Yet the weapons and magic combat that fuel the core gameplay remain clunky and imprecise. It's tricky to disconnect the expectations of the modern gamer from an RPG that was unconventionally innovative back in 2006. Yet Oblivion can still put on an admirable show two decades on and will please many players for whom nostalgia is not the primary motivation.
Forbes
22-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion' Remaster Is Live, Free On Xbox Game Pass
Oblivion Bethesda At long last, Bethesda and Microsoft finally decided that they would debut the most-leaked project in the industry and do so without moving the release window that everyone was reporting. And yes, it's out now. After a stream showing off the remade Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remaster (not classified as a remake, apparently) with its absurdly amazing new graphics and features, it was announced that the game was launching today, as previously predicted, as a 'shadow drop,' the likes of which Microsoft has done before with games like Hi-Fi Rush (one of the great tragedies of our time, given what happened to its studio). The Oblivion remaster was made by Virtuous, not Bethesda pulling off devs to work on it as opposed to the eternally gestating Elder Scrolls VI, where as you may expect, there was not any news about that project in this stream today other than a quick mention. Rather, the focus is on this remaster which is far above and beyond what we've seen for practically any other game, at least nothing this old. It's genuinely amazing to behold, and this should grab a large numbers of new and old players alike. 600,000 people were watching this reveal stream alone. Oblivion Bethesda Despite being a hushed release until today (minus the leaks), the Oblivion remaster, if it's as good as it looks, may prove to be one of the bigger games of the year, given the impact the original had and how popular the franchise remains (as a decade of Skyrim demonstrates). Sure, even if some aspects are dated despite being a remake, this seems like it will have a wide audience. And a wide audience that includes, you guessed it, Xbox Game Pass players able to get the Oblivion remake as a part of their subscription. It looks solid, better than almost any remake I've seen in a long while. Getting your hands on it is another thing, and it will cost you a good chunk of hard drive space (120 GB) and $50 if you're not on Game Pass (it is also on PS5 and Steam). But at the time of this writing, I already paid for it because well, of course I was going to. I will report back with my own thoughts on the remake once I get a little ways into it. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Bluesky Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
Forbes
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Xbox Reveals Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remake's Likely Release Date
Elder Scrolls The worst-kept secret in the industry is no longer a secret. Microsoft has just announced a livestream event for the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remake that was first revealed in court documents during the Activision case, and in recent months has been confirmed by a half dozen reputable sources that it was on the way as a 'shadow drop,' something Xbox has done in the past. It's just been announced that there will be a livestream tomorrow, April 22 at 11 AM ET, 8 AM PT on Twitch and YouTube about the project. I'm saying this is also the likely release date, as it stands to reason the show would probably end with a big 'and you can go play it now!' moment, given that behind the scenes of places like Steam, things are already spooling up, including a reportedly leaked file size of (a rather large) 120 GB. If it's not tomorrow, it's certainly by the end of the week. It makes sense that a stream like this would exist, given that you're not literally going to throw something like this onto console or PC stores without even a word. So, this stream will go through how it looks, plays and what changes have been made to modernize the game to some extent. Again, a numbere of these changes have already leaked ranging from blocking to archery to stamina. This is a big deal, the game is not being remastered, but remade in Unreal Engine 5, and the shots we've seen (you guessed it, leaked, and from this time the studio working on the game itself, Virtuous) look rather incredible. If it also looks that good in motion, everyone is in for a treat. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder This obviously will spark a few conversations about the state of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls VI, first announced in 2018 and currently with no set release date. But this is not Bethesda taking time off to work on this, this is Virtuous, the studio tasked with the remake. Despite being a barely-promoted, almost entirely leaked shadow drop, this does seem like it has the potential to be a really big game this year, given how beloved Oblivion is and the fact that people are A) tired of pretending Elder Scrolls VI is right around the corner and B) perhaps finally tired of Skyrim and its many re-releases over the last decade. I expect this to be big starting tomorrow, or the next day. Or by Friday. But I think tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Bluesky Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
