TES IV: Oblivion remaster shadow dropped on a random Wednesday. I don’t generally play games as soon as they come out; I’m more of a patient gamer. But I’ve been testing out PC Game Pass (I’m late to the train, I know), and I was able to pick it up “for free”. Oh, and be warned - nostalgia for 2005 is a factor in this review.

Player character in a green robe, wearing a bow on his back, looking in the direction of the Imperial City. The Imperial City is still the primary focal point wherever you are in Cyrodiil. Oh, and the third person camera finally feels good to control.

My history with Oblivion goes way back. I first played it when it launched – right after sinking countless hours into Morrowind – and the upgrade felt incredible. The jump in fidelity over just three years (Morrowind came out in 2002) was remarkable. While Oblivion was less weird and more streamlined than its predecessor, it still captured my imagination. I didn’t print out the entire UESP wiki for it like I did with Morrowind (sorry again about the printer, mom!), and I spent less time thinking about it when I wasn’t playing compared to Morrowind. Despite that, I probably sunk more hours into Oblivion overall.

When I saw the announcement call this a “remaster”, I did get a bit worried - but my worries were mostly unfounded. The release is somewhere between a remaster and a full remake, built on a new foundation but carrying forward both the charm and the baggage of the original.

Visually, the jump to Unreal Engine 5 is immediately apparent - the world looks gorgeous, and the lighting truly elevates the experience. Improved textures, reflections, and such are all good, but it’s the new lighting that takes Oblivion remaster from passable to great. Riding your horse into the sunset, spelunking in torch lit fort, or stumbling upon a campfire at night - the game oozes atmosphere. All the spells have new beautiful effects, too.

The remaster does a great job capturing how Oblivion felt back when it came out in 2005! Even the new faces, which I initially found jarring and weird, grew on me after a while – they seem to be a deliberate stylistic choice. The original had weird faces too, this is just different weird.

An empty campsite in the middle of the night with a lit campfire. The lighting does wonders for the atmosphere. Don’t you just want to sit down at this campfire and listen to some stories?

To test the waters, I jumped into a dark elf Atronach battlemage playthrough: rocking heavy armor, a massive battleaxe, and slinging spells. This is where the remaster’s strengths and weaknesses came into focus.

That gorgeous lighting enhances exploring torch-lit forts and ruins, making the atmosphere palpable. Yes, it’s still the same Oblivion - with dozens of similar looking caves, ruins, and forts - but the lighting system makes these feel fresh again, and each descent into yet another dungeon feels more exciting.

And seeing those new spell effects erupt from my hands felt great… when they worked. Still, I had fun running through myriad of Oblivion side quests and power leveling alchemy (since being born under the Atronach sign forced me to rely on potions for Magicka restoration).

However, this playthrough immediately highlighted some friction points. Combat feel is one area. The combat has improved from vanilla Oblivion - enemies recoil after being hit, there are better blood splatter effects and new ragdolls. But distance on weapon swings feels off: weapons felt like they kept not hitting enemies when they were right in front of me. It was rough when my axe swings whiffed what felt like point blank. Perhaps it’s because I recently played Avowed (with it’s sense of impact in melee combat), but the combat could use more weight.

Then there are the engine quirks and performance. Performance during the battle of Kvatch was poor - I had to drop my settings to stay above 30 FPS! Likely due to the move to the new engine, swimming is very floaty, and sometimes, when going up a hill, the character moves at a snail’s pace, seemingly because the engine gets confused by the terrain. And the loading screens! That’s where I remembered how much the loading screens bugged me - mages guilds in particular are made up of 3-5 separate cells (I visited Chorrol, Skingrad, and Bruma), and having to sit through back to back loading screens made me think I’m writing a Starfield review.

A dunmer saying "I think they're right behind me!", with an attacker, indeed, right behind them. They’re right behind you, buddy. Comedic timing, as always.

Bugs, both old and new, also made an appearance. There’s unpolished corners throughout and bugs abound. I ran into two separate issues with quest stages not properly updating during the main quest and had to pull up UESP whenever I would get stumped because the quest marker didn’t update, or some trigger wasn’t hit - frustratingly, all of those bugs were original 2005 bugs. There are some new bugs too, like Oblivion gates occasionally spawning in a new game even before visiting the city of Kvatch. Which is a no-no story-wise.

On top of the general combat feel issues, damage output itself felt suspect on this character. Occasionally, spells would fizzle with no effect (and surely basic grunts don’t have spell absorption?), while weapon damage seemed bizarrely low – even rats took multiple swings to kill. This led me to suspect a bug with the difficulty setting; perhaps after fiddling with the slider earlier, the game never actually lowered it back to Adept as indicated. Getting stuck on a higher difficulty would certainly explain the sponginess, which is often the least fun part of TES difficulty scaling – just beefier hit points, how boring. Of course, maybe it wasn’t a bug at all. Perhaps I simply overleveled my character relative to my combat skills – with Oblivion’s scaling, you never quite know.

The new level-up screen in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered. Meet Fargoth, my Bosmer stealh archer. Leveling up is now done by increasing any of your skills, and come with fixed 12 points per level.

Which leads nicely into the leveling system, because the Oblivion remaster actually changes things up here. Remember how in the original, only your major skills counted towards your character level? Since the world scaled up right alongside you, that led to the weird meta where picking major skills you didn’t plan on using was often the ‘smart’ play, just to keep your level down. It was a way to avoid suddenly facing super tough enemies because your main combat skills hadn’t kept pace with your level – a problem Oblivion’s main quest was infamous for at high levels, potentially becoming incredibly difficult due to scaling bloat.

Well, the new system scraps that. Now, any skill increase contributes to your level, major or minor. Finally, it makes sense to pick the skills you genuinely want to use as your majors! In theory, focusing on these should keep you appropriately powerful for the challenges you face, plus it just feels more thematically right. They also give you a fixed number of attribute points each level, cutting down on that old tedious metagaming where you had to strategically train useless skills just for meaningful attribute progression. Overall, I’d call it a solid improvement, even if, as my battlemage found out, Oblivion can still make you feel weak sometimes, thanks to bugs or its enduring scaling eccentricities.

Switching gears, I tried a sneaky Bosmer archer - hitting up the thieves guild (as well as the Arena for cash). As is always the case, stealth archer is an engaging and rewarding play style. The experience felt smoother, perhaps because by tighter focus on major skills I avoided overleveling this time around. Sniping enemies was more entertaining than endlessly bashing them in the head with a battleaxe or even throwing spells at them (especially when those spells weren’t doing damage!).

Fan favorite - the adoring fan. The adoring fan is still here, excited to follow the champion in battle (and to hide at the first sight of danger).

The lack of combat weight felt less critical when sniping from afar - and new ragdolls feel like they have more weight to them - it’s fun seeing an enemy fall when being hit by an arrow, especially if they’re running toward you.

Overall, I’m conflicted. I’m glad I picked up Oblivion on PC Game Pass and didn’t pay full price - nostalgia is hell of a drug. I’ve enjoyed the 20-or-so hours I’ve poured into both playthroughs, experiencing the highs of the gorgeous visuals and atmospheric moments, alongside the lows of bugs, performance issues, and loading screens. I’ll likely continue playing through my Bosmer character once the review’s out, with the goal to finish up the Thieves’ Guild, join the Dark Brotherhood, and hit up The Shivering Isles - my favorite location in Oblivion.

But ultimately Oblivion Remastered is a flawed experience. There are definite improvements here, especially visually and with the leveling system changes. Yet, many old bugs remain, new ones have cropped up, and core aspects like combat feel and performance need more polish. I’m not sure if the remaster will be seen as substantial once the release hype goes down. It’s a potent dose of nostalgia, best enjoyed with tempered expectations (and maybe the UESP wiki close at hand).