Oblivion Remastered

[peter]

When I saw that a remastered Oblivion had hit the consoles I very nearly punched the air in excitement.

OK - it isn't Morrowind which I would have preferred, but as a second shout in absence of ES6 it's pretty damned good.

So shortly thereafter I was springing the 60ish dollars (well, about 20 - the rest I had on gift tokens) and getting the thing downloaded.

I've played a few hours now and here's my first impressions.

Well firstly, it's Oblivion. It isn't materially different, but that's okay. It's not a remake and doesn't pretend to be. It includes The Knights of the Nine expansion and if I have it correctly a Cyrodil expansion, but it plays like the original with a few minor exceptions.

The massive difference is the graphics, both in the npc rendition and even more so in the landscape. It is done on unreal engine 5 (I believe) and the difference is great. Gone are the crude grasses and tree renditions. Here we are talking lush landscapes with an almost Skyrim remastered level of detail. It works - not 100 percent without jerks and loading - but absolutely well enough to make a difference. I'm currently in my first Oblivion gate - the one at Kvatch - and the terrain on the approach is beautiful. All of that growing menace and darkness that you remember, but with so much more depth. Inside the gate is less well improved, but still good.

Conversation with npc's is much as it was with some additional voices added in. The faces are much improved from that wooden style of the original, but not to the point of a truly modern game. I think that the developers have deliberately kept the 'feel' of the original by not actually altering it too much - and this is all to the good. It's going to satisfy both returning players and also those new to the game.

I've played Oblivion before, but not very far into it. My last copy on an old Xbox crashed and became unplayable (console issue) and so I'm really looking forward to going further into the game.

As long as you can accept that this is Oblivion and not a different experience, then this is going to satisfy you. If you'd want a totally different game for your dollars then wait for ES6.

Me, I'm happy with what they've done.

[peter]

Just a quick follow up on the above post.

I'm a couple of weeks into the game now and am really enjoying it. Did I say above that I have never really scratched the surface of Oblivion - and even affer two weeks of daily play I'm still not even close to doing so.

The 200 or so quests are spread around the game evenly, and concentrating on them as I've been doing, I'm not even coming close to exploring the 'underground and inside' sites I'm discovering as I travel around. I mean, I've got 20 or so quests lined up, have actually started around half a dozen (I jump around a lot while gaming), and am currently concentrating on the beginning of the 'Knights of the Nine' dlc ,which begins with a fairly extensive bit of search and find exploration.

And gosh I'm enjoying it. It isn't Skyrim, but it's close enough and I'm beginning to understand why some people actually like it better. You aren't quite as recognised a character in it and that's quite refreshing. The terrain, while less varied than Skyrim, is still beautiful, if in a softer way. The map size is (I read) actually bigger than that of Skyrim, because so much of the latter is unavailable mountain territory. In the Cyrodil of Oblivion, you can actually get to most of what you can see.

The remastering is well done, if a tad jumpy at times. The textures and reflections, light contrasts and shadows etc, are of significant improvement to the point where this is a different experience than the original. Someone rode past me on a horse the other day and it was so fluid and lifelike - not the stade walk of Skyrim horses but a vibrant trotting passage where you could actually expect the horse to behave in a real fashion, should it become frightened by a noise or whatever. Little things like this make all the difference.

I've given up on ever being around long enough to see ES 6, but this is a damn good substitute and (given some of the trends of more modern games latterly) I suspect that for many people, it will be a better experience than the new game, when it finally hits the ground. I think our expectations of ES 6 are simply too great and it can only fail to meet them. It'll be good - but it won't be Elder Scrolls. Not as people who've been in the ES world since Morrowind would expect/want it to be. It'll be new and designed to cater to a more modern audience, where Oblivion remastered is quintessentially Elder Scrolls in the true roll playing sense. (Okay - perhaps not so much as Morrowind, but equally if not more so than Skyrim.)

People reckon that the depth of side quests is more satisfying in Oblivion than Skyrim, and I'm beginning to see some evidence of this. My first fighters guild contract was a simple rats in a cellar job (ala the Companions of Skyrim), but it branched out into a more expansive job almost immediately that went far beyond a hack and slash, collect money exercise of the Skyrim type. Nice work.

So on this evidence I'm at the beginning of an adventure that is shaping up pretty well. I've had a couple of scary moments with potentially quest breaking glitches, but a bit of jiggering around and reloading has seemed to square them out without too much issue. So all in all a good experience in the round.

I probably won't come back to this thread again, but I hope this review has been helpful. Good gaming.....

[Avatar]

Pretty damn steep for a nearly 20 year old game. I did play the original all the way through, although only after I played Skyrim, and largely found it meh. I doubt I'll bother with this one.

--A

[peter]

Horses for courses Av.

It's never going to beat Skyrim for sure, but it has value for an Elder Scrolls fan nevertheless. For me (never having played it through) I'm discovering much I'd never seen before. Was pleased to encounter M'aiq the Liar the other day and am looking forward to the dark brotherhood questline, where Shadowmere will once again reappear, but much of my pleasure is derived from just the vibe of being back in Tamriel and seeing what the new remaster has done with the game graphically.

An example of this was, I happened to be down on the coast near Anvil doing the Dunbarrow Cove quest and saw that the sun was setting over the sea. I could see the city and castle to my right, the sea with its sun reflection in front of me and the coastal grassland and cliffs upon which I stood. I decided to watch the sunset just to see what attention to detail the guys had given to the game, specifically if you were doing something as unusual as standing in one spot and sightseeing, rather than moving around doing the usual stuff.

It was very impressive. The gradually changing tones of the landscape, the changing colours both of the sun and the reflection, the way the latter was gradually pulled away into an elongated shape as the event proceeded. And all without actually moving the character other than a bit of looking from side to side.

And in detail, the things like the grass and stones are so much better, not to mention the opponents you come up against. I'm doing a quest in which I'm clearing a ship of ghosts and they are really well depicted this time. The Unreal Engine 5 is really doing its stuff and I can only imagine that with a computer and high end graphics card it would be significantly better again. It might be that the quest catalogue will not be as strong as that of Skyrim (though some people really prefer it over the later game) but I can live with this. Being 'off world' in a game is often enough for me and I can tailor my meanderings in Cyrodil to meet my own needs. Yeah, the bucks are high for an old game but are reflective of the effort put into the remaster. I'm happy with what I got in return.