Rumors about a remake of Images for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion have panned out to be true after leaked images surfaced online. Virtuos Games accidentally left access to the upcoming remaster (aka formerly rumored as a remake) on its website. Word spread quickly among the PC community and, of course, various individuals managed to download the images before they were locked down again. As of yet, neither the developer nor Bethesda has asked for the images to be removed from the internet, but that could be imminent.
Here’s a comparison slide that someone also grabbed. Despite the trailer title snapshot above indicating this is a remaster, it’s easy to understand why some were calling it a remake when looking at the differences in the following comparison slide. Fans of the iconic game will no doubt be divided by the changes, but they are extensive.
And edition images:
More images can be found here. All in all, it looks like a lot of work has been put into touching up the now 20-year-old title, which originally released on the Xbox 360 and PC in 2005 and was then followed by a PS3 port in 2007. This project has been rumored to be in the works for some time, but just last month, it was said that we could see a release as early as this month. Odds are that even if it doesn’t, it’ll probably launch soon nonetheless, given that release materials have already been prepped. One thing is for sure, though: it’s no longer a rumor, and the question is not if, just when and how much.
On a side note, it’s interesting that this project has happened as remakes/remasters of classic PC titles have become more widespread in recent years. More recently, however, veterans of these types of projects, Nightdive Studios, expressed their interest in tackling classic Xbox 360/PS3 titles.
Discussion (16 replies)
Join Discussion →Man they sure are milking this game for all its worth. I played through the initial game and it was fun, but don't really see myself going through it again just for some updated graphics.
I'd love a proper remake of Oblivion but not sure about this.
It's brown. Have modern game developers ever been to nature? Cuz it's definitely not brown.
Also desexualized for the modern audience, and probably body type A B and no modding support.
West Texas is brown with splashes of green. Felt right at home. We're going back to Quake brown, gray color palette.
The question I have is whether this is just a graphical image update or if they've reworked any of the underlying mechanics.
If the updates are just graphical, there's plenty of mods for that. If they change mechanics, most non-graphic update mods will no longer work. At best, this is a waste of time, and at worst it'll anger the existing player base.
So the better question is ... why?
On a side note, I've recently been playing through a heavily modded version of Daggerfall Unity. It's totally free (legit free not community demo free), and aside from a few bugs here and there (a lot less than I remember in the original), it has been fairly enjoyable.
Oh, existing mods most definitely won't work. If rumors are true this uses UE5. The question is whether there will be modding support at all. Because if not that will anger the community. And be a deal breaker for me as well.
For once they won't be using their custom version of the ancient GameBryo engine the Creation engine?!?!?!?!?! I mean, not that UE5 is the best choice to jump to, but good gaaaawd GameBryo/Creation was old as f*ck. They just kept reusing the gawd-dang thing over and over and over and over... minor updates here and there, slapping sh1t on until it was a big mish-mash of crap like how X11/X.Org Server ended up after all these many decades.
Don't get your hopes up. The way I understand it the game still runs on the old engine, UE5 is just used as a graphics wrapper. So in a way this is a bigger mish mash, potentially combining the downsides of both engines.
Reminds me of the story of how RDR1 was made for PS3. Patched the crap out of that engine until nobody knew what was going on.
Here's hoping that they at least learn enough to not repeat Starfield's performance issues...
And perhaps open up the potential to make better games.
Pretty sure everyone saw this coming.
Here's hoping it will have mod support because without that Bethesda games are not worth much.
That is 100% the truth.
I wonder if it includes audio/voice actor make over as well.
I bought a used Xbox from a friend a very long time ago and pretty sure I picked up the original version of this for ~$5-$10 used at gamestop. Probably put about ten minutes into it back then and put it down after that.
That being said, I got this version on sale recently and started playing it again yesterday. So far have about 3+ hours into an really enjoying it. I like the graphics and controls. It has the usual Bethesda feel but, for now, I'm finding it more enjoyable than Skyrim. I was bummed that it doesn't support HDR but W11 HDR does a good job with it and I'm also enjoying the soundtrack. Game definitely has some retro vibes going on which is really nice. I have a break coming up and really looking forward to spending some time playing this.
I was working at EBGames (under GameStop ownership) when Oblivion came out. That game had no copy protection or DRM of any kind, and yet it sold incredibly well. Too bad Bethesda couldn't have learned from that. Anyways, my friend got a Radeon X800 XL, which was his very first PCI-Express card (and on his first 64-bit system, an AMD Athlon 3000+ on an nForce 4 board), and Oblivion was one of the games we used to really see what that card could do. Sh1t blew our minds back then. I never did finish the game, or any other Bethesda game. I had a blast getting lost and immersed in Oblivion's environments though. So many friends told me incredible stories of games like Morrowind, and while Oblivion wasn't quite on the same level as something like Morrowind, it was still a very impressive effort. The detail for an open-world game back then was astounding. It was also my first experience with Bethesda's overly-buggy hella-glitchy games. That's part of the charm! And to think, all these years later Bethesda is STILL using some version of the Gamebyro Engine (they eventually started calling their version of it the Creation Engine)! X360 also came out when I was working at EBGames, and I remember we sold a decent amount of copies of the game for that system too. I was confused cuz I was wondering why people would bother to get a game like that for console. Turns out a lot of people played Morrowind on the original Xbox.