this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
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I've been playing a lot of Oblivion Remastered and was hoping on starting a discussion thread about it.

I've put in around 12 hours so far and it's everything I wanted from a remake. Aside from the gorgeous graphics overhaul, they added a lot of more subtle QoL changes that really add up. Having a sprint button is great, and the reworked leveling system is way better than how it used to be. Combat has also been enhanced in lots of subtle ways like significantly better animations and better impact when hitting enemies.

The remaster is very impressive, when news got leaked that this was in development I expected a low effort re-release with a higher resolution, but they managed to make it play like a modern title. The lighting is crazy good and the open world can look breathtaking at times. They also managed to keep all the old Oblivion charm by not messing around with things people loved - the game under the hood still works the same, glitches and hilarious NPCs are still intact. They even kept some goofs from the original.

The only two issues right now for me are:

  • Open world performance is just not good. It hovers around 50FPS on my 3060 Ti in the open world on medium settings, which is rough.

  • Difficulty settings are wack. Normal is too easy and hard is way too hard. The slider literally goes from 1x/1x damage taken/damage dealt to 3x/0.6! No idea why we can't get something in the middle, but luckily there's already a mod that fixes it (I'm now using 2x/0.75 which is the sweet spot).

If those get fixed, it's basically a perfect remaster. Anyone else here playing right now? How are you enjoying it?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

I'm disappointed with it, but that's my problem. I can't put my finger on why, I think my expectations have changed. Somehow I was expecting it to blow me away like the first time I played it and obviously it just can't do that.

Still gonna sink a fair few hours into it though.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Difficulty settings are wack. Normal is too easy and hard is way too hard. The slider literally goes from 1x/1x damage taken/damage dealt to 3x/0.6!

This was my only real complaint, other than them taking the noise cue away from lockpicking! I've really been itching for an elderscolls game with modern graphics and QOL so I'm super happy.

As for the lockpicking I learned something recently from a video and now I never break a pick. I can't believe I never knew this:

Basically when you hit one tumbler there are the 3 drop speeds right? You push it up and it falls either slow, med, or quick. They “switch” between those three speeds when the tumbler falls back to the starting position.

If you hit a tumbler up and HOLD up (I’m on controller), or whatever key is up, then the tumbler will bounce slightly in the fully raised position. When it’s like this it will be remaining in the “fall speed” from when you first triggered it. We want it to be the slow fall speed so basically while it’s bouncing if you see any spring between “bounces” it’s too fast, let it fall to the starting position and try again.

If it’s bouncing and you can barely see any movement at all let alone any spring then it’s in the slow position, that’s what we want. When it’s like that watch the lockpick and when the lockpick is moving upwards trigger the lock with whatever the confim button is for you. It should always work!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago

As for the lockpicking I learned something recently from a video and now I never break a pick.

I noticed this myself today! At first I thought lockpicking was random and I broke almost all my lockpicks, but I noticed a subtle cue for when it's going to lock in place. From what I understand the middle speed has a chance to work or break your lockpick, but the slowest speed is guaranteed to work.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Has anyone played this on the Steam deck yet?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (2 children)

According to Reddit you get 15-20 fps when I'm lowest settings that make it look worse than the 2008 game

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (5 children)
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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I like the remaster, it plays much better than the original of course. The graphics at first were really sluggish/choppy, but i found disabling the steam overlay fixed it for me.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

I'm honestly surprised that so many people longed to return to Oblivion. The game's as bad now as it was 20 years ago - janky combat, horrible dialogue, bugs galore. They gave it a nice coat of paint, but the moment you transition from dialogue to gameplay, you go back to the same animations from the original game. It's kind of eerie looking at a game with modern graphics and such dated gameplay.

There are so many games nowadays that do what Oblivion attempted to do, so much better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

I like the quests more than skyrim

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 week ago

Still better combat than Fromsoft games

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

I feel as though the combat is much cleaner in my book. Yes it's based off a 20 year game, it's not going to match the witcher in sword play, but it's not annoying anymore to me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Skyrim is the same way. I really hope they adopt combat similar to Mordhau or Chivalry for ES6, but that seems about as likely as them firing Emil Pagliarulo to bring the writing standard back up.

Also, the characters still look vaguely horrifying, just in a more crisp but less charming way than they used to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One man is not responsible for all of your criticisms of writing in their games for decades. The writing and development processes of games are too opaque for you to be able to attribute anything to one person on teams as large as Bethesda's.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It was a joke, Emil, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

There are so many games nowadays that do what Oblivion attempted to do, so much better.

Such as?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

i generally agree with the point you are making because Oblivion is my favorite TES game, but I just got done playing Avowed which is pretty good. defintiely not as deep as oblivion in many areas though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Probably just false sense. Staples in the game industry for a reason. Bethesda fell on there sword with Fallout 76 but these games still don't have good competition or you wouldn't have so many Skyrim reruns?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Skyrim (2008), Skyrim (2012), Skyrim (2016), Skyrim (2020), Skyrim (2022), and Skyrim (2024)

(My years may be off)

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 week ago (2 children)

As someone who played waaaaaay too much of the original game back in the day and was very concerned about a remaster doing it justice, I have to say it turned out about as well as it possibly could have.

It didn't set out to reinvent the wheel or make fixes for things that weren't broken (other than the leveling, at least), it just turned Oblivion into a modern game while still being Oblivion deep down inside.

I am curious to hear perspectives on what Skyrim-only players think about it, because while the Oblivion remake is arguably now the most modernized Elder Scrolls game, it still doesn't have some of the gameplay and QoL improvements that later came to Skyrim. It's a perfect remaster for me, but it wouldn't surprise me if there are folks out there thinking, "Why is there no dual wielding," "What's with the weird zoomed in dialog system," "Where are all the skill perks," or "Why are there no NPC companions," and similar.

I also do hope that Bethesda or the community releases an updated version of the construction set soon so the modding scene can take off again for the game. From what I hear, the original Oblivion construction set is able to be used in the remaster with a good deal of messing around, but modders don't currently have the tools needed to interact at all with the Unreal Engine 5 wrapper.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

I played oblivion when it first came out but I put a lot more hours in to skyrim. I do think they could have improved the game a bit more. I've only been in the capital yet but it felt brutally empty, with all the npcs having the same path/walking speed and so few of them.

I think a bit of decorations and a few new npcs would have gone a long way. I wished they would have worked on the AI a bit more. Taverns don't have bards and little ambiance, walking into one is disappointing and ends up with all the npcs in a clump moving at a snails pace because all their walking paths overlap at the same time when they spawn it. It was the same in the original but it's also 2025.

The waterfront could have really used a bit more shacks. The arena posters just slapped onto walls bother me as well.

Thankfully, I imagine mods will fix all this so I'm optimistic overall.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago

Also played Oblivion years and years ago, and I can agree and think you put it best. "It turned out as well as it could have". Because to anyone complaining here, any and all changes anyone here suggests the team obviously thought the same things, but there is obviously a balance. Change it too much and hardcore original fans are pissed. Don't change it enough and new fans are pissed because it's too old. No matter what people were going to be unhappy. Gamers are some of the most negative people I've met.

I see a decent remaster, I see gameplay and motions have been updated, I see a lot has been updated without changing the core game too much. It turned out as well as it could have.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Love it but have generally the same criticisms as you. Luckily there are mods that help both of these issues:

this one helps slightly with performance: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/35

and this one with difficulty: https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivionremastered/mods/58

Also playing on steam deck I can't tell if aim assist is helping at all. Can be difficult to look at each gold to pick it up with a controller.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

That's the difficulty mod I'm using. Do the performance tweak mods actually make a difference? Every time I tried one of these it ends up being placebo.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I've not yet touched it. But since you mentioned it: How does leveling now work? And more importantly, how does enemy scaling work?

If I remember correctly, in the original, I felt strongest when I got Umbra at Lv 1 and just never levelled up.

Furthermore, how are the character animations? I saw the Emperor in the Remake and while the model was quite nice, in combination with his facial animations, I actually preferred the original. What I assume to be the original animations paird with updated models seemed too uncanny. However, that problem could be specific to him.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

The old style auto added points based on what attributes you used. So if you leveled destruction a lot during level 5 you could get a boosted willpower or Intelligence stat when you leveled up. It was a little chaotic. Now you have 12 stat points(virtues) you can add to whatever 3 attributes you want maxed at 5 points per attribute.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I haven't played the remaster, but the old Oblivion leveling system was exceedingly hard to do efficiently unless you planned in advance. It very much needed a rework, although skyrim dumbed it down way too much, in my opinion.

Basically, among all the skills, like destruction magic, blade, sneak, you pick 7 (I think it's 7) major skills. Those get a boost at the beginning. When you raise your various major skills 10 times, you level up. When you level up, you get to raise three attributes, like strength, speed, or intelligence. You get bonuses to how much you can raise an attribute per level, with 1 being the minimum and 5 being the max. The bonuses are determined by what skills you raised during the last level. For example, the sneak skill is tied to the agility attribute, so raising your sneak skill gets you a bigger agility bonus on leveling up. So, to optimize it, you'd have to raise your major skills exactly 10 times (so none of them go to waste) and fill out the bonuses by raising minor skills, which don't count towards a level up, to get the ideal spread of +5 to 3 attributes per level.

The main problem with it in Oblivion was that the enemies grow stronger as you level up, and since a lot of people didn't understand the leveling system, they'd wind up with horribly underpowered characters in the late game. Some people deliberately remained at level 1 to keep the enemies easy.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

The main problem with it in Oblivion was that the enemies grow stronger as you level up, and since a lot of people didn’t understand the leveling system, they’d wind up with horribly underpowered characters in the late game. Some people deliberately remained at level 1 to keep the enemies easy.

Yep, the old "optimal" way to play, if you didn't want to focus so hard on efficient leveling, was to make all of your major skills ones that you never planned to use. That way, for the skills that you do use frequently, you can increase those as much as you want while still sitting at level 1, allowing the player to become considerably stronger while enemies stayed at the same difficulty.

Alternatively, if someone messed up character creation, they could also simply choose to never sleep and never trigger the level up dialog. But there are a couple of quests which require the player to sleep to trigger an event, so folks would have to be smart about how they go about engaging with those.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

IIRC in the old oblivion there was an arbitrary limit to how many skill points you can put in a stat depending on your class. This has been removed, you can now put up to 5 points in a single stat every time you level up to customize the build as you'd like. You get the same skill points regardless of skills you leveled up.

Some stats have been balanced, like how Agility now scales damage of daggers and shortswords now (before it was only bows). Many masteries have been rebalanced and changed to fit the playstyle more. Enemy scaling still exists and AFAIK enemies scale the same, but because leveling has been reworked you shouldn't have to worry about min-maxing or what skills you're gaining.

As for face animations, they're a little uncanny but overall I'm impressed with them. They look great, most of the time.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago

Yeah performance is my absolute biggest issue rn. I'm getting like...70-80fps on med on a 2080ti. Other than that, I'm very happy with it, although I'm only about 4 hours in

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