It looks like people are pretty evenly split on leaked images of the long rumoured Oblivion remaster that’s supposedly shadowdropping next week. Some think it looks amazing, while others are quite upset about the new art style it’s adopting.

While I personally don’t have much of an attachment to the original Oblivion’s art style, I do understand why select individuals are disappointed that the remaster is dropping the vibrant, saturated green color scheme in favor of something a little more grounded and realistic.

Reactions to the remaster’s visuals once again proves that working on a new version of a beloved title requires developers to walk a fine line and understand that, no matter what they do, someone is going to be mad.

The Problem With Remaking Classics

Remaking games is such a tricky thing to get right. Ideally, a good remake captures the same feeling of playing a game back when it originally launched, but punches up some areas where the older design clashes with modern sensibilities and expectations. What makes that so difficult is that different people will have different preferences for what they want to remain from the original.

Take Resident Evil 4, for example. In the original game, Leon wasn’t able to move and shoot at the same time, but in the remake, Capcom made it so that he controls much closer to modern third-person action games. That’s a controversial change since many believed that having to plant your feet and choose to use your gun added a sense of tension, which has been evaporated in making Leon much more agile.

When it comes to Oblivion, there are a lot of ways it can be modernized, but that doesn’t mean everything should be changed. A lot of the Xbox 360-jank that’s associated with the game makes up much of its charm. Oblivion wouldn’t be Oblivion if guards didn’t awkwardly burst into a room, knock everything over, stand in the middle of the mess they just made, and stiffly tell you that they’re taking you away in handcuffs.

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Technically, that’s not how well-made modern games should operate, but that roughness is key to the Oblivion experience. On the other hand, new players trying out Oblivion for the first time might find Oblivion-jank off-putting and walk away from the game since that sort of thing feels extremely dated.

So, what do you do? Making everyone happy is an impossible task, so Bethesda and Virtuos had to make the choices they thought would best suit the experience. It’s unfortunate that the visual identity of Oblivion has been lost along the way, but I can’t fault studios for making a creative choice and sticking to it.

Thank Daedra For Game Preservation

Even though some fans are disappointed, there is a silver lining to all of this. Luckily, the original Oblivion is still very much playable on modern Xbox consoles and PC, so anyone unhappy with the remaster still has the option of exploring the original version of Cyrodiil.

This is the ideal situation for when a remake or remaster launches. It’s extremely frustrating when a rerelease is the only way to play a game on modern hardware because it means that the rerelease becomes the definitive edition of that game by default.

For example, as much as I liked the Silent Hill 2 remake, I would really appreciate the ability to play the original game on my PS5 as well to compare the two. Oblivion is able to get around that issue because, despite its age, you can still give the original game a shot at any time if you don’t like the changes made to the remaster.

Hopefully, Oblivion Remastered is able to recapture the immaculate and absolutely bizarre vibes of the original game even without its vibrant colors. I wonder if they kept that line where the voice actor messes up and restarts midway through? If they don’t, then I’m sticking with the original.

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The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

RPG Systems 10.0/10 Released March 20, 2006 ESRB M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Violence Developer(s) Bethesda Publisher(s) Bethesda
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DIGITAL
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