We finally have concrete evidence that The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion is getting a remaster, and fans aren’t all happy. The first leaked screenshots of Cyrodiil make it look notably less colorful than in the original game. One particular shot, showing a dock extending out into a body of water with a hill in the background, looks more detailed, sure, but less saturated and way more brown. Where the original Oblivion was bright and verdant, almost like a fairy tale kingdom at times, nüBlivion is heightening the realism at the expense of the vibe.
This isn’t a big deal to me because Oblivion has never been one of my favorite games, but with reports indicating that a Fallout 3 remaster will be coming at some point in the future, I’m worried that Bethesda’s classic RPG will get the same brownish treatment.
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PostsFallout 3 Is 2007 In Video Game Form
Fallout 3 is the most potent time capsule to the late ‘00s I’ve ever seen. I didn’t play the game at the time of its release, but when I picked it up for the first time in 2021, I was struck by how quickly it connected me to my teenage years.
When I played Fallout 3, it was still fairly early into the pandemic, vaccines weren’t widely available yet, and I was still looking for anything to make the sheer amount of time spent indoors more tolerable. I was 13 when the game initially launched, and when I headed into its post-apocalypse at 27, I was treated to a nostalgia trip that got me out of the cursed present and into a happier past.
In other games, that kind of connection might be caused by characters, gameplay, or level design, but for Fallout 3, the nostalgia comes almost entirely from how it looks. The brown landscapes and the hazy green filter over everything are key to the game’s appeal, and if the studio behind the potential remaster tries to bring the game’s aesthetic closer to modern trends in the same way Oblivion was handled by completely revamping its visuals, I just can’t help but feel that it won’t feel like Fallout 3 anymore.
Aughts Photorealism Look Aggressively Stylized Now
The late 2000s and early 2010s were an aggressive time for video game graphics. Games like Resident Evil 5 had intense filters that skewed the colors far away from realism. They could feel closer to a fever dream, or to the feeling of walking out of a movie theater in the afternoon, blinded by the light of the sun.
If you talked to devs or players at the time, they would likely say these games were just aiming for photorealism, but with 15 years of hindsight and a few console generations of graphical enhancements later, we can now see the games’ aesthetics more clearly. They’re harsh and garish in the same way that nü metal, extreme sports, and fashion defined the beginning of the decade.
Fallout 3 is similar. It was aiming for realism. Now, it feels like a memory — specifically, the way I remember 2007. It’s a good RPG on its own merits, with some strong characters and questlines, but revisiting those without the aesthetic that ties them all together just feels like a misstep. There’s already a good version of Fallout 3 available on modern Xbox consoles, at no extra cost if you have Game Pass. That’s all I need. When the remaster comes out, I’ll save my money and buy a CRT for my next replay instead.
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