Oblivion Remastered is hiding an NPC voiced by Bethesda Game Studios head and creative director Todd Howard, just like in the original Oblivion.
Despite its new Unreal Engine 5 coat of paint and a few other tweaks, the surprise release of Oblivion Remastered is largely the same Oblivion from almost 20 years ago. That means it still has many of the fun quirks that give the 2006 version so much of its personality, ranging from humorous bugs to an infamous voice line mix-up.
That also means it includes a secret house where players can talk to, piss off, and persuade Howard. As broken down by PC Gamer and shown in videos like this one from user Uzis on YouTube, he’s not in the game proper–players won’t bump into him just casually walking the streets of the Imperial City. Instead, players need to use a console command to teleport to a hidden test house by bringing up the in-game console commands on PC and typing “coc toddtest” and pressing Enter.
Inside the house, players will find an NPC named Alban Corinis wearing Elven armor. Talking to him at first reveals he doesn’t initially have Howard’s voice, instead reciting a bit of quest dialogue by a different NPC. Afterwards, however, players can choose between a number of different conversation topics like Angry, Fear, Happy, Neutral, Sad, and Surprise.
Clicking these emotion-based topics will see the NPC react accordingly in Howard’s voice. The dialogue choices are actually bypassing Oblivion’s confusing persuasion minigame to change the NPC’s disposition, and players can see the results by once again setting the Howard-voiced NPC to Neutral.
Howard will reply in all kinds of ways, ranging from saying “You are indeed a bastard” when he’s angry to being madly in love when he says “I can’t recall ever loving moments, like this moment, with you.”
Since Howard is far from a professional voice actor and was just recording these lines as a test, it all comes across as a bit strange when he’s acting surprised and exclaiming, “Oh no! What do we do? I’m so scared!” or confessing his love.
That is, however, all part of Oblivion’s charm. As noted in GameSpot’s Oblivion Remastered review, the game’s rough edges, strange-looking characters, and sometimes-confusing mechanics are part of what give it its character. Retaining all that weirdness for Oblivion Remastered, including this strange Howard test NPC, is just another example of why the original game is beloved by so many.
