Virtuos Games’ remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is all but confirmed to be releasing later this month, and honestly, even that “all but” is looking shaky. A few different sets of images from the RPG have surfaced, supporting rumours that have been kicking about since an internal Microsoft document leaked in 2020. Also, Eurogamer said it was true, and they’ve got an uncle that works at the White Gold Tower, although prodding Bethesda themselves proved as forthcoming as trying to get stones out of a blood orange.
If you’ve been following all this, you may have noticed that the timing of the remaster’s (or remake’s?) release is a little bit, um, convenient. The team behind Skyblivion – a full remake of Oblivion in Skyrim’s engine – is also due to release this year. While it’s obviously tempting to frame this as the monstrous cads at Bethesda n’ chums taking a power-hose grade widdle on the dreams, work, beds, and pets of volunteer modders, it seems the modders themselves aren’t too bothered.
“The real remake is the friends we made along the way,” says Skyblivion lead KRebel. “This changes nothing for me. This always was a passion project and still is until the end. For the community its a win-win as you get twice the amount of Oblivion this year. All love and no hate towards the people who made the official remaster.”
This echo earlier statements made to our network chums at VG247. “I’ve gotten more out of this than I ever imagined, friends, experience and it made me realize I wanted to work in the gaming industry which I ended up doing,” KRebel said. “At the end of the day it only exists because Bethesda allowed it, so I guess if the official remake is real it’s good that we were still allowed to exist at all.”
And that’s the key point here, I think. The official remaster has presumably been in the works for many years at this point. Bethesda knew it was coming, and still allowed the Skyblivion team to carry on doing their thing. The result? Well, it means we’ve all got a more bucolic Tamriel to visit when the official version’s seemingly ubiquitous 2005 shooter piss-filter gets too much.
