A Fresh Coat of Paint And A Sprint Button: How ‘The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion’ Remaster Put The Industry To Shame
Bethesda’s surprise release of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remaster has emerged as perhaps the defining remaster of this generation. While other studios settle for minimal enhancements, like The Last of Us Part II Remastered, Bethesda Game Studios followed the Demon’s Souls (2020) approach, delivering substantial updates to both visuals and gameplay with remarkably few hiccups.
This is what a remaster should be: not just a technical upgrade, but an experience that triggers something deeper. Like catching a familiar scent that instantly floods your mind with forgotten memories, revisiting Cyrodiil feels both familiar and revelatory. Yet Bethesda’s and Virtuos’ home run may have inadvertently created a problem.
By so perfectly reviving their past excellence, they’ve set a standard that their current work, and much of the Western RPG landscape, simply can’t live up to. In fact many would argue that the 19-year-old game is competing with all of the open world western RPGs from the last decade. The Metacritic user and critic scores both place this remaster among the better games in the genre. This should not be the case.
Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not saying Oblivion Remastered is a perfect 10/10 masterpiece. Instead, it’s pretty good. I went back and put some hours into The Outer Worlds, Cyberpunk 2077, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance just to get a sense of where we’ve gone since. As I reflect on my time with Oblivion Remastered and the other recent open-world western RPGs, I’m left wondering if the genre has substantially improved since the release of Oblivion in 2006.
The open-world RPG genre has experienced a significant decline in innovation and improvement over the past decade. Although titles like Kingdom Come Deliverance and Cyberpunk 2077 have made notable contributions, the lack of consistent releases from top studios is concerning. Since Skyrim’s release in 2011, we’ve seen a few standout games, including The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
But these successes are often spaced out over long periods, leaving a significant gap in the market. The pace of game development has slowed, with studios releasing games at a rate of one every 4 to 5 years, a far cry from the frequent releases of classic franchises like Fable, Knights of The Old Republic, and Mass Effect.
Sure visuals are clearly improving but in terms of role playing elements, NPC behavior, and world interactivity there isn’t much to write home about. I will contend that the Oblivion Remaster does many of these aspects better than those examples I provided. The world’s interactivity and NPC behavior are superior to those in The Outer Worlds and Cyberpunk.
The combat as a whole is much better than that of KCD 2. I’ll also admit that some of these games do certain things better than Oblivion but it is a shame that none of them are complete improvements as a whole. While other studios have engaged in these practices, Bethesda’s case is particularly noteworthy given their previous high standards and the direct comparison made possible by the Oblivion Remaster.
That’s ironic considering their countless ports of Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. To be fair, they never claimed that the later ports of Skyrim were remasters but rather “special” or “anniversary” editions. Even the recent mod breaking Fallout 4 update was not labeled a “Remaster” but rather a “next-gen” edition, and with good reason too.
None of these versions were significant updates so as to claim they were remasters, oftentimes they would simply consist of a higher playable resolution, performance upgrades, and bug fixes (sometimes). Nevertheless, Bethesda has had a tough time competing in the genre when they release a brand new game every five years or so.
Constantly compared to Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas or their own Skyrim and now to Oblivion: Remastered, we see the constant decline since Fallout 4 to Fallout 76, The Elder Scrolls Online, and most recently Starfield. No studio has chosen a niche and forgotten about the rest of the game like Bethesda has.
Though to be fair Fallout 76 and ESO weren’t ever meant to act as genuine stand alone titles. Instead, it has been speculated that they were pushed into production so as to increase the value of Bethesda Softworks and Zenimax in anticipation of a major acquisition sometime in the future.
After all, the potential profits from live service multiplayer games are incredible. In hindsight and with the massive failure of other live service games it is surprising to see that Bethesda’s own money printing projects aren’t utter disasters but actually quite passable experiences. All in all, I wouldn’t want to include those games to the core of my argument as they are spin off titles and not intended to be single player open world sandbox RPGs that Bethesda is known for.
Fallout 4 and Starfield, on the other hand, are indeed evidence enough to make my point. I don’t want to get too into why I and other consumers weren’t head over heels in love with Fallout 4 or Starfield as that has been done a thousand times over. Instead, I’m just going to point out the fact that both of these titles aren’t so much updating the systems of previous games, but instead just investing their efforts into frankly undesirable elements.
Voice acting and an incredibly restrictive dialogue system was a massive waste of time in Fallout 4. The addition of a voiced protagonist was one of the biggest sticking points for players. As the player character neither felt like a representation of ourselves nor a unique and fleshed out individual. It was basically a voice attached to a massively downgraded dialogue system – “downgraded” being the word of the day.
You see, the narrative depth that once was at the center of Bethesda games had been reduced as well. Again it would be another 3000 words just to get started on that, but enough players share the sentiment and were let down when they realized that Fallout 4 wasn’t the full-fledged role playing game we’d come to expect. And unfortunatly the same could be said about Bethesda’s most recent game.
Eight years after the leaunch of Fallout 4, 2023’s Starfield could’ve been the redeemer in the eyes of Bethesda fans. They had the chance to do more with less. Let’s remember that Cyrodiil or The Capital Wasteland really aren’t that massive by area, but their sheer content density made all the difference. Anyway, Bethesda opted to give us like a thousand procedurally generated and mostly empty worlds instead.
As if the success of their previous content rich worlds weren’t reason enough to determine that their player base craves well-thought-out and interactive settings, this is worse because the few hand-crafted sections of the game are just as good as ever. This indicates that there is still some talent left in the studio. Some of what made their previous games so great remains, but seems to be restrained in exchange for procedural generated exploration.
I don’t have to spell out why that doesn’t work. My question is why is this the direction Todd Howard and Bethesda chose to go?
If Starfield truly is a passion project for Todd Howard, then why would he opt to make it the most restrained and lifeless games the studio has ever made? One would expect meticulous attention to detail and zero tolerance for lazy oversight. This passion project comes off as more a proof of concept for procedurally generated Bethesda RPGs than Bethesdsa Game Studios’ magnum opus.
This leads me back to the Oblivion Remaster, the game with the same four voice actors for the entire region; the game with the same bugs and exploits as were present 19 years and three console generations ago. This game should have been left in the dust by now. Oblivion with all of its faults is overall a better game than both of Bethesda’s recent single player RPGs.
It does have in part to do with Oblivion being an amazing game in its own right, but the Remaster is only proof that even if they did essentially the same thing they were doing almost twenty years ago, they would actually be steps ahead of where they are now.
Their true motivation should have been to improve on what came before; not rewrite it and subvert what was expected, but to sharpen and refine their greatest assets. That expectation is the reason why so many gamers still perpetually look forward to their next game. Those of us who look forward to the new memories like the ones we created playing Fallout 3, Skyrim, and Oblivion.
Bethesda would be fools to not hit a grand slam with The Elder Scrolls 6, and it’s simple: Improve on what you have and stop trying to force unwanted systems. You want to know a franchise that managed to improve desired systems and innovate at the same time?
In contrast to this stagnation, FromSoftware has consistently built upon their formula, particularly in the Dark Souls series and Elden Ring. These games are a wonderful example that although they’re much less inspired by the BGS formula, their use of countless weapons, magics and consumables are still compelling when they’re built upon game after game.
It can be seen when comparing the combat systems of Demon Souls to each incremental improvement in subsequent games. Sure, the differences between Demon Souls and Dark Souls are not exactly jarring. However, when you compare the strides made in the decade between Dark Souls and Elden Ring, we can see that each gradual upgrade eventually made for a combat system that has become the new status quo.
Conversely, one can look at the changes in gunplay from Fallout 3 to Starfield. In 15 years one could reasonably contend that while there have been updates to the gunplay, it has not improved much since their first foray in the FPS genre.
In fact, the same could be said in The Elder Scrolls franchise. Some people still want their spears back from 2002’s Morrowind. So other studios have taken the reigns and made their own improvements as they see fit. One notable example is Obsidian Entertainment, a studio with a history of crafting engaging open-world western RPGs.
There was massive anticipation for The Outer Worlds as Obsidian’s return to the open world RPG space. However, when it came to release many were underwhelmed as despite the game being very well received. I’ll admit I ate it up too. It soon became evident that there was something missing. The replay value of The Outer Worlds simply wasn’t there.
Each return to the Halcyon solar system revealed more and more shortcomings. The lack of intelligent denizens of the borderland settlements made each small map to feel empty. The writing also would become like nails on a chalkboard. With far too many quips and jokes than serious thought provoking conversations.
It isn’t immediately evident on the first playthrough, but by the second time around, one wonders why it’s all so cartoonishly silly.
To be fair the overall combat and mission structure was signature Obsidian, though it was not enough to make up for the small lifeless worlds and all too short playtime. At the end of the day The Outer Worlds wouldn’t fill the Bethesda void and didn’t live up to expectations after the statement that Fallout: New Vegas would become. Unfortunately, Obsidian made little improvement with their latest project Avowed.
An even clearer chance to produce a “Skyrim killer”, Obsidian returned to the Pillars Of Eternity universe to make a fantastical open world first person RPG. Being released a year and a half after Starfield’s disappointing launch should’ve meant that all the pieces were in place for Obsidian to yet again step to their former glory and show Bethesda how it’s done. Too bad they didn’t.
Avowed earned mixed reviews with many criticizing their lack of innovation and yet more simplification of role playing systems while only building on their combat. Avowed’s combat was indeed a much needed improvement for games in the genre and could’ve been the game changer the genre needed, if it didn’t fall short in the writing and role playing.
With those two underwhelming releases and the sandbox survival game Grounded in tow, gamers have stopped expecting a return to form by Obsidian. There are still, however, many who look forward to The Outer Worlds 2 as a release with no excuse to not rectify their previous game’s shortcomings.
If the studio takes criticism directed toward not only themselves but that of other studios in the genre to heart, they should have the blueprint to build their own masterpiece that Warhorse Studios may have just missed by a hair with their newest release. Kingdom Come: Deliverance was yet another attempt of filling the void while only fulfilling a niche.
Both KCD and its sequel KCD II are regarded as amazingly deep open world RPGs. But as seems to be a habit for games in the genre, it has faults too big to ignore. In this case the combat, while deep, many consider it inaccessible and not worth spending hours upon hours fighting the enemies and controls at the same time. To be blunt, it simply isn’t fun.
At a time with complex yet responsive melee combat in games like For Honor, Mordhau, and the Chivalry series, Warhorse Studios stuck to their guns and said “get gud” to all of the scrubs struggling with KCD’s janky swordplay. I don’t think anyone would’ve faulted them for introducing a more intuitive system like that of Chivalry 2 in exchange for slightly less role playing experience.
Expecting your players to fumble around for hours with a mediocre combat system for the sake of immersion seems to be a pretty terrible value proposition. Warhorse Studios had Bethesda on the ropes, but ran out of steam just short of hitting their knockout punch.
The struggles of larger studios to innovate and maintain quality highlight the challenges faced by smaller indie developers attempting to make their mark in the RPG genre. Though they’re usually sleeper hits like Dontnod Entertainment’s Vampyr or Big Huge Games’ Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning.
Every year or so we do get quality games, but unfortunately they cannot act as replacements for the bigger titles for the simple fact that their scope is typically much more limited.
Spiders’ Greedfall serves as a prime example of an ambitious AA open-world RPG that fell short of its potential. Despite its engaging mechanics, including compelling dialogue, a beautiful open world, and meaningful decisions, the game’s budget constraints were evident.
Issues like invisible walls, reused interiors, lifeless NPCs, and shallow combat detracted from the overall experience. Combined with a lacking marketing strategy, Greedfall’s good word of mouth was ultimately overshadowed by its numerous flaws, making it a game that flew under the radar despite its promising foundation.
The mid-budget open-world RPGs seem to be stuck in a vicious cycle, with their scope consistently limited by time and financial constraints. As a result, these games often arrive at a lukewarm reception from the gaming public, despite offering decent RPG experiences.
However, there is one notable exception to this trend: a recent game that has defied the odds and captured the attention of fans and critics alike.
Claire Obscur Expedition 33 is a great game, better than anyone would’ve expected from a new studio. It does everything right. Combat, narrative, characters, setting, and visuals are all top-notch. Bethesda is lucky that this studio wasn’t gunning for their throne, but went for the JRPG space instead.
If this studio had set its sights on dominating the open-world western RPG genre, it’s likely they would have achieved still greater commercial success. I’ll be keeping a close eye on their future projects, eager to see what they have in store.
It could be that my expectations are unreasonable. I’m an outsider in the industry and have never held a position in a large game studio. I’m an amateur indie developer and do not claim to understand the intricacies of modern day AAA game development.
All that I’m proposing is that newer games should learn and build upon those that came before. Or at the very least not recede in quality and mechanics. I totally understand gutting mechanics and systems that weren’t well received by players, but what about the parts of the game players loved?
I don’t mean to pick on Bethesda but they have exemplified recessive game design since the release of Skyrim. Again I understand that some sacrifices must be made for the sake of adhering to the developers vision, and sometimes we cannot sensibly fit every little thing from the last game into the next one.
I would propose that players would prefer improvements on existing elements instead of trading trademark systems in for something completely new and unwanted. No one wanted a lazy and linear Fallout with a voiced protagonist, nor did anyone ask for a never-ending, procedurally generated Starfield.
Ultimately, the success of Oblivion Remasterd serves as a valuable lesson for developers: prioritize meaningful improvements, listen to your audience, and build upon the strengths of the past.
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