The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered review: A warts-and-all remaster of an iconic RPG

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is a way to play Oblivion the way you remember it, not the way it actually was.

For most players, that’s probably exactly what they want. It’s a nostalgia trip. It’s a way to kill time before The Elder Scrolls 6, whenever that might be. Nearly 20 years later, the game is still a masterclass in RPG writing, and features questlines that trump much of what the genre has managed in the two decades since.

However, dated combat, constant performance issues, and a fair share of bugs make The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered a game I’d recommend to a nostalgic millennial, but probably won’t wow someone entirely new to the series.

Oblivion Remastered has been developed by Bethesda and Virtuos,  the latter of which also built Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater, another remake for people now crashing head-first into middle age.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered is very firmly a remaster, not a remake. A duplication glitch that’s so old it could now legally drink is still in the game. Methods for breaking the game’s progression and levelling your character at top speed are still in the game. Insane conversations between NPCs that change in dialogue and intensity seemingly at random are still in the game, and I’m glad they are.

Who wants “polished Oblivion?.” The jank is part of the charm. That sentiment has run through the core of all discussion of Bethesda Game Studios games for the past two decades, which, perhaps hypocritically, leads me to my major complaint.

For all the things the game does well as a remaster in terms of visual upgrades and quality of life improvements, the performance issues and quest-breaking bugs that at this point seem endemic to the engine itself persist.

Take one of the game’s earliest and most iconic quests, The Arena. This quest sees the player face off against a series of tougher and tougher opponents, before, in the end, facing the Champion. In order to do this, there is an NPC in the arena that will trigger the final battle.

Despite the fact that I had seen her every single time I returned to the arena to continue the quest, when I finally needed to speak to her, she was nowhere to be seen. Since I’m playing on console, there’s no way to summon her, and no alternative way to complete the quest, leaving me stuck.

Similar logic-breaking issues happened during the main story path, forcing saves to be reloaded and a lot of trial and error. I’ve played all of Bethesda’s RPG releases since Oblivion, so I’m equipped to deal with the temperamental nuances of the engine, but for a new player playing the game for the first time, they’ll perhaps wonder why, as part of the remastering process, things like this weren’t eliminated. There’s jank, and then there’s being unable to complete a quest.

Oblivion’s importance to gaming can’t be undersold. When it was first released, just months after the debut of the Xbox 360, it was a true marker of a generational transition. It’s one of the first games I remember looking at and thinking, “there’s no way you could do this on the PS2.” It’s the reason people bought the Xbox 360, and it’s still easy to see why now.

The game’s quests are not only legendary from a writing perspective, they’re still fun today. The Dark Brotherhood, a questline which has become a standard-bearer for RPGs in the two decades since, is still amazing, and each of its twists, turns, and permutations makes it worth experiencing all over again.

The game world’s relatively small size compared to modern games also works incredibly well in its favour. It’s easy to remember what’s going on across the many towns and cities of the world because you’re not scrolling across the map for two weeks.

“For all the things the game does well as a remaster in terms of visual upgrades and quality of life improvements, the performance issues and quest-breaking bugs that at this point seem endemic to the engine itself persist.”

Other positives come in the game’s visual makeover, which retains the original game’s art style while bringing in line with modern standards.  Characters still have ridiculously slanted eyes and gravity-defying hairlines, but the game looks modern. Managing to make a game that looks both modern and like it came out in the mid-2000s is an extremely impressive needle to thread.

Some races, namely the Argonians and Kahjiit, get a full makeover, as does every weapon and piece of armour in the game. Some of the game’s colour palette is less vibrant, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered could have benefited from a filter system to reintroduce the wild blues and greens of the original, but that’s something that, on PC at least, modders have already solved.

While there’s plenty to admire about this remastering effort, ignoring the game’s constant performance issues is impossible. While the original game was also a famously bug-riddled mess, this feels like one element of authenticity to the original that I’d have been happy being changed. 

Loading into an area in the Imperial City results in you watching the world in front of you burst into relief in real time as textures scramble into place. There’s also constant frame-rate problems, and the highest number of hard crashes we’ve experienced in a console game in years. 

If you handed someone who’s never played a Bethesda Game Studios game The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, they’ll find excellent writing, great quest design, and some combat that was dated 15 years ago, never mind in 2025.

But if you hand The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered to someone who spent their teenage years running home from school to advance further in the Thieves Guild, or close every single Oblivion gate, or find the hidden chest of the west coast with the helmet that lets you breathe underwater, they’ll smile.

That’s what we did. Smiled at every ridiculous line read. Every single time we entered a shop and all of the items on the tables started to tremble. Every classic “Are you the hero of Kvatch?” and “STOP! YOU VIOLATED THE LAW.” It is a nostalgia trip. A nostalgia trip for an iconic RPG that has been well taken care of after all these years.

This isn’t a remake that will bring it in contention with RPGs of the modern age, but it isn’t trying to be, it’s a trip back to your childhood through ray-traced rose-tinted glasses. Though no amount of 4K visuals and up-ressed armour sets can seemingly get away from the bugs, glitches, and full-on crashes that will seem to plague this particular game engine forever.