Bethesda, the famed game developers behind beloved titles such as Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim and Skyrim, have ventured beyond their traditional swath of titles to remaster its predecessor: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. 

The Elder Scrolls series is near and dear to my heart. I’m a “Skybaby,” someone who started with 2011’s Skyrim. Just like the rest of the world, I fell in love with the game. It’s easily my most played video game across my lifetime with a combined total playtime of around 3,000 hours.

During my teenage years, I played all of the previous Elder Scrolls titles, including 2006’s Oblivion. To say I felt the same awe and wonder that Skyrim gave me would be accurate. 

The opening cutscene is narrated by Emperor Uriel Septim VII, played by Sir Patrick Stewart, and is one of the most iconic in video game history. It immediately sucked me in and made me want to find out what foreboding threat put so much fear into the emperor’s voice. 

So when Bethesda announced the Oblivion remaster, I was ecstatic. When the announcement concluded by launching the game, I went feral. One of the most influential titles in gaming has been remastered, and they just released it on a Tuesday with no fanfare.

As soon as I was able, I installed the game on my PC. Then I played it six hours later, because the file was insanely huge. That’s a separate problem: why do I need a hard drive the size of a nation to store every new game?

Anyway, once I was finally in the game, I was immediately hooked. Stewart’s narration sounds the same as it did, but it has never looked better. When I saw every little wrinkle on Septim’s face and the bright, explosive lava in the planes of Oblivion, I knew I was in for a treat.

The player makes their character and is thrust into a prison cell. The emperor and his bodyguards are escaping assassins through a secret passage that happens to go through our prison cell. Septim believes it to be fate. 

Unfortunately, the escape isn’t successful. The emperor and most of his vanguard are slain in the passages, leaving you and a lone soldier. Just before his death, the emperor hands the player the Amulet of Kings and says you must “close shut the jaws of Oblivion.”

The tunnels eventually open out into the world of Cyrodiil. From here, the player can do whatever they please. One could certainly follow the emperor’s dying wish and deliver the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre, but that’s far from their only choice.

The player can join a faction, such as the Thieves Guild or Mages Guild. Another option is to simply explore the nearest dungeon and see what’s inside. Some players may decide that their sole purpose will be to pick mushrooms, and that’s awesome, too.

There is a whole world waiting to be explored, full of both things one would expect to see in a fantasy world and items that subvert the player’s expectations.

Threats such as trolls, imps and bandits litter the landscape. Cyrodiil is also home to caves, towers, shrines to scorned gods, forts, abandoned ruins and more, just begging an eager player to explore them. 

The 2006 original is infamous for having many glitches, bugs and other “unintended features.” The developers wanted to keep a good amount of that intact, so as not to alienate players returning to the remaster. 

To keep a long story short, I got soft-locked in the tutorial because one of my companions got stuck walking on nothing and couldn’t get to where he needed to be. 

By sword, spell or sneak, the world of Oblivion is just as janky as it has always been, but it has never looked or played better. The only thing that could be funnier than keeping all the bugs in would be if someone made a mod that makes the new one look like the old one. 

The new one adds a few quests and quality-of-life improvements, such as an improved user interface, but the Oblivion experience is still perfectly intact.

Oblivion gets a 5/5. It is by no means a flawless game, and it’s a bit of a slow burn, but there are no words that can possibly express the joy I always feel when messing around with this title, and the remaster preserves that feeling excellently. 

Tolbert can be contacted at [email protected]. Duplicate him using scrolls.