Well, they did it. They really did it. A brisk 19 years after the original game's release, Bethesda went back and slathered a thick layer of Unreal Engine 5 over The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion's beating Gamebryo heart. It's out now, it's $50 (£50), and you even get the horse armour thrown in (except, um, the special deluxe edition horse armour). Don't say Todd Howard never did anything for you.
But oh, what's this? Cyrodiil certainly has expanded since I slotted it into my Xbox 360 disc drive back in 2006. Where the original game asks only a svelte 4.6 GB of drive space per its system reqs on Steam, the remaster wants, uh, more. Quite a bit more: it wants 125 GB. Fair's fair, though: that's only an economical 115 GB download thanks to Steam's compression.
That's a size increase of about 2600%, if you're a relativity fan. At 125 GB, it slots in neatly at seventh place in our list of the biggest games by install size, shunting Red Dead Redemption 2 down to eighth place (though, full transparency, it's been a little while since we last updated that list—the Oblivion Remaster probably isn't actually the seventh largest game ever made).
But damn, it's a meaty one. I can't be too mad, though. I have to admit: a bit of weirdness with some character faces aside (my beautiful Betto Plotius, what have they done to you?), the remaster does look gorgeous. Bethesda and Virtuos say—in terms I can understand—that they've got UE5 handling the graphics and good old Gamebryo handling the core logic. That's a whole lot of game to put in one place. It's no surprise it's put on a few pounds in the transformation.
That's what really excites me, I have to say. Keeping Gamebryo intact should mean all that beautiful Bethesda jank, the stuff Howard grimaces and calls "charm" in the reveal vid, ought to still be there in its full glory. Stilted conversations? You bet. Amiable idiots wandering into deathtraps in single-file? Absolutely. Some guy ascending corporeally to heaven because the physics engine forgot how gravity works for a sec? If it's not in there, I quit.
Beautiful but still weird? That's just what I want from an Oblivion remaster, so I'm eager to get my hands on all 125 GB of this one. Now all I need to know is what's gonna become of all my mods, and I can meander through Cyrodiil a happy man.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
