THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION REMASTERED announced and released

As was prophesised in the ancient texts (well, yesterday), Bethesda Game Studios have announced and released their remake of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the same day. The game is available right now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.

French studio Virtuos created the remaster, working under the watchful eye of Bethesda. The game features a completely reworked graphics engine, with Unreal Engine 5 now handling rendering, though the original GameBryo Engine is apparently still working somewhere under the hood. Every graphical asset in the game was recreated from scratch and some areas have been given a serious glow-up. The game's infamously janky levelling system has been reworked, and combat is more responsive. The game has added new combat animations and physics reactions, and the voice cast has been hugely expanded with many new voice actors added. However, the original voice actors' performances (including Sir Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean) have also been preserved. As expected, the remaster includes both the Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles expansions.

The Skyblivion remake mod team can take some heart from the fact that Oblivion Remastered appears to not have thoroughly reworked area design or the game's infamously samey dungeons. Skyblivion has focused on expanding those areas of the game, which should be a major improvement. Skyblivion has committed to a 2025 release date as well.

The same leaks indicating the existence of Oblivion Remastered a few months ago also claimed that Bethesda are working on Fallout 3 Remastered, which is also a very interesting prospect.

Bethesda to announce THE ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION REMASTERED tomorrow

Bethesda have confirmed they will be making a big announcement about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered tomorrow, April 22nd 2025, at 11am EST, 8am PST and 4pm BST. This follows weeks of speculation and leaks about the game, and widespread rumours the game would be "shadow-dropped" (released with absolutely no preamble or warning) today.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was originally released in 2006 as, obviously, the fourth game in that venerable series, following on from Arena (1994), Daggerfall (1996) and Morrowind (2002). Only one additional game in the mainline series has been released since then, the infamous Skyrim (2011), although The Elder Scrolls Online (2014) has kept some attention on the franchise. Bethesda have confirmed that The Elder Scrolls VI (no subtitle confirmed) is their next project but no release date has been mooted.

Oblivion was noteworthy for its very impressive graphics (for the time), its status as a unit-shifter for the Xbox 360 console (the game was later also released on PlayStation 3), its huge open-world environment, outstanding and quirky side-quests and its employment of top vocal talent, including Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean. The game eventually saw some criticism for its weird levelling mechanics, the tiny pool of voice actors (often leading to two NPCs with identical voices talking to one another) and the irritating Oblivion Gates, which had a tendency to crop up and interfere with whatever side-quest the player was trying to do at the time. The game was also seen as too much of a standard fantasy, after the extremely weird Morrowind; Skyrim was seen as a more halfway house between Oblivion's conservatism and Morrowind's bizarre experimentation. Finally, Oblivion was the first high-profile game to feature paid DLC, in the form of the infamous "horse armour" upgrade, which some players despise to this very day. Still, Oblivion was well-regarded for its atmosphere, rich assortment of weaponry, interesting bestiary of enemies and its extremely epic conclusion.

Given the number of times that Skyrim has been upgraded, remastered and re-released, fans had been speculating for years about the same attention being given to Oblivion, giving it broadly shares similar technology and a graphics style to the later game (Skyrim's Creation Engine being only a moderate development of Oblivion's GameBryo Engine). Bethesda themselves always seemed cool on the idea, saying they'd rather spend time working on a new game and pointing to numerous fan projects doing similar things. Oblivion has had mods available for many years to improve its mechanics and graphics, to a point.

However, Bethesda may have been slightly disingenuous, having outsourced development of the remaster to Virtuous Studios whilst maintaining oversight from afar.

News broke in 2023 that Bethesda were planning remakes of both Oblivion and Fallout 3 as far back as 2020, as well as considering a Dishonored 3 from their subsidiary studio Arkane. Dishonored 3 never happened - Arkane instead released Deathloop and Redfall, and are now making a video game based on the Marvel character Blade - leading to scepticism about the other claims. These were emphasised by the impressive and sterling work done on the unofficial fan remaster Skyblivion, which was of a very high quality and had committed to a 2025 release, leading to speculation that Bethesda might consider that project for an official release.

Based on the (mostly credible) leaks, Oblivion Remastered will include expansions Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles (and, yes, the horse armour) and will release on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC, and will be available on Game Pass on both PC and Xbox. The game's graphics have been reworked from the ground up, possibly in Unreal Engine 5, with significant visual upgrades. The UI, combat and levelling also appear to have been reworked for a more modern feel. To what degree other elements have been upgraded is unclear; Skyblivion has redesigned every fort, cave and dungeon in the game to be larger, more expansive and more unique, but it's unclear if Remastered has gone that far.

It's also unclear if tomorrow will be an announcement about the remaster or just the actual straight-up release of the game. We will need to see how that unfolds.

SKYBLIVION developers re-commit to 2025 release

The developers of fan mega-mod Skyblivion, which seeks to update venerable fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) to modern-ish standards, have re-committed to releasing the game in 2025, as they originally promised two years ago. The project is almost feature-complete, with developers and testers now able to run through entire quests, as they have demonstrated in a new video.

The original idea behind the project was to remake Oblivion in the upgraded Creation Engine of its successor, Skyrim (2011). However, the project stalled after several years and was relaunched before the pandemic under new management. The title is somewhat misleading, as the game now features improvements from later versions of the engine and features from other modders, including better 4K textures and enhanced lighting. The mod is also not a straightforward remake, as it redesigns and enhances some areas of the games, for example replacing the identikit caves with different designs based on their descriptions (i.e. mines and random caverns no longer look identical) and making the infamously tiny forts larger and more imposing. The city of Leyawiin, which was massively scaled back in development, has been returned to its original, imposing design straddling a major river with a drawbridge to allow ships to pass.

The creators have kept in touch with Bethesda during development to confirm what they can and can't do: they've kept the original soundtrack and even added to it with new material, but have had to re-record all dialogue for legal reasons (presumably the need not to pay Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart lots of money again). This will probably be a boon, as Oblivion infamously had a tiny voice cast, and it wasn't uncommon to stumble across three people with the exact same voice talking to one another, which was weird.

Playing the mod will require the player owns copies of both Oblivion and Skyrim. As noted before, the plan is to release the mod before the end of 2025 via Steam, GoG and Nexus Mods. A console version is currently impossible due to the massive size of the new files (which outsizes the limits Bethesda put in place for console modding).

In 2023 it was rumoured that Bethesda were considering their own remaster of Oblivion, which sounds like an exercise in futility compared to the scale of Skyblivion. It'll be interesting to see if that project is actually something that's happening.

RUMOUR: Bethesda were planning OBLIVION and FALLOUT 3 remasters back in 2020, along with a possible DISHONORED 3

A leaked schedule for Bethesda video games from 2020 suggests that the company was at least planning remasters for two of their older titles, as well as a new game in one of their biggest franchises.

The leak appears to have been an accidental release of information as part of Microsoft's ongoing battle to clear international legal hurdles preventing its acquisition of Activision-Blizzard. The schedule has known projects on which did eventually release (such as Redfall and Starfield), as well as unannounced games including Dishonored 3. The leak also suggests that Microsoft envisages just a three-year wait for The Elder Scrolls VI, the follow-up to the much-acclaimed 2011 title The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

Even though the list is official, we should take it with a grain of salt as it is very clearly outdated. The list is pre-COVID, and the COVID pandemic caused massive delays and multiple project cancellations in many companies. It's not clear which of the projects on the list remain extant (beyond the already-confirmed Elder Scrolls VI).

The list also indicates that both The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2006) and Fallout 3 (2008) are to be remastered, not remade. This would likely be a moderate graphical overhaul and some minor technical and UI improvements (similar to the recent, somewhat underwhelming Red Dead Redemption remaster) but otherwise leaving the games alone.

This is notable as a group of fans have been remaking Oblivion for the past decade with considerably more advanced graphics and a full UI overhaul drawing on later Bethesda games like Fallout 4 (2015, itself already confirmed as getting a next-gen remaster and re-release next year). This project, known as Skyblivion, is currently due for release in 2025 and has Bethesda's support (as well as persistent rumours that Bethesda may make it an official release if the quality is high enough). An Oblivion remaster may be redundant in that case, but it's worth noting that back in 2020 there was widespread scepticism over any of these fan remasters actually being finished. Three years later and with more in-depth coverage of the project's development, Skyblivion does indeed appear very close to completion.

Dishonored 3 is a welcome idea. Dishonored (2012) and Dishonored 2 (2016) are two of the greatest video games of the last decade and cemented Arkane Studios' reputation for great game design and fantastic worldbuilding. Deathloop (2021) - set in the same world albeit in a different game genre - also did well. However, the underwhelming commercial performance of Prey (2017) and Redfall (2023) has somewhat damaged Arkane's reputation, alongside the departure of much of the OG team at the company behind its earlier games. There will be likely scepticism that the remnants can deliver a worthwhile successor, especially as stand-alone expansion Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (2017) delivered a pretty final ending to the story of the series. Deathloop takes place in the same world and does open up some more narrative possibilities for that setting, so a further game in the series might have some legs to it.

Finally, the list suggest that The Elder Scrolls VI will follow three years after the release of Starfield. Given Starfield's two-year delay from the list, that suggests they may be envisaging a 2026 release date for Elder Scrolls VI. With Bethesda only recently spooling up full-time work on the game, that feels very optimistic. Many fans have been projecting a release date of 2028 on the low end to 2030 on the higher.

The leak is interesting, but as yet none of the projects mentioned on it beyond Elder Scrolls VI and the Fallout 4 remaster have been formally confirmed.

ELDER SCROLLS IV: OBLIVION remake targets a 2025 release date at the latest

Whilst The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has been remastered for more platforms than you can shake a stick at, its 2006 forebear has gotten much less official love. However, Oblivion has been getting a major makeover thanks to a large collection of modders and fans who took it upon themselves to remake the entire game in Skyrim's engine, whilst also upgrading that engine considerably.

The result, the slightly-painfully-named Skyblivion (I would give Bethesda serious money if they give them permission to just call it "Oblivion Remade" or something), has been making serious progress for the last couple of years, with increasingly impressive dev diaries and YouTube videos exploring the rebuilt version of Tamriel's Imperial Province of Cyrodiil.

The team have now confirmed a 2025 release date. If that seems a bit far off given how much progress they've made recently, the team agrees and notes this is a worst-case scenario date and they don't get any more resources to help bring the game across the finish line. However, if they are able to recruit more people to help out, they might be able to shave some months off that and bring the game out in 2024 instead.

Skyblivion has ported the entirety of Oblivion into the upgraded engine, but the team have gone back and recreated almost all of the textures, models and effects in the game. Some of the geographic areas have been reworked and resized to make a bit more sense, and the city of Leyawiin has been almost completely redesigned in line with its original, more ambitious, concept art. The biggest change will be with the dungeons. Oblivion used very repetitive and simple dungeon designs, with even some dungeons being simple copy+pastes of others. Every dungeon in Skyblivion has been redesigned and many are now larger and more sprawling. The game will also use Skyrim's more balanced level-scaling system rather than Oblivion's deranged version, but will retain the original game's spellcrafting mechanics.

Skyblivion will launch by 2025 at the latest, and will require the player to have purchased copies of both Skyrim and Oblivion. Bethesda themselves are working on their brand new, space-based roleplaying game, Starfield, which should be out later this year. Bethesda are also in pre-production on The Elder Scrolls VI, but that is many years away.

OBLIVION remaster inching towards completion

A fan-made remaster of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has released a major update on progress, for the first time making positive noises about completion in the not-too-distant future.

The remaster is called Skyblivion, although that's become a bit of a misnomer. The starting point was remaking Oblivion in the somewhat updated engine of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but in the years since then they have also redone the lighting and rendering engine, so it's even better than Skyrim and looks a lot more modern.

At the moment the exterior worldspace is almost complete and the team are working on the dozens of dungeons and shops in the game. For the dungeons they are going beyond just recreating locations but also redesigning dungeons to be larger and more interesting (Oblivion's dungeons were infamously tiny, often not being more than very modest caves). They are also creating new art assets for the entre project and have integrated every quest from the original into the game, although there are lots of issues and bugs they are tracking down and resolving.

No timeframe for completion is given, but from the look of it and bearing in mind this is a small team working in their own time, this may now be down to a couple of years away. Impressive given the mod's long, long-gestating status.

Bethesda themselves have been supportive of mods, especially mods that update and upgrade their older games. Despite re-releasing Skyrim on multiple platforms with updated graphics, Bethesda have indicated a reluctance to go back and update Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, noting that the technical compromises they made to get those games out were severe and they'd feel the need to completely remake them, which would be a huge amount of work they'd rather divert to working on their new games.

Bethesda are currently working on a new game in a new franchise, Starfield, and Oblivion's successor, The Elder Scrolls VI. Neither project has a timeframe for release at the moment.

Bethesda tease new ELDER SCROLLS video game project

Bethesda have posted an image hinting at new developments in their Elder Scrolls line of fantasy RPGs.

The Elder Scrolls is a bestselling series of video games, comprising the main games Arena (1994), Daggerfall (1997), Morrowind (2002), Oblivion (2006) and Skyrim (2011); and the spin-offs Battlespire (1997), Redguard (1998) and The Elder Scrolls Online (2014). The last main series title, Skyrim, is one of the biggest-selling games of the last decade, with over 30 million copies and sold and being ported to multiple platforms. With this year making the ten-year anniversary of the last game in the series, fans are increasingly antsy over when a sequel will be released.

Bethesda released their last big single-player CRPG, Fallout 4, in 2015, whilst a secondary team at the company developed a controversial multiplayer spin-off, Fallout 76, which was released in 2018. Bethesda also confirmed in 2018 that they are working on two new single-player games, a new IP title called Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI, although they cautioned that the latter game was in a very early stage of development. Bethesda have repeatedly said that Starfield is their current main project and will precede The Elder Scrolls VI by several years.

For this reason, it is highly unlikely that the image Bethesda has posted has anything to do with Elder Scrolls VI, or if it does, it will be fairly obliquely, since Elder Scrolls VI is likely still many years away.

More likely is that the image refers to recent and possible future plans for The Elder Scrolls Online. The map has a candle located over the city of Solitude in Skyrim Province, a key setting for the recent Dark Heart of Skyrim expansion; other candles located near a set of coins, which were given away as collectibles for the recent Greymoor expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online (set in Skyrim), and a candle burning in the province of Hammerfell. We know the next expansion for Online is The Gates of Oblivion, and will tie in with the other-dimensional realm of Oblivion as well as possible new content in the Imperial Province of Cyrodiil (probably non-coincidentally tying in with the 15-year anniversary of the release of Oblivion), although intriguingly the map is oriented so Cyrodiil (south-east of Skyrim and east of Hammerfell) is not a focal point.

The candle burning in Hammerfell though may be a nod at The Elder Scrolls VI, as that province has been long-rumoured to be the main setting for the game. Hammerfell is the home of the Redguard, an important faction in the Empire, and a likely flashpoint between the Empire and the rival force known as the Dominion, whose machinations drove much of the main plot of Skyrim. This would also explain the game's long-rumoured working title, Redfall (although recently a freelancer who worked on Skyrim and may be working on Elder Scrolls VI has said that this is not the title, implying Bethesda secured the IP for another project).

I suspect we won't learn much more about The Elder Scrolls VI for a long, long time. In the meantime Bethesda are hard at work on their new IP, Starfield, reportedly a large-scale science fiction game set in the distant future and which will allow players to visit different planets. Bethesda Vice-President Pete Hines has hinted that we will get more news about Starfield this year, which excited some fans who noted that Bethesda's last two games have been formally announced and had release dates set within only four months, which has helped them avoid the problem of "overhype" which has beleaguered some other recent releases.