I've been playing a lot of Oblivion Remastered and was hoping on starting a discussion thread about it.
I've put in around 12 hours so far and it's everything I wanted from a remake. Aside from the gorgeous graphics overhaul, they added a lot of more subtle QoL changes that really add up. Having a sprint button is great, and the reworked leveling system is way better than how it used to be. Combat has also been enhanced in lots of subtle ways like significantly better animations and better impact when hitting enemies.
The remaster is very impressive, when news got leaked that this was in development I expected a low effort re-release with a higher resolution, but they managed to make it play like a modern title. The lighting is crazy good and the open world can look breathtaking at times. They also managed to keep all the old Oblivion charm by not messing around with things people loved - the game under the hood still works the same, glitches and hilarious NPCs are still intact. They even kept some goofs from the original.
The only two issues right now for me are:
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Open world performance is just not good. It hovers around 50FPS on my 3060 Ti in the open world on medium settings, which is rough.
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Difficulty settings are wack. Normal is too easy and hard is way too hard. The slider literally goes from 1x/1x damage taken/damage dealt to 3x/0.6! No idea why we can't get something in the middle, but luckily there's already a mod that fixes it (I'm now using 2x/0.75 which is the sweet spot).
If those get fixed, it's basically a perfect remaster. Anyone else here playing right now? How are you enjoying it?
I'm honestly surprised that so many people longed to return to Oblivion. The game's as bad now as it was 20 years ago - janky combat, horrible dialogue, bugs galore. They gave it a nice coat of paint, but the moment you transition from dialogue to gameplay, you go back to the same animations from the original game. It's kind of eerie looking at a game with modern graphics and such dated gameplay.
There are so many games nowadays that do what Oblivion attempted to do, so much better.
Such as?
Probably just false sense. Staples in the game industry for a reason. Bethesda fell on there sword with Fallout 76 but these games still don't have good competition or you wouldn't have so many Skyrim reruns?
Skyrim (2008), Skyrim (2012), Skyrim (2016), Skyrim (2020), Skyrim (2022), and Skyrim (2024)
(My years may be off)
i generally agree with the point you are making because Oblivion is my favorite TES game, but I just got done playing Avowed which is pretty good. defintiely not as deep as oblivion in many areas though.
I don't know if you're asking sarcastically or not, but I'd mention Divinity 2, Baldur's Gate 3, Witcher 3, and those are just the most popular/universally acclaimed. I feel all three of them offer the same sense of adventure and exploration in an open world map, with actually interesting side content, engaging combat system, and voice acting that doesn't scream "we're being held in the recording room against our will, please save us". They are also relatively bug-free, or at least not broken the way Bethesda titles are.
Back in the days, I think Gothic had the same clunky gameplay but at least offered a much deeper worldbuilding and more interesting choices.
You can also widen the search by changing the parameters. The thing that sets Oblivion apart is that it attempted to do a lot of things, but everything is either shallow, poorly executed, or outright bugged. If you take a look at other titles that did some of the things Oblivion did, there are countless that executed those ideas a lot better. Fable 2, Dragon Age, Avowed for example, and again, I'm only mentioning the most famous ones.
I feel as though the combat is much cleaner in my book. Yes it's based off a 20 year game, it's not going to match the witcher in sword play, but it's not annoying anymore to me.
Skyrim is the same way. I really hope they adopt combat similar to Mordhau or Chivalry for ES6, but that seems about as likely as them firing Emil Pagliarulo to bring the writing standard back up.
Also, the characters still look vaguely horrifying, just in a more crisp but less charming way than they used to.
One man is not responsible for all of your criticisms of writing in their games for decades. The writing and development processes of games are too opaque for you to be able to attribute anything to one person on teams as large as Bethesda's.
It was a joke, Emil, I'm sorry I hurt your feelings.
Nah, don't try to pass this off as, "I was only joking, bro". People get real death threats when this kind of shit happens in forums. I remember the Jennifer Hepler stuff, and there was just as much expert analysis that went into her witch hunt back then.
Don't mix criticisms of how someone does their job with encouraging death threats. He is the head writer. If the writing has gotten worse, it's his responsibility.
Oh, I've seen the "criticism", and you can't point it all at one person, hence the problem. You make a target out of someone without understanding it.
I said he should be fired, and nothing else. You are putting words in my mouth and clearly arguing in bad faith. Feel free to take the last word if it makes you feel better, there's no point in continuing to talk to you.
The first person who attributed issues at BioWare to Jennifer Hepler, without understanding how any of it works, only called for her to be fired too.
Still better combat than Fromsoft games