The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a game that has often been long in the shadow of Skyrim. In many ways, Skyrim overtook the attention of the middle child, Oblivion, and took away its toys.
The 2011 Elder Scrolls Game, Skyrim, which takes place in the homeland of the Nords sold over 60 million copies. A game which sells that many copies isn’t simply a success, but it has an imprint on gaming culture. The game has been so dominant for so long that Bethesda has struggled with finding a plan to develop a sequel that would be able to surpass it.
Skyrim with its better graphics and more streamlined experience allowed for it greatly surpass Oblivion. Many gamers enjoyed Skyrim without knowing that there have been four separate games in the Elder Scrolls Series before Skyrim. For many players, Skyrim is The Elder Scrolls.
Oblivion was always the dark horse and was obscure for many years. The Remastered Edition brings Oblivion back into the spotlight. It also shows what the contemporary Video Game industry is now missing in its spirit. That spirit is what made so many classic games. Now, the video game industry is simply unable to build anything that can truly surpass the older generations of games.
When one compares the original Oblivion and Oblivion Remastered, one can see that Oblivion and Skyrim were merging in the new version.
While the older version of Oblivion was more colorful, Oblivion Remastered is more similar in style in both graphics and its UI to Skyrim. In the screenshot above, one can see that the game has a more desaturated look in comparison to the older Oblivion versions.
The walls surrounding Bruma seem like they could right at home in Skyrim. One city that it reminds of in Skyrim is Whiterun or even Solitude.
As you can see in the screenshot above, the original game had a more colorful look in comparison.
The Orcs in the original game had deeper tones of Green as shown here.
Compare that to the graphics here:
These are same pieces of clothing here. The big difference is the realism of the cloth and the colors. Unlike in the original version of Oblivion, the colors in the Remastered edition do not have the dark blue shade. The raiment in OC Oblivion looks like someone dipped the clothes into a blue dye. The blues are very dark while in the Remastered edition, the blues seem to be more realistic and also have some dirt on them.
Another area of comparison is that of the Imperial City, which has the most NPCs in the game.
The greenery and bluish tones of the Original Oblivion seem go well with each other. The main area which changes this look is the lighting and how shadows are rendered in the game. Unreal Engine 5 is a true leap in being able to provide more depth and details to shadows. However, what this does to the game is gives it a more realistic look which makes it seem more historical in a sense.
As you can see, lighting makes all the difference here. The game now seeks to make The Elder Scrolls less like a Tolkein style game and more like more recent games such as Elden Ring and Avowed. Some of this trend towards darker lighting seems to be a product of both technology and cultural changes as a result of Skyrim’s dominance in the RPG genre.
The thing that is most striking about the differences between versions is the sky is more realistic and more desaturated. Having this change in how shadows and lighting being rendered in the game has taken away some of the color that was prominent in the OC Oblivion.
The Remastered version is faithful in reproducing the locations of the original game. However in one aspect of the Imperial City that caught my attention is the addition of these blue tinted shingles on buildings in the Talos Plaza District in the Imperial City. In my opinion, this is a great addition to the game and helps bring out more color to the city.
The original game’s Imperial City was more grayish in its style and I see that the shingles having a color now makes it more interesting now.
These changes show the how the Video Game industry has improving in the realm of fidelity and made a leap into almost photorealistic graphics.
What Oblivion Remastered accomplishes is being faithful to the original game while updating some aspects of the gameplay. I think that the success of the release alongside newer titles is a testament to Oblivion’s excellent design, music and overall atmosphere.
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