I don’t expect they would, since Skyblivion already has their blessing and the team has been working with representatives from Bethesda to make sure that everything they’re doing continues to be kosher with them.
The Skyblivion devs also released a statement recently that they are also looking forward to the release of this remaster, and believe that there is enough love to go around for both projects.
Basically, Oblivion fans are going to be eating well this year. If the official Oblivion remaster is underwhelming, there will still be Skyblivion to look forward to.
Agreed, though one would think they’d have taken steps to C&D Skyblivion the very moment they decided to move forward with their own project if that was their intent. It wouldn’t make much sense otherwise to let Skyblivion keep going this whole time if they saw it as a threat to their profits, since the mod is pretty close to completion at this point.
If they C&D’d skyblivion now only to offer their own remaster it would turn a lot of people off of it, they’ll wait until a few months after the remasters release, once they’ve gotten the bulk of their sales in and aren’t worried about the PR backlashing cutting sales they’ll drop the hammer on the skyblivion team.
Wouldn’t be much of a point, though. Skyblivion is already just about done. If they C&D it later this year, there will still be a 99% finished Skyblivion floating around on various hosting sites that they’d never be able to stop people from getting their hands on. Basically I don’t think it’s a question of whether or not Microsoft/Zenimax would want to kill the project to boost their own profits, but rather if they even could at this point, and I think the answer is no. A few years ago may have been a different story, but that ship has sailed.
It’s not the same sort of situation as teams making mods or romhacks of Nintendo games who (foolishly) announce it early and get C&D’d immediately before there’s anything to play. Skyblivion is something you can play in an almost-complete state right now if you wanted, and I don’t think a C&D in a few month’s time will stop modders from finishing it anyways since it’s so close to completion.
I’m hoping for remake. The game needs to abandon (or at least rework) their level scaling. It’s by far the worst implementation it that I’ve ever seen.
Then make everything less orange, shiny, and bulbous.
That is still the big question for me. I am all for modernizing the engine and don’t care if that means Unreal Engine 5, but if it doesn’t have comparable mod support to other Bethesda games, I feel that will end up hurting it pretty badly.
But as long as they don’t pull a Blizzard and replace the original game with the remaster, the original game and all of its mods will still be there to be enjoyed, at least. And maybe that means we might someday see an OpenOblivion similar to OpenMW if all else fails.
I don’t think there’s a shot that there is zero mod support. It’s Bethesda’s bread and butter. What I’m wondering is will old mods be compatible/portable? Rumor is the game is running old gamebryo engine logic alongside UE. Looking forward to seeing what this actually is tomorrow
I think the gaming community severely overstates the amount of people that mods their games. I wouldn’t be surprised if less than 20% of Skyrim’s players have ever used mods, and I’m damn sure having mod support or not wouldn’t have any considerable change on their sales.
I’m guessing not likely, if only because we’ve already seen mod compatibility take a hit for less drastic engine updates (Skyrim vs Skyrim SE, Fallout 4 vs Fallout 4 next-gen). The work they’re doing seems more extensive than those examples, so I wouldn’t expect old mods to work, but maybe they could be recreated or converted through community effort.
So the combat and leveling systems have been reworked, but aside from that it’s largely unchanged mechanics wise, from what I can gather. I just booted it up 5 mins ago so I can share more impressions in a few hours
Every leak points to a remaster, using gamebryo for the game’s logic and UE5 for the rendering part. Some leaks also mentioned it’ll have an updated HUD, archery, stamina and blocking mechanics, but we don’t know anything else.
Don’t think we know yet. Based on earlier leaks, the thought is that Unreal Engine 5 is involved somehow, but there is uncertainty about whether or not it is full-on in UE5 or if UE5 is just being used as a rendering layer. If Bethesda’s own engine is still used as the core of the game, we don’t know if that means simply reworking the original Oblivion code, or if they updated everything to the latest version used for Starfield.
What we can assume is that, even if the original engine is used, there will need to be a good deal of work done to update it regardless, since it is still a 32-bit application that would need to be rewritten for proper 64-bit support. And a lot of the game mechanics, physics, movement, etc. would need to be updated to work with the UE5 rendering layer if that is indeed how it’s working.
They can’t just be rendering on top, the visuals would clash with collisions. Some of the assets we’ve seen in captures are different enough from their legacy counterparts that they would cause all sorts of issues while playing. Also, they wouldn’t be able to increase the forest density, because trees have collisions. So it’s at least a remaster within gamebryo (which seems most likely to me, because it’s tailor-made for this kind of game) or a more profound remake within another engine (needless troubles, if you ask me, most unlikely).
It wouldn’t be the first sort of game that Microsoft has remastered in that style, though.
The Halo 1 and 2 remasters used a separate rendering layer over the original game which included updated art assets, and a setting to toggle between the original graphics and the updated ones on the fly. For the most part it was fine, but there were a couple of (primarily out of bounds) areas where the original collision did not always align with the updated geometry.
But I am hoping that it is more than just a simple rendering layer over the original game, because like you said it would require more hands-on work to improve things like forest density and interior clutter. It would look odd if they just increased the polygon count of foliage while still leaving it as sparse in places as the original. At least based on the leaked screenshots, the side-by-sides do give the impression that things have moved slightly and additional objects have been added, so extra rendering layer or not, my guess is that edits to the original game are also still involved (and likely means there won’t be a Halo-style graphics toggle button).
Booooooo… So not today. I’m doubting the same day drop. Knowing marketing asshats they’ll want to run a week or more of advertising first especially if they’re calling this a reveal. :/
Don’t even for a second think those articles from ‘games journalists’ (marketers) were organic and that things ‘leaked’ - this has been a marketing campaign.
I’ve mostly been ignoring these Oblivion remake posts. I’ll believe it’s actually gonna happen when/if they actually drop it in the next 24-48 hours. I actually don’t give a shit, and it’s one of my favorite games.
I’m with you there. It’s going to be cool and I really want it, but I’ve already completed it a bunch. I’m never going to be able to get properly excited like I would for ES6
Honestly, I wouldn’t be mad if ES VI was just Morrowind reworked into the modern era. It’s a great game, and it could use a few more pixels and updates to the combat and leveling systems.
But yeah, an ES VI update w/ some kind of target release date would absolutely be welcome (even if it’s just a year).
They literally have a teaser trailer for ES6 they officially releasedyears ago (in 2018; similarly to how Cyberpunk 2077 was teased way the hell back in 2012). They said it wouldn’t go into major production, though, until after Starfield released. Which has also already happened.
Right. Yet there’s zero timeline for release, and I’d like a timeline for release. You can’t just tease something and have pretty much no updates for 7 years…
My copium is maybe we get a little update with this announcement. Not thinking it likely, but this whole Oblivion shadowdrop move would tie in well with a statement that ES6 is still coming and this is their way of tiding people over until then.
Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. I don’t need gameplay or anything, I just want to know more-or-less what the status is. As in, are we likely to see a release in the next couple years? Or is this a 5-years out situation?
As another user already said, this remaster is being done by an outside studio, so it shouldn’t be significantly affecting any ongoing work at Bethesda.
While Todd Howard is full of shit half the time, I do believe him when he talks about their development roadmap. When Elder Scrolls 6 was announced, it was under the disclaimer that it was not an active project for the team at the time, and would not enter full production until Starfield was done. Starfield released in fall of 2023, so Elder Scrolls 6 should have been in full development for about a year and a half now.
I bet the OG Oblivion scene gets a new spark because of this. It’s still going strong as it is.
I’ve been playing Morrowind, and it’s still a great game. Script Extender or OpenMw, choose your modern flavor. The quests and flow of the game is excellent.
My only thing is that Oblivion does not play well on newer hardware. It was a bit of an ordeal to try to get it running well on my PC where I have two monitors, since it only runs on whichever monitor is primary and only if in Fullscreen mode. And don’t even think about alt-tabbing to check Discord, or it just crashes.
If it got the OpenMW treatment, I’d be thrilled with even that.
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The shadow drop was real, I’m downloading it now!
Don’t fuck with Skyblivion, Bethesda.
I don’t expect they would, since Skyblivion already has their blessing and the team has been working with representatives from Bethesda to make sure that everything they’re doing continues to be kosher with them.
The Skyblivion devs also released a statement recently that they are also looking forward to the release of this remaster, and believe that there is enough love to go around for both projects.
Basically, Oblivion fans are going to be eating well this year. If the official Oblivion remaster is underwhelming, there will still be Skyblivion to look forward to.
It’s all kosher until Zenimax decides it can make more money.
Agreed, though one would think they’d have taken steps to C&D Skyblivion the very moment they decided to move forward with their own project if that was their intent. It wouldn’t make much sense otherwise to let Skyblivion keep going this whole time if they saw it as a threat to their profits, since the mod is pretty close to completion at this point.
If they C&D’d skyblivion now only to offer their own remaster it would turn a lot of people off of it, they’ll wait until a few months after the remasters release, once they’ve gotten the bulk of their sales in and aren’t worried about the PR backlashing cutting sales they’ll drop the hammer on the skyblivion team.
Wouldn’t be much of a point, though. Skyblivion is already just about done. If they C&D it later this year, there will still be a 99% finished Skyblivion floating around on various hosting sites that they’d never be able to stop people from getting their hands on. Basically I don’t think it’s a question of whether or not Microsoft/Zenimax would want to kill the project to boost their own profits, but rather if they even could at this point, and I think the answer is no. A few years ago may have been a different story, but that ship has sailed.
It’s not the same sort of situation as teams making mods or romhacks of Nintendo games who (foolishly) announce it early and get C&D’d immediately before there’s anything to play. Skyblivion is something you can play in an almost-complete state right now if you wanted, and I don’t think a C&D in a few month’s time will stop modders from finishing it anyways since it’s so close to completion.
Which is it, a total remake or a remaster? Or a remaster with reworked controls?
I’m hoping for remake. The game needs to abandon (or at least rework) their level scaling. It’s by far the worst implementation it that I’ve ever seen.
Then make everything less orange, shiny, and bulbous.
I actually restarted halfway through because I leveled up so much that every enemy (even animals) were miserable to fight.
I realized you only leveled up when you slept so I just never slept. Game was way easier.
At that point is not really oblivion?!
Don’t think we know for sure how updated it is until tomorrow. Mod support is another big question mark
That is still the big question for me. I am all for modernizing the engine and don’t care if that means Unreal Engine 5, but if it doesn’t have comparable mod support to other Bethesda games, I feel that will end up hurting it pretty badly.
But as long as they don’t pull a Blizzard and replace the original game with the remaster, the original game and all of its mods will still be there to be enjoyed, at least. And maybe that means we might someday see an OpenOblivion similar to OpenMW if all else fails.
I don’t think there’s a shot that there is zero mod support. It’s Bethesda’s bread and butter. What I’m wondering is will old mods be compatible/portable? Rumor is the game is running old gamebryo engine logic alongside UE. Looking forward to seeing what this actually is tomorrow
I think the gaming community severely overstates the amount of people that mods their games. I wouldn’t be surprised if less than 20% of Skyrim’s players have ever used mods, and I’m damn sure having mod support or not wouldn’t have any considerable change on their sales.
I’m guessing not likely, if only because we’ve already seen mod compatibility take a hit for less drastic engine updates (Skyrim vs Skyrim SE, Fallout 4 vs Fallout 4 next-gen). The work they’re doing seems more extensive than those examples, so I wouldn’t expect old mods to work, but maybe they could be recreated or converted through community effort.
So, it’s tomorrow now. I’ve seen the trailer and it looks pretty damn updated, but I don’t know any details.
So the combat and leveling systems have been reworked, but aside from that it’s largely unchanged mechanics wise, from what I can gather. I just booted it up 5 mins ago so I can share more impressions in a few hours
Every leak points to a remaster, using gamebryo for the game’s logic and UE5 for the rendering part. Some leaks also mentioned it’ll have an updated HUD, archery, stamina and blocking mechanics, but we don’t know anything else.
Don’t think we know yet. Based on earlier leaks, the thought is that Unreal Engine 5 is involved somehow, but there is uncertainty about whether or not it is full-on in UE5 or if UE5 is just being used as a rendering layer. If Bethesda’s own engine is still used as the core of the game, we don’t know if that means simply reworking the original Oblivion code, or if they updated everything to the latest version used for Starfield.
What we can assume is that, even if the original engine is used, there will need to be a good deal of work done to update it regardless, since it is still a 32-bit application that would need to be rewritten for proper 64-bit support. And a lot of the game mechanics, physics, movement, etc. would need to be updated to work with the UE5 rendering layer if that is indeed how it’s working.
They can’t just be rendering on top, the visuals would clash with collisions. Some of the assets we’ve seen in captures are different enough from their legacy counterparts that they would cause all sorts of issues while playing. Also, they wouldn’t be able to increase the forest density, because trees have collisions. So it’s at least a remaster within gamebryo (which seems most likely to me, because it’s tailor-made for this kind of game) or a more profound remake within another engine (needless troubles, if you ask me, most unlikely).
It wouldn’t be the first sort of game that Microsoft has remastered in that style, though.
The Halo 1 and 2 remasters used a separate rendering layer over the original game which included updated art assets, and a setting to toggle between the original graphics and the updated ones on the fly. For the most part it was fine, but there were a couple of (primarily out of bounds) areas where the original collision did not always align with the updated geometry.
But I am hoping that it is more than just a simple rendering layer over the original game, because like you said it would require more hands-on work to improve things like forest density and interior clutter. It would look odd if they just increased the polygon count of foliage while still leaving it as sparse in places as the original. At least based on the leaked screenshots, the side-by-sides do give the impression that things have moved slightly and additional objects have been added, so extra rendering layer or not, my guess is that edits to the original game are also still involved (and likely means there won’t be a Halo-style graphics toggle button).
It’s not gamebryo. It’s built in unreal.
oh really ? we know that ?
Booooooo… So not today. I’m doubting the same day drop. Knowing marketing asshats they’ll want to run a week or more of advertising first especially if they’re calling this a reveal. :/
Ye ah, they might have it drop next week. At the very least we know it should release by the end of the month.
how do we know that?
It’s been leaked by dozens of reliable sources, the same ones that told us Oblivion was getting remastered two months ago.
They’re “shadow dropping” it. It’ll be a very quick release after reveal.
but how do we know that?
Because either they’ve said it or a leak said it. There’s been multiple posts about it recently.
They’ve been running weeks of marketing now.
Don’t even for a second think those articles from ‘games journalists’ (marketers) were organic and that things ‘leaked’ - this has been a marketing campaign.
I’ve mostly been ignoring these Oblivion remake posts. I’ll believe it’s actually gonna happen when/if they actually drop it in the next 24-48 hours. I actually don’t give a shit, and it’s one of my favorite games.
dude follow the link, there’s an official bethesda countdown to the stream.
Been playing nonstop since it came out. I’m already level 30, almost done with Mages Guild and nothing else.
It’s back.
I’m with you there. It’s going to be cool and I really want it, but I’ve already completed it a bunch. I’m never going to be able to get properly excited like I would for ES6
I wonder how the loading screens will be, that was the main thing that kept me from Starfield.
Did UE5 help beyond “pretty”?
So… is Elder Scrolls VI ever happening?
After this they’ll remaster Morrowind. It’ll be Elder Scrolls III 2, and two threes is six, so that’ll be Elder Scrolls VI
Imagine what it’d be like if halfway through this livestream they just shift the “I” to the other side of the “V” and reveal VI as well though
Honestly, I wouldn’t be mad if ES VI was just Morrowind reworked into the modern era. It’s a great game, and it could use a few more pixels and updates to the combat and leveling systems.
But yeah, an ES VI update w/ some kind of target release date would absolutely be welcome (even if it’s just a year).
That’s some mighty fine Steiner math!
They literally have a teaser trailer for ES6 they officially released years ago (in 2018; similarly to how Cyberpunk 2077 was teased way the hell back in 2012). They said it wouldn’t go into major production, though, until after Starfield released. Which has also already happened.
Right. Yet there’s zero timeline for release, and I’d like a timeline for release. You can’t just tease something and have pretty much no updates for 7 years…
Todd Howard thinks he can. 🤷🏻♂️
My copium is maybe we get a little update with this announcement. Not thinking it likely, but this whole Oblivion shadowdrop move would tie in well with a statement that ES6 is still coming and this is their way of tiding people over until then.
Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping for. I don’t need gameplay or anything, I just want to know more-or-less what the status is. As in, are we likely to see a release in the next couple years? Or is this a 5-years out situation?
Bethesda didn’t make this port.
hold your horses armor buddy, they still have a few other elder scrolls games to remake first.
When Daggerfall stops being free you know they’re about to destroy it’s charm with a modern take.
As another user already said, this remaster is being done by an outside studio, so it shouldn’t be significantly affecting any ongoing work at Bethesda.
While Todd Howard is full of shit half the time, I do believe him when he talks about their development roadmap. When Elder Scrolls 6 was announced, it was under the disclaimer that it was not an active project for the team at the time, and would not enter full production until Starfield was done. Starfield released in fall of 2023, so Elder Scrolls 6 should have been in full development for about a year and a half now.
Im definitely interested in seeing how this came out. In the Day 10 patch world we live in I’m definitely not going to try it for awhile though.
It might motivate me to dust off my old copy of Oblivion though.
I bet the OG Oblivion scene gets a new spark because of this. It’s still going strong as it is.
I’ve been playing Morrowind, and it’s still a great game. Script Extender or OpenMw, choose your modern flavor. The quests and flow of the game is excellent.
My only thing is that Oblivion does not play well on newer hardware. It was a bit of an ordeal to try to get it running well on my PC where I have two monitors, since it only runs on whichever monitor is primary and only if in Fullscreen mode. And don’t even think about alt-tabbing to check Discord, or it just crashes.
If it got the OpenMW treatment, I’d be thrilled with even that.